Indie game dev who wants to output telemetry.

Hi, I'm a Unity developer. I've been working on something using the Oculus Rift, and I've been thinking that it works great for the visual experience, but if I could add a real sensation of motion that would make it complete. So I've been looking into what I would need to do to make that happen.

If I understand correctly, if I want to be sure the game will work nicely with this, I should output telemetry data with acceleration and pitch and roll? Is there anywhere that's a good intro to doing this?

From this, I get what some of my options are:
http://www.xsimulator.net/community...a-plugin-for-simtools-api-documentation.4612/

I could export through UDP packets or Memory Mapped Files. But that doesn't fully address what format I should use to present the data. Would I pick my own format arbitrarily and then write my own plugin to interpret it? How can I make sure it's easy to write?

Good Day

I am a C# programmer and wonder if the data could be read through C# to be used for other cool simulator addons?

Thank You

Albertus Geyser

The initial project I wanted to do this I've had to put on the back-burner, but I'll keep this in mind.

There are examples of how to send and receive UDP packets through C#, and same thing again for using memory mapped files.

If there isn't a standardized protocol for how this data in structured within the packets and/or files, you kind of do have to handle it on a game-by-game basis. That's the impression I get from the "how to write a plugin for simtools" tutorial.

Like I said, the project I was initially looking into this for they decided they weren't going to support motion sim. But I'd like to try it out for one of my side projects, to learn how it works.

I've played a little with UDP in Unity. It looks like memory-mapped files are a little more difficult, so I'll only support UDP to start.

@yobuddy, for Roll, Pitch, Yaw, Heave, Sway, Surge, is there any common approach for which direction is positive or negative? What I mean is for example does a positive Surge value usually mean it's accelerating forward and negative mean backwards? And does positive Roll mean it's tilted to the right?

And for Roll and Pitch, should I assume that 0, 0 would mean it's laying flat?

Also, the Heave Sway and Surge should be relative to the orientation right? What I mean is, if it's Pitch has the nose down 25 degrees, its Surge should be the acceleration along that axis that's pointed down 25 degrees, not along the normal flat axis?

Also all numbers are 32-bit floating-point values. I'll assume that's fine?

This might help, even though quite a few of our plugin don't follow it, we tried to create a standard,
http://www.xsimulator.net/co-ordinate-system/

Yes this is correct.

Floating point values should be fine.

@rrh

Hi! I'm also a unity game developer. I am developing a bicycle game. My problem is I don't know how can I start writing the code for telemetry output. If you've solve this, can you guide me, Thanks

Hi @rrh and @Ralph Manuel

There's no common definition of the angle or acceleration values. People output what they use in their coordinate system. Sometimes Heave, Sway, Surge are given in world coordinates, sometimes in local coordinates, sometimes in "g" units, sometimes in m/s², and so on. That's why we have SimTools. We collect the available game data in the plugins and convert them to the right values for the simulation platform with the definitions as mentioned by @eaorobbie
@Ralph Manuel: What language are you coding with? I can give you some sample snippets in C++ and VB.net (if needed in LUA too LOL)

BTW: Memory Mapped File (MMF) may sounds difficult but is no big deal either. I can provide you some sample code too. (Not in LUA though )

I've provided Ralph some example code in C# that I used in Unity with a plugin written by YoBuddy, which I link here:
http://www.xsimulator.net/community/threads/capturing-max-min-with-tuning-center.5623/#post-58471

I output the motion using UDP not MMF, because of Unity reasons.
( Those reasons: Unity uses a Mono framework which supports .NET class libraries up to 2.0, but System.IO.MemoryMappedFiles was introduced in .NET 4.0
Outputting to UDP was a lot easier for me than figuring out how to work around that.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/system.io.memorymappedfiles
https://docs.unity3d.com/401/Documentation/ScriptReference/MonoCompatibility.html )

@value1
I'm using C# for this.
rrh gave me some codes in C# I think it will help me a lot.
I cannot give it a try because I'm busy right now because of exams. Maybe tomorrow or tonight I will be able to check it.

Thanks @rrh for the codes. I will also use UDP to send data because it is more easier than MMF.

I'll give it a try and will make you updated. Thanks for guiding me, this is a friendly forum