Thadiun Okona

${1} e: what's the trick to making youtube links work here again?

There seems to be some confusion about the 'sweet spot' on Index, likely stemming mostly from a misinterpretation of what Norm from Tested brought up. The sweet spot he was talking about was the relation of your eye to the lenses and how much wiggle room there was for the hmd to get out of position, not edge to edge clarity. The dual element lens system requires your eyes to be properly aligned, so if the headset shifts on your face it can more easily go out of the desired location. However with the headset actually in that location, apparently edge to edge clarity (what most people are talking about when they mention sweet spot) is extremely good. The dev from Hotdogs Horseshoes and Hand Grenades goes into more detail about this (around 5:30)

The Lighthouse has to excite a minimum of three photon sensors on the headset in order to triangulate its position and orientation. The ability of Lighthouse to track is derived from the time differential of when the beam hits the different sensor locations in relation to each other.

It's not a strange quote there is just more nuance to this because the fov is not fixed due to moving parts that affect the results. The Index has 20deg more fov potential than Vive. Both Vive and Index can move the optics closer/farther from a users face. While Vive is spec'd at 110deg, that is at the ideal distance but if you have glasses or super long eyelashes or whatever and run the optics way out it's going to be less for you. With Index it's the same but with 130deg being the best case scenario instead of 110.

TARGET does more than kb/m emulation, though I've encountered scenarios where it was the only emulated mouse a game accepted (MWO) which was vital to my control scheme. For kb output, you can also natively script macros, sequencing, timed events. Once I scripted a pulse-width-modulation scheme to make a digital axis in a game behave like an analog one, etc. It also can return digital events from analog inputs with a high degree of control of the behavior. You can set it up to be able to alter axis parameters on-the-fly, it can be used to initiate 3rd party software. It has the option for shift layers and on and on. Didn't know VPC gear can be recognized by it, that's a big deal for people that want the power of TARGET with the quality of VPC hardware, especially for those that rely on combining devices into a single virtual controller which is mighty useful for games with awful joystick support

Reverb is said to be 63mm with +/-8mm adjustment

Hehe, no not to put in the hydraulic damper, to use instead of one or to supplement it so that you can run the hydraulic at minimum resistance. I have one of those hydraulic dampers, and also make adjustable tension friction rub joints and the quality of the kinematics of a generous amount of surface area is actually better than the hydraulic damper. I assumed my damper was a lemon, so did some homework and bought some synthetic 10 weight motorcycle fork oil after reading up on motorcycle forums. Mine also has sticktion, that gets worse with higher resistance. I'm hoping the bleed/refill makes it start behaving, otherwise I'm sticking with my mechanical dampers. Here's an album of a positioning joystick I made for MWO in 2012 https://imgur.com/a/ixi64. Towards the middle of the album is a breakdown of the simple friction joints. I used it emulating absolute mouse, and it was totally viable playing against kbm warriors, due to the precision of the damping and Nyogel made it from from good to great.

Use real damping grease. Nyogel 767a is not like anything you can buy at any hardware store (I've been making damping mechanisms and exploring greases for this purpose since 2012) and makes mechanical damping mechanisms work nearly as well as real hydraulic ones. One of the things that make it very different form other greases is the lack of stiction under these conditions, despite being really heavy stuff. Breakout force is no different feeling than the kinematic stroke and it doesn't evaporate away the way normal greases do.

What a waste that would be... just swap the sensors because the TARGET capable original board that also can be tuned with Cougar Control Panel is worth its weight in gold by comparison. If only the Warthog or any other joystick board were as useful as the Cougar is... OP, if still available I'll gladly take it off your hands!

I love projectors, but not for $5k! I have an Epson 8350 I bought as a refurbished unit from them and it's lasted years now. It's also a 3lcd/3chip (no spinning wheel...) projector, so image is very nice and no flickering. 1080p, very bright and short throw, though not ultra short. I gladly paid $950 for mine, but they have them for $675(!) now. https://epson.com/Clearance-Center/Home-Entertainment/PowerLite-Home-Cinema-8350-1080p-3LCD-Projector---Refurbished/p/V11H373120-N The 8350 is very low latency for a projector, under 20ms which may not be up to 'gamer' standards for a shooter, it's more than adequate for normal people and sims. I use it hours every day since 2014 and am on the original bulb, which only costs like $50 to replace. I too use my Rift for simming/playing though, but it's nice when friends are over they can see what's going on in-game and I like watching others playing too. Bottom line it's a sweep projector, that seemed to outperform the units made to replace it as well.

Here's a useful resource for this thread if it's not already known... a CAD generator for making custom pulleys to print. I downloaded OpenSCAD and generated pulleys with it and it works quite well. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16627 I've been pursuing my MSFFII mod and finally have all the parts together, (the Shotkey diodes I needed were out of stock -everywhere- until last month) other than the large pulleys I've yet to print. Not sure if I should post about it here at this point though since it's in a very different direction than this thread has chosen so will start my own thread once I'm cutting metal and soldering have things to take pics of. I've already posted most of the relevant info along the way anyhow. I acquired some 30t GT2 and 20t GT3 pulleys to do a comparison to evaluate the tactile properties though, which I'll post here after I get the belts and make a test rig for them. My drive will be 25:1 (5:1 x2), based on one of these pulleys. I wound up using the 03 models of the 14000 series Pittman motors I linked before (skewed armature brushed DC motors that can be driven from a modded version of the MS circuit). Motor selection came down to cost, as these were readily available on ebay for pretty cheap along with some resistors to bring the voltage drop to the desired range. Torque will be ~3.5 - 4Nm after reduction.

https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/111003-mechpit-ii-a-practical-approach/

Well, right aileron and up elevator to turn right... right pedal would be used to keep that action coordinated but you don't turn a plane with the rudder like a boat :p

This is what I've been waiting to see. For some applications I prefer a hard center like opposing rocker arms (tweezers) apply, but for others not so much. The mechanism however looks like it would be fairly straight forward to swap out with a cam mod however, though modding $500 pedals is probably not an idea situation for most. Also would be easy to incorporate a nice damping mechanism as well. Either way it's great to see a big manufacturer make a serious set of pedals though.

I make these dust shields to keep gunk from getting into the bases while in use. They are die cut out of .012" thick mylar http://www.dualsticks.com/dustshields/

Tracking shouldn't be anything less than CV1.. make sure there are objects in the space your in for the headset's cameras to be able to use as tracking references. The only times I hear of issues are spaces that are too featureless or dark.

Before everyone gets too excited, Nate Mitchel ( Oculus Co-founder & Head of Rift) popped by a thread on reddit to help manage expectations.

A single sensor is indeed fine for cockpits. Yes the dual sensors are to provide tracking for the hand controllers in 6dof, to reduce occlusion, but with a single sensor, the HMD is still tracked in all 6dof whether your sitting down or not. Tiny lateral movements cause major shifts in near/far field objects through the mechanism of parallax and even in the confines of being strapped in a cockpit our heads can move 20-40cm in those axes so they are critical to track in VR or else the experience is instantly nauseating.

The performance hit for the higher res screen is not so bad since it's the equivalent of running higher PD/SS settings only in this case it's for real pixels instead of sub pixels. Put another way, running Vive Pro at native resolution at SS of 1.0 is the equivalent of running CV1 at SS of 1.7 or so. Get the Ti if you can afford the extra horsepower, they also announced 11 series cards so if you're not building right now perhaps an 1180/Ti which are set to launch summer or fall... https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-11-series-launching-around-july-gddr6-mass-production-timeline-confirms/

They should keep in mind that rubber molds have a shelf life, as well as a 'library' life. Shelf life is how long the rubber lasts sitting on the shelf (ozone and UV are the enemy). Library life is how many pours you get before the molds stsrt getting ragged due to chemical interaction. I can already see discoloring from having several pours done, which means they won't be good much longer and a new set will need to be made and if it's not done before parts start looking jacked all is lost. I use platinum silicone with urethane resin and am lucky if I get more than 20 pours before molds are a lost cause. Personally in this situation (I cast resin flight grips) once I dial in a mold I 'download a hard copy'... meaning I make a perfect negative of the mold using tough pattern making material with super low shrink like Smooth-Cast 385. That way once the silicone ages or a critical nub breaks off, I can easily pour a new mold halves without having to fully set up the mold (risers, sprues, vents, locks, plugs, parting lines, etc), which takes a whole lot longer and can be quite frustrating. IMO those backup negatives are the real molds, the rubber tooling for making end use parts are fragile, temporary, and disposable and need to be treated as such or else the project will be short lived.

Adding to this... the MagREZ sensors can be used as direct replacements for the pots on the Cougar mainboard... the one in pic is debolestis's and uses his own board because he didn't have the stock one.

You should pick up one of debolestis's awesome printed replacement gimbals. They replicate the kinematics and precision of the Uber gimbals at 10% the cost. https://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=195464

I'm interested in such a part as well. I have a torn down T16k with that shaft in tact and can supply precision measurements of any of the geometry if needed.

I'm building a full scale column with mine ...but for a sailplane cockpit (I'm sisu1a on the Condor forum) which in this case is 30cm in pitch/25 in roll, a good bit shorter than what you probably want plus my grip will be really light. The modified MSFF circuit will be running 2.8A vs the stock output of 0.7A; so @24v this is ~70w. While it might be possible to go crazy with the gear ratio, 24:1 is already two reductions (4:1+6:1). Going much beyond that may run into inertia problems but conveniently the way MSFFII circuit is designed it is based on stick position vs motor position, so it would be pretty straight forward test to since motor position is inconsequential. The most powerful motors in the Pittman 14000 range that could be run at full torque with this exact need to be ~70w. The 14206 is 75w (36.5 oz/in, and the 48v version has the proper resistance) so I'll use that as a reference for the thinking. At 24:1, this yields ~5.75Nm. If you wanted to experiment with higher ratios though, a systematic way would be to plan for 24:1 but run that through a third reduction to see what you can get away with to see if you can get it up to the torque you want. If it works without unintended side effects... score ...but share the magic numbers! For reference, by my estimates (lacking motor specs, I'm comparing to the closest motor from Pittman which is probably optimistic), the stock MSFF is <0.4Nm There are also mods where people brute force two MSFFII's together, which would get you over 11Nm all things being equal. Man, I thought I wanted high forces... the glider I fly (SZD-59 Acro) ailerons really load up at higher speeds -set in concrete above 90kts, though most sailplanes have much lighter stick forces. I can see how warbird controls would req the crazy torque you want though.. mechanical linkages, big birds, high speeds, long levers etc. I was initially going for really high forces (and a full blown roll-your-own solution), but have scaled back my ambitions because perfect became the enemy of good :p A luck would have it, I'm already waiting to hear back from Roland van Roy (the electrical engineer who cooked up that particular MSFFII mod) to see about running higher current with the same parts and asked if it's possible to run more current through it or possibly to beef it up further. It might just be a matter of bumping up the amp ratings of the MOSFETs and Shottkeys which are the most likely candidates to let the magic smoke out.