Mouse pointer and head movement in VR

[mrsylvestre]

Still no news? This topic comes regularly in the virtual reality subforum. The other, civilian flightsim, nicely dissociates head and mouse cursor movement and it feels so much more natural and is so much precise to have the mouse move the cursor relative to the cockpit alone, not to where one may be looking. With the current DCS implementation, it is as if on the Windows desktop, the mouse pointer would be controlled by your hand and where you look, at the same time. Very unpractical. Please ED, consider adding an MSFS-like mouse behaviour as an option.

[SharpeXB]

The idea is so logical, it makes me wonder if there’s some deep game engine level reason why it’s difficult to do. Otherwise this makes so much sense. For 2D and VR. Does having the mouse mapped to the cockpit require it to be a 3D object as opposed to just an emulation of the windows mouse pointer? 

[despinoza]

I give a bump cause it would be a massive upgrade in vr be able to click things and not fail in the attempt

[Hicksy]

I agree with everything said here. The whole concept of the cursor position being related to head movement and to mouse movement at the same time, seems totally illogical. It's a definite spoiler for me.

As for how easy it would be to do implement the option of decoupling head movement to mouse movement, it's hard to say... but it sounds easy enough! I guess it would also require some means to recenter the cursor to where your looking in VR, or you could find yourself searching for where you last left the mouse cursor! Again, it doesn't sound like rocket science.

[II.JG1_Vonrd]

Bump... the new, more visible cursor in update 2.9.3.51704 is great but please de-link it from head movement (or make that an option).

[average_pilot]

The mouse cursor isn't really coupled to head movement. What happens is that it lives in screen coordinates so as we move our heads the 3D scene pans below the uninterested cursor that stays at the same spot of the screen. So it's not as easy as de-link it from head movement because it is not.

The two solutions are:

• Moving the cursor around the screen just the right amount to compensate for head movements creating the illusion that is decoupled. I made myself a partial solution that worked pretty well with what I was using for headtracking a few years ago before the VR era. Quite a few years ago indeed: 
• Making it a 3D object that lives inside the 3D scene. This has the extra benefit that it would allow to manipulate switches that are not in view. Once you put the 3D cursor on a switch you can look elsewhere but the mouse input still goes to that switch. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Edit: Just realized that this is not entirely true. With click&drag controls like some levers and knobs the cursor stays over the control during the time the mouse button is held down. You can even lean to the sides and see how the image of the cursor is projected onto the surfaces of the 3D objects. So, I don't know, maybe the current solution is some sort hybrid 2D/3D cursor already? Perhaps that means that it is indeed easy for ED to decouple mouse cursor from head movement. They are just one step away from providing that functionality from how the mouse cursor is already implemented.

Edited March 14 by average_pilot

[II.JG1_Vonrd]

8 hours ago, average_pilot said:

Quite a few years ago indeed

Interesting...

Does it still work? In VR? If so, can you give a bit more detail as to where to put the script, how to connect it to DCS and the peripheral (mouse or PointCtrl)? Can it possibly break the game or mouse / PointCtrl?

[average_pilot]

6 minutes ago, II.JG1_Vonrd said:

Does it still work? In VR?

No, sorry.

It's a script for Glovepie, an ancient program to do all kind of shenanigans with keyboards, mouse, joysticks and some exotic etc., but it's been abandoned for ages and doesn't support current VR hardware.

And I don't think that even the concept would work in DCS for reasons I confusedly commented in the edit of my post.

Let's hope someone in ED finally decide that is time to finally try that very long requested feature and test for themselves how much better and natural the interaction with the cockpit becomes.

[II.JG1_Vonrd]

Rgr, thanks for the reply!