TrackIR Settings

griphos wrote: In item #3, setting the XYZ and the PBY settings to 0.50 and 0.75 just limit how far you can turn your head. They just scale the TIR input, according to what Stephen says above, and so shouldn't affect smoothness. A setting of 0.50 means you won't be able to look past about 90 degrees to the side. Can't speak to the other suggestions, as I don't really have jerkiness anyway.

Ok, I am back in business. I decided to give Live cam another try and to actually TEST various settings to see what they do.

Well, the problem I had with not being able to look behind me was indeed due to PBY Scaling being at 0.75. Don't know if that's the default number but I set it to 1.00 and all is perfectly fine in that regard. Just run the game in windowed mode, look behind you and change that PBY number: you will see your view being limited more and more the lower you make the number. My advice: leave it at 1.00!

Secondly: the huge jumps/movements of the screen were due to the Scan Speed. It's very odd but I had it at 12. I turned it up a lot and looking around got stuttery. So I turned it to 1 and with that setting I got huge jumps/movements! After setting it BACK to 12... the jumps were gone...! Odd... Maybe some setting got stuck somewhere and I had to change the setting in OpusFSX to reset it...?

The only thing that still doesn't work well are the smooth transitions: they aren't smooth. I do not get sudden jumps anymore as I did with a previous beta, but the transition is jerky... I can live with that though (for the moment) because in the Legacy I do not need to change views that often. Don't know if it is because of the latest beta OR simply restarting my PC in the meantime, but transitions are smooth too now!

So... I'm good again now! It pays to actually test various things so you know what you are doing.

BTW I have TrackIR 4 hardware but still use TIR 5 software.

EDIT
After flying with the EZCA wobbles for a few days, OpusFSX DHM looks so much better...!

G'day

G'day Darryl

You could also just create your VC cameras with a zoom setting of 0.8, set the captains view as tye default view and assign buttons to all of them. Then you have achieved everything you want.

Stephen

Is there a cockpit walls like function for Opus? So as your head movement using TrackIR stays inside the cockpit?

We will be introducing cockpit limits in the future.

Possible cause of the jitters ...

I'm new to the forum and the following may have already been addressed.

Wow!  Thanks for the quick response...

Den wrote: Wow!  Thanks for the quick response... Yes I understand that adjustment.  But in my case, I'm trying to find the happy medium between what my screen is doing versus the speed of TrackIR in a effort to remove the jitters. Immediate adjustment to the slider seem to help me balance the rate of change in the view.  But, when I return to the Camera settings in OpusFSX the slider has returned to it's "original" setting.

Opus Software wrote: We will be introducing cockpit limits in the future.

Hi, just a comment about TrackIR settings in the docs. TrackIR can be used with the default TrackClip, or it can be used with TrackClipPro. The latter has its own LED emitters and its setup is very different from TrackClip. With TrackClipPro the Camera IR brightness should be zero and Light Filter Threshold should be set to a high value. The easiest way to get the correct settings is to click the TrackClipPro button in the TrackIR window and it will reset the Camera settings automatically.

It may also be worthwhile noting that if you have a TrackClipPro, AND you mess with the Infrared LED settings slider, you will NOT be able to return it to zero after you've altered it. However, if you're using the TrackClipPro, it's essential that the IR LEDs are off (for the reason Barry gave, and more).
To accomplish this, toggle the TIR mode back to TrackClip, and then back to TrackClipPro, using the buttons in the TIR software. This should reset the IR LEDs back to OFF. Then leave that item alone! ;)

Can I beg clarification on a couple of items gleaned from re-reading this thread a couple of times today, please?

Firstly - PBY scaling; I've found an answer to what it means here, but I don't believe I found it spelled out in any of the various manuals/guides included with the product. It might be worth ensuring that PBY - Pitch, Bank & Yaw - is made more obvious in the docs, perhaps? And with a note to the effect that if you can't turn your head fully round, it'll most likely by the PBY scaling factor that's the cause (which might stop folks returning to EZCA, etc).

Second - some of Stephen's posts mention reducing IR LED emission levels down to 15 or less - this is ONLY pertinent if you are using the reflective TrackClip (wire frame widget on the baseball cap), and conversely if you are using the TrackClipPro, it's an absolute no-no (you want IR levels to be OFF, as per my tip above), or you may suffer random IR reflections that confuse the camera.

Finally, I'm trying to determine what the scan-rate setting in Opus actually equates to. It's measured in milliseconds, from what I can tell, but if so, logically this means that a 30ms scan-rate is SLOWER than a 2ms scan rate, surely? By that I mean, if the INTERVAL between scans is 30ms, this is fifteen times less frequent in grabbing TIR data than a 2ms setting, presumably? Reason I bring this up is because various peeps (myself included) have talked about 'upping' the scan-rate, or 'increasing' it - when in fact, if we enlarge the number in that box, surely we're actually slowing it down, or increasing the interval, rather than the speed. It might be useful to have some confirmation on that point because it may prevent confusion in the future (if someone suggests 'speed it up' but actually means - without realising it - quite the opposite, well, you can see how that might end up complicating matters, rather than helping them!)

One last, last item - is it worth enabling some kind of 'input-output TIR data log', in Opus, so that we can keep track of what Opus is doing with TIR's data, and whether TIR itself, or Opus's handling of it, is the problem? I appreciate this might generate some pretty huge files (if scanning at 1ms, for example!) but perhaps might be worthwhile. From what I can tell, *usually* the cause of these 'one-frame resets' or occasional flickering, is the light threshold in TIR being momentarily confused, but I couldn't put my hand on my heart and say it's *always*, *exclusively* that reason alone. There are times when I'm scratching my head, and gritting my teeth, and maybe can't find anything obvious on TIR's panel to account for it - then next day, it'll be fine, without me having changed a thing, knowingly, at least.

Another, final, final, final ;) suggestion: perhaps is it worth introducing some 'TIR smoothing' in Opus itself? Simplistically, don't allow a reversion to zero XYZ/PBY coordinate on a single (or short number of frames), if the previous frame was greater than a certain deflection? I appreciate I'm saying this whilst blind of all the inner workings of what Opus is actually doing, but you probably get what I'm meaning. Not really 'smoothing' - more of a high-deflection-to-zero-deflection over a short time-frame 'filter'. Obviously, if the problem is SimConnect dropping the ball when it's busy, this won't help, but I mention it just in case it's worthy of investigation.

Thanks either way. :)

Thanks for the response, Stephen.

To display our test outputs, just run the FSXTRACKIR.EXE program with a TEST argument. But the displayed test outputs depend on what I was checking the previous time, they are not meant to be for user information. The data may even be rounded for display purposes.

Stephen

They should just use the default settings and check there DHM and AHM movement, that will check their SimConnect, and users should have an idea how taxed their FSX systems are.

Try just turning off the turbulent bumps and leave the inflight turbulent motions on, and set all sliders to default mid way. I just couldn't fly without DHM, just not the same.

Stephen

Had the same issue when I recently bought OpusFSX. TrackIR was working perfectly on it's own but when switching to DHM there were random jumps. I looked up the Opus manual and slowed the scan speed right down to 40ms. That fixed it but all the smoothness in head rotation was lost.