AMVI_Rider

Hello, The project was apparently dead, but it's not... I have to apologize everyone here because I disappeared and thank many of you for the personal messages I received. It was only a very busy year (mostly because of chip shortage) and some personal commitments that left me zero time for flying or coding. I'm still unable to fly, but here and there I have time for coding. I saw OpenKneeboard with much interest and I know that Fred is a sharp software engineer, still I hadn't time to explore his work yet! To answer a recurrent question, VRK and OpenKneeboard are similar tools. They share the purpose but have some relevant techincal and user experience differences . This is why I feel that supporting VRK is still a good idea. Also, I put some striong effort in making VRK the best tool for the kind of operations that my squadron do, that's something I have to care about. Anyway, let's go into interesting details: Next verion (2.0 series) will enter alpha today, I have two major bugs to fix before beta. The new code base is alredy there and working OpenXR support including OpenComposite, OpenXR-Toolkit, Steam implementation, Pimax-OpenXR and hopefullty anything else. WMR is included but not yet tested. MSFS is also working. Most of this work has been inspired and derived from the impressvie work make by Matthieu Bucchianeri with OpenXR-Toolkit. His tools lead the way to have VRK working on OpenXR. To clean some mess in the code I removed the "native" support for Oculus, it has alway been problematic and I feel that it will get worse with time. I may consider re-adding it if OpenXR will show a significant drop in performance. Oculus users, please let me now your opininion on this matter: it's long time since I turned on my Rift. Complete ceanup of some convoluted requirements and razionalization of used libraries. This will continue in time with the aim of improving resource usage and performances. I should have posted this before, but given my difficulties in the last year I made the choice to wait hand having something done to put on the table. Although it's not DCS, the image is the real proof that OpenXR is in place: Sorry for the quality. I have no other option (yet) than the smartphone camera when using non Steam OpenXR. Ciao!

It happened to me and it was caused by the relocation of the sim directory using NTFS Junction which worked flawlessly for years. In my case C:\Sim was relocated into D:\Sim and the junction took place of C:\Sim. The solution was to launch the updater from the real directory ( D:\Sim ) and not from the linked one. Sorry for posting in he english here, I hope the fix will work anyway

There's a bug that causes VRK to show only Blue infos. IT is already fixed and will be delivered with next version. I can't find a proper way to deliver a good mouse experience. As you already know "capturing" the mouse will make DCS unresponsive to flight controls, on the other side getting mouse events "in parallel" can lead to unwanted clicks in DCS cockpit. The middle-tier solution is to use DCS scratchpad to take text notes and have them displayed in VRK.

No beacuse as soon as VRK tries to probe SteamVR, it completely starts and probing is necessary to be done at VRK startup

A little follow up: the latest version (V 1.4.3.07) contains the fix for the memory leak which was part of SteamVR code. I stopped posting changelogs here, but you can find them in the Discord server or GitHub release. Regarding FS2020 is highly likely that SteamVR will work day 1. Given the design of the sim I think that injecting Oculus into it will be very hard (harder than DCS and others). Time will tell, but, again, I'm very disappointed to see how closed is their API (compared to SteamVR).

The S Bluetooth can be used also in USB mode. Latency and disconnections may be resolved by putting the BT dongle closer with an USB extension or hub (if you are using an USB dongle).

There is no on/off option for the 2nd kneeboard, but you can do it by: setting the Width to 0 for the one you want to disappear and Active Kneeboard Switching mode to Manual.

You should not poiunt the DCS_Updater exe but the DCS exe which is in the bin directory. Mind that you should launch DCS_Updater manually from time to time to let DCS update. It is possilble with the old 1.2 version which is not supported anymore => No new features Generally speaking I advise to avoid tablets because because of the weight, thickness and the value of the device. I already hit my tablet several times against the desk/stick mount and the risk of scratching/breaking the display is real. The Surface, in particular, is more expensive and generates some heat (per reports, I don't own any). If you can afford the graphics tablet, you'll have the best solution (for VRK) in your hands. Anyway... Link to 1.2 is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wy0M4-Vq4YC7HMq2lRNTif2YMWuUwQIv

To enlarge the are in which the kneeboard becomes active (and changes it size) without moving the kneeboards you can use the Default Focus Factor for Width and Height. My settings are 1.3 for Height and 1.1 for Width.

The .20 complaining about "wrong" hook is because the script has been upgraded to support briefings. Probably a better wording is needed there. Just going into configuration and "Install hooks" will upgrade the script (maybe better wording there also). If you open the hook script which version do you see? To debug this I need a log, if you don't mind loosing the settings you can erase the profiles forlder ( C:\Users\<win_username>\VRK<Profiles ) and it will revert to a working state. Gnerally speaking: I'm in the middle of a product release, so I'm a bit overloaded of activities. This is why I've some latency in replying to posts and messages. Let me get out of this and I will get back to support and fix as usual.

There are some things you can check 1. check how much RAM is used by VRK. Latest version improved a lot the RAM usage but since VRK moved from 64 bit you can go well beyond normal RAM usage without noticing if you load many pages documents 2. avoid leaving your pen over the tablet: this will cause a constant triggering of kneeboard refresh 3. check you video RAM usage. Stuttering sometime happens because of that. Removing VRK is just freeing some video RAM improving the running condition Generally speaking VRK is designed to not interfere with DCS: if you don't move the pen VRK does not render anything as the image is already uploaded to SteamVR overlay. Then the compositor work is not a huge problem for your GPU. Also, VRK is runinng in a "free" core without disturbing the core that is used by DCS. I have a similar system (with only the 3600X being faster than your 3500) and the 1080Ti is keeping the Rift S with no stutters.

If you are upgrading from 1.3.3.07 (included) or newer you can just install the new version and your setting will be there. Mind the size change, that's something you have to change manually. If you want to be sure, make a backup copy of: C:\Users\<windows_username>\VRK\Profiles Panther suggestion is the way. If you have Cougar MFCDs you can map VRK brightness control to brightness/contrast/sym/gain switches. That's convenient and saves precious tablet buttons.

Version 1.3.3.20 is available for download This version contains a number of relevant new features and fixes. It should have been called 1.4, nonetheless it is an important step forward. Over the previous release the big one is the HW acceleration for the renderding. It brings the pen-to-VR latency down improving the feeling and the writing. This feature is a big change and may have some side effects. In SteamVR flickering has already been reported and already partially resolved At the current state it should not be annoying (if not, please report again). DPI scaling has been fixed, you will notice that kneeboard size will be larger than before (128% of the original size). Now size is correct. WinTab (Wacom) users should now deselect the Relative buttons in their config. This is really important from now on. If you are experiencing low sentivity please change the Pen Tip feel from Wacom Tablet Properties. Mind that the relative buttons is deprecated and will be removed from available features. For the lovers of DCS integration, mission (and coalition) briefings are now imported, see the quick start guide (DCS Integration chapter) for details about coalition. Changelog: [1.3.3.20] [NEW] HW accelerated rendering [NEW] Bookmarks functions [NEW] Pages merging in context menu [NEW] Eraser support as button 9 (preliminar) [NEW] DCS briefing loading (preliminar) [FIX] Wintab crashing on relative buttons configuration change [FIX] DPI and image loading [FIX] Oculus not making KB transparent [CHG] VR Refresh limited to 30 fps [CHG] VR Refresh performance improvements [CHG] WinTab will behave like 1.3.3.08 in a single tablet configuration Official download location: https://www.amvi.it/download429-vr-kneeboard.html Donation link: https://tinyurl.com/vrk-donate Discord: https://discord.gg/mxqSSa4 I would like to thank all VRK supporters for their donations and suggestions!

Things changed in the config due to various new features and sometimes the quick start guide is not promptly updated. In this respect I think I've fond the proper equilibrium and I don't expect big changes anymore (except for new feature of course). To answer some more questions: - Tablets (and specifically Ipads): I left the tablets options because of the lack of sustainable use cases. I know many of you already have tablets, but it is a huge effort to support both worlds and everybody that tested the tablet (at the time) then quickly moved to the pen tablet. I know that someone may want to try, but I suggest trying the app without the pen, and then consider buying a pen tablet. - current support is for kneeboards embedded into missions (DCS Briefings also, but not yet released). The image import in the stable version is broken, but already fixed in the test version. You can access it in preview via Discord if you want to.

Hello guys, I try to answer all your questions in a single post... The kneeboard not loading has been reported. I will investigate as soon as I finish the performance improvement campaign. Sadly OpenVR didn't liked the HW acceleration technique which is giving so good results. In theory it shouldn't matter and I'm investigating why. The image distortion is fixed and will be released with next version. For the moment stay with 1:1 aspect ratio or be patient. I have the old installer for the client / server and I will add the link as by tomorrow for anybody interested. In any case consider to buy the pen tablet because the surface is getting hot and uncomfortable to be used (as reported by users in this forum). VRK is distributed among threads but WPF (the MS graphical framework I'm using) is not. There are many areas in which I'm improving performances but some workarounds I was obliged to use are CPU intensive. The good part is that nothing of this is influencing DCS so you are only using the extra cores left by DCS. Mind that the HW accelerated (and optimized) tendering is 4 to 8 times faster than what you see now. The CPU usage will be at part but latency will be much better. Sorry for not being present here (more active on Discord those days) but the SteamVR tests are very demanding.

Version 1.3.3.16 is available for download This version is mostly dedicated to bug fixing. Changelog: [1.3.3.16] [FIX] Wintab doesn't register strokes starting with light pressure on tip [FIX] Tablet events routing causing multiple actions and wrong target kneeboard [FIX] Image aspect ratio [FIX] VR Toggle not properly restoring [CHG] VR Toggle global effect [NEW] Oculus: option to disable sim launch on profile load [NEW] Support for high res images (do not scale down to VRK resolution) [NEW] Maximum zoom increased to 16x Official download location: https://www.amvi.it/download429-vr-kneeboard.html Donation link: https://tinyurl.com/vrk-donate Discord: https://discord.gg/mxqSSa4 I would like to thank all VRK supporters for their donations and suggestions!

I've just released a version that fixes your problem (was a known bug)

That's Fox Delta video, anyway, the tab on the left are documents which are create for any document you "add" to the kneeboard (notes, pdf, directory...). On top there are Bookmarks. You can rename them by just right clicking with the mouse. To change the location (left, right, top, bottom) there are drop down lists in the VR tab of configuration. As per DCSMP I already started F-16, but VRK is taking most of my free time and it's slowly progressing.

Thank you! Well, to be hones I forgot to add a function to cycle bookmarks. The PREV/NEXT Tab is used to cycle trough "documents". I will add it in the current dev version ( 1.3.3.18 ). I take the opportunity to give a little insight about the 1.3.3.18. It is mostly around performance optimization and tuning: I notice that the current version is not rendering at a very good framerate. The latency pen to VR is higher than I expected. Going deeper I found that rendering into offscreen surfaces (that's required to support supersampling) is done in software mode causing the CPU to struggle in keeping up when you draw a stroke. Done some optimization of the code result in some improvement, so, I decided to implement some HW acceleration and that's the result: 1.3.3.16 2020-03-29 23:51:39,020 [1] INFO VRKneeboardLib.VRRefresher - Average Rendering time: 49 1.3.3.18 (optimized) 2020-03-31 20:18:58,397 [1] INFO VRKneeboardLib.VRRefresher - Average Rendering time: 38 1.3.3.18 (HW accelerated) 2020-04-01 19:42:18,834 [1] INFO VRKneeboardLib.VRRefresher - Average Rendering time: 12 A little patience and I will come back with some interesting improvements.

No, but it has already been fixed in the test version (1.3.3.16). That's why Fox Delta (which is testing) doesn't see the problem anymore. If you want to join the testing, go to VRK Discord and look in the test-version channel.

Hey, no worries. When users push to get things working it is always because they found the tool valuable. Frankly I still don't get why you need to push so hard while I can keep my settings so relaxed. I'm not sure if you are following on Discord, but I have published there a test version that should fix the pen problem for Wacom. I'm not sure if it will fix the sensitivity too. Can you try it and give me feedback?

I've just found an issue there that happens if you start the stroke with a very "light" tip pressure. In this case the stroke is not drawn, also if you increase the pressure later and this can cause also the joint letters problem. Confirmed to be a bug, easy fix in the code. What doesn't add up is that, in my case, I had to press with the lightest touch I was able and never happens with a normal pressure. This must have something to do with tip sensitivity in Wacom Tablet Properties or my unit (I hope not). Here you can find my settings, can you share yours?

I'm trying to reproduce the issue, sorry for the troubles. In he meanwhile you can revert to 1.3.3.07 by running the setup (no need to uninstall). You will have to remap the table physical buttons. @epolta it this happening to you too?

The input system changed a lot because both 64 bit (the Wacom WinTab SDK was not really ready for 64bit) and multi-tablet support. The problem is to understand if it is the hysteresys that is causing problems or something else. I own a Intuos S and tested personally, so, it may be just something into your configuration (VRK or tablet). Can you sent me the logs (C:\Users\<windows_username\>\VRK\Logs) via PM or email? I will check if everything is ok.

Hi, I guess you are using a Wacom tablet (which is the one that is causing this problem to some users). You have two solutions: Lower the Tip Feel in the Wacom Tablet Properties (Wacom configuration uility) or Enable the Relative Buttons mode in VRK. The first is preferrable because it keeps the hysteresis logic enabled in VRK (which prevents boucing clicks on kneeboard buttons), the second is the last resort.