BAM made me to come back to fp after years, and start to bulid the display for it. Dzieki ravarcade!!! In terms of visuals It does all I ever dreamed PC pinball simulation would ever do, simply AMAZING!.
I could praise you for 10 pages.
Now we just neeed somebody with your skill to hack the Newton physics.dll and ... market for commercial pinball simulators on PC will be dead for ever ;-).
I have 3 questions:
1.Under winXP I have the same issue with with ps3eye as hargabyte had: after restart i have to plug it in and out everytime to make it visible in the system. Did anybody find a solution. (Unistaling & installing did not help for me )
2. BAM sees my PS3EYE as simple cam fine, but not as PS3eye simple. Any ideas on a fix? Does it really matter?
3. Is it possible to set up both stereoscopic 3d (like the modern tv) and head tracking work? Did anybody build a setup/cab like that, that works and willing to share specs and impressions?
BAM made me to come back to fp after years, and start to bulid the display for it. Dzieki ravarcade!!! In terms of visuals It does all I ever dreamed PC pinball simulation would ever do, simply AMAZING!.
I could praise you for 10 pages.
Now we just neeed somebody with your skill to hack the Newton physics.dll and ... market for commercial pinball simulators on PC will be dead for ever ;-).
I have 3 questions:
1.Under winXP I have the same issue with with ps3eye as hargabyte had: after restart i have to plug it in and out everytime to make it visible in the system. Did anybody find a solution. (Unistaling & installing did not help for me )
2. BAM sees my PS3EYE as simple cam fine, but not as PS3eye simple. Any ideas on a fix? Does it really matter?
3. Is it possible to set up both stereoscopic 3d (like the modern tv) and head tracking work? Did anybody build a setup/cab like that, that works and willing to share specs and impressions?
1; I have similiary problems: then i reboot my desktop i have to plug out ps3eyes camera. Boot freezes on POST (before bios starts load system from disk). Problem occurs on my desktop, but on other computer all works without problems. My guess is to try update bios or try to find in BIOS options related to usb/boot.
2. Simple PS3Eye (and HT w/PS3Eyes) uses developer libs from CL. To use it You have to install CL-Eye-Platform-SDK and select "developers" libs. But it will not work if:
- You have already instaled CL-Eye-drivers
- You have already installed CL-EYE-Platform-SDK with "release" libs.
You need to remove all CL-Eye software before, restart computer and install CL-Eye-Platform-SDK (with "dev" libs) and then CL-Eye-driver.
BTW. Free Track work much better than my "simply PS3eye".
3. I have tested a lot of versions. So here is shor summary:
- with Anaglyph glasses - lost of colors, but tracking and feel of depth is realy greate. gameplay is also ok
- with shutter glasses - almost all tv screens will give black screen when You have glasses rotated 90 deg (in comparision to normal usage). only plasma displays don't have problems with glasses rotations. Also there is problem with image switching.Your eye will get clear image for 1/120 sec and then black screen 1/120 sec. For big objects it is not a problem. Table elements look great, but ball is small and it is hard to trace. Gameplay is "bad". For me it is cool "technical" demo of technology.
- with passive 3D displays - i did not test it i practice, but my guess is it will work best. No "binking" for eyes will allow to easy trace ball. For big screens there may be problem in portrait tv rotation, because angles to glasses from pixels at top of screen are lot diffrent than for pixels at bottom of screen. It may create "ghosting". I is best to do tests before choose of display.
There is a info on this thread from one user with small (22") inch passive monitor in small cab, that in 3D mode there is no problems with ghosting or ball tracking.
I'll try to do these when I back from work,(I did not update bios on this MOBO since 2008)
New plugin, even better!? I found simple cam with the second tracking algorithm already amazing for a desktop setup. Only feature it could possibly miss in it was an adjustable dead zone.
I'll report on the results.
3. Anaglyphic mode did not really work for me, I could not get the colors right. If you will still develop it, maybe adding a utility to calibrate colors in bam to match the particular glasses/ monitor setting would improve the color reproduction, something like the gamma adjustment feature in many games : "Look through cyan glass adjust the tint up until you can clearly see the first stripe and don’t see the second …look thru the red glass until you see the first stripe and don’t see the second.
Also the blue overlay added by BAM menu makes it harder to find “the sweet spot” because you need to go in and out to see the effect. But I will give it another shot.
I thought that active glasses 3d TV was the only hope for a stereoscopic cab display. Does not passive 3d TV relaying on a linear polarization not mean that your head/ glasses must be in nearly horizontal position to the TV? Then turning the screen would break the stereoscopic effect. Then pasive 3d would be working well for desktop mode, or watching TV but, not on a cab?
I thought that active glasses 3d TV was the only hope for a stereoscopic cab display. Does not passive 3d TV relaying on a linear polarization not mean that your head/ glasses must be in nearly horizontal position to the TV? Then turning the screen would break the stereoscopic effect. Then pasive 3d would be working well for desktop mode, or watching TV but, not on a cab?
It is exacly oposite.
All lcd display have polarized filters. Same filters are in almost all shutter glasses. Some time ago Sony have shutter glasses without polarization filter but there was big problem with ghosting and Sony solution was to add polarization filter.
If You have active 3d tv, both TV and glasses have linear polarization filters.
It is easy to check, You don't have to start 3d mode. You can check it with normal lcd display too. All You need is to look thru glasses and rotate it. You will see, that on certine angle image on scree will become black.
I will make better example with ascii graphics
'-' is horizontal polarization, '|' - vertical (or glasses rotated 90 deg. and '/' - glasses rotated 45 deg.
let say display, You look at TV with horizontal polarization "-", and glasses are "-" to, You will see clear image. I will write it in short:
- - clear image
- | black image (*1*)
- / darker image but visible
now when You add another polarization filter between display and glasses:
- - - clear image
- | - black image
- / - dark image
- / | dark image (*2*)
Cool thing is, that if You add to (*1*) another filter between display and glasses You will be able to see image, but
/ - | or - | / will give black image.
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Passive 3D display use polarized filters too, but that filters are CICULAR. With circular filter You can easly rotate glasses. Only drawback view angle.
Good thing to do is go to big shop with many 3d tv and check what will happend, when You rotate glasses from few diffrent TV with diffrent 3D technology
1. FIX: FreeTrack plugin may change cam position in "Static CAM" mode.
2. Few menu structure modifications:
- All Backbox options (global and "per table") are now in one menu ([Table & Lightning]->[Backbox]). So [Backbox] menu with global settings is removed form [Config] menu.
- All Lightnig model options are now in one menu ([Table & Lightning]->[Lights]->[Lightning model]). There are options for New Renderer. So [New Renderer] menu is removed from [Config] menu.
- On request "Kick" and "Tails" effects can be enabled/disabled "per table".
3. Few fixes related to cam filtering.
4. New Cam position filter: "Predict". My own design, used to "guess" cam position in future and minimize lag.
Guide about Cam Position Filtering.
---------------------------------
First, it is good to understand how filtering works, so i have added tool to test & learn how it works. Here is little turorial how to use it:
1. Set mode to "Happy Cab". This mode is used as Cam position input. For test set params:
- CamX,Y,Z = 0, 1000, 100
It will move base camera position above screen close to center.
- Sway movment range X = 500.0
- Sway movment interval X = 4.0s
It will create cam move "loop".
You should see RED diamond moving left/right on center of BAM menu.
2. Go to menu: [Config] -> [Player Tracking] -> [Cam Filtering Test] and set:
- Show dots: YES
- Fake CAM: YES
Now You should see "GREEN" AND "WHITE" diamons above "RED"
WHITE diamond is input position from "HappyCab" plugin
GREEN is position recived from "fake cam" used as input to filtering.
(please note, WHITE diamond is move 100 points up, and green is 50 points up).
You may see more "diamonds". It depends on used filtering.
Any time, You can disable "Fake CAM" (set to NO) and select another Cam input (another plugin). That additional "diamonts" may help You visualize how filtering works.
3. Go one menu up: [Config] -> [Player Tracking] and to Cam move smoothing section.
Set filtering MODE:
- NONE - all filtering is disabled. See RED and GREEN diamonds, they are always in same position.
- Latency - It is simplest filter. Try to change "Latency" to 200ms and see how "RED" diamond folows green. Try to set Min dist.
Now we are goin to more advanced stuffs.
MODE: Accel mk3.
This filter stores last 3 filterd positions, they are displayed as BLUE diamond 100 points unde "RED".
Try to manipulate "Speed modifier" and "Exponet".
Notince:
Speed modifier = 1.0 and Exponent = 1.0 are "pasive" settings. With this setting there is almost no jittering reduction. "Almost" means, that when new cam position is recived from input it is not instantly passed to output, but cam position will change from previous position to new in time equal to interval between frames from cam. It will make move "smooth" but will not remove jittering.
Default values: Speed modifier = 5.0 and Exponent = 1.5 works for me well with FreeTrack plugin. It should also work well with Kinect. Because IR-Tracking is very accurate for HT w/PS3Eye i set it to 1.0 / 1.0 (or 1.0 / 1.2).
You can also add Letency filter, but i think it is better to left it off (Set "Min dist"=0 and "Letency" = 0).
You may set "Min dist" for example = 10.0 and left "Latency" = 0. It will add "deadzone" to Accel mk3 filter.
"Predict" filter.
It works in steps:
1. Remove jittering with Accel mk3 filter. Params works same way as it is described above
2. Prediction filter. It uses up to 10 stored position from 1 step. I try preduct next position based on few last positions and acceleration.
3. Last "Letency filter".
All new things are in "Predict of next position" section.
"Passive" settings: Acceleration = 0, Precit = 0, Steps = not important
Try to do few experiments and remember, that this filter will increase jittering.
For FreeTrack and Kinect it will probably not improve things but for IR-led tracking i may decrease lag.
At end my "lag" test:
without filtering:
with "predict" filter:
You may change video speed in Youtube. Set it to 0.25.
If anybody is interested: after removing and reinstalling the drivers for ps3eye with camera un-pluged it is not needed any more to plug it in and out after every power up to make it visible. Only case when PS3eye is not correctly visible in the system is wake-up from suspend mode but that is pretty common for usb devices.
I just finished testing free track plug-in from the previous release. It seems bit more cpu hungry, but tracking is much smother than with simple cam, but the Z-axis movement of my head produces bizarre distortion of the perspective.
I tested it with desktop setting on 23' screen and on flat "cabinet" with 38'' tv. When I lower the head too much and/or move forward the objects become un-naturaly stretched on their y dimension (everything looks much taller then it should). I with moderate success I mange to reduce the distortion changing parameters away from real values using trial and error method.
The distortion looks a bit like the effect I can get setting too high FOV in the 3d editors..but there is no FOV setting in BAM
First: You have 100% chance to get correct results if You give BAM incorrect (guessed) values. In BAM (and in FreeTrack) there is many ways to check, if values are correct.
For start, guid for FaceTrackNoIR and FaceAPI.
FIRST STEP: SET CORRECT SCALE IN FaceTrackNoIR
In FaceTrack window, when You start tracking You can see two sets of coords:
1. UP - coords processed by freetrack
2. DOWN - coords from FaceAPI
Second coords are in real world units, in CM ( 1 inch = 2.54 cm ). Z is distance from camera. On image above i'm 0.56 cm away from cam (~22 inch). BAM don't have access to this coords, only First coords set is passed to BAM
First coords set is processed by FreeTrack. It is scaled. It is important to set correct scale. BAM expect to get coords in same scale as from FaceAPI. So 1cm move must be reflected in 1.0 units. This is why in my first guide i recomend RESET scale in FaceTrackNoIR.
If You use PS3Eye toy You should use only WIDE FOV of cam (smaller face on image). If You try PS3Eye narrow FOV You will have to change scale X/Y/Z (decrease X/Y and increas Z).
SECOND STEP: ENTER IN BAM CORRECT VALUES FROM REAL WORLD:
- screen size
- in FaceTrack plugin set Cam X/Y/Z - it is Your base position
- Reset FaceTrackNoIR coords, to set (0,0,0) coords in FaceTrackNoID to base position.
Now Tracking should more/less work ok.
THIRD STEP: CORRECT ANGLES.
Because Came is probably not in front of You, but lower or on left. or on right... when You move forward/backward You get little diffrent move inside BAM.
Another example. In my test i have camer put low. Camera "looks" ~30 deg up. In this setup, when i move back, in BAM camera moves back and down. To correct it, i set "angle x" ~30 deg.
With this info, I think I'll manage to get around the problem. The wide angle setting is a particularly useful hint.
Meanwhile I tested the BAM with Free track + Passive 3d screen in a desktop mode, result is simply amazing!
I could not praise it enough.
I could turn the 3d effect only without second, back-glass screen. Is there some combination of settings making it possible to have both on at the same time: backglass and stereoscopic 3d?
I did test with 2 monitors and stereo 3d. It works for me fine, but i have found one error:
When Stereo 3D mode is used and i exit from table and start again (same or another table) without exit from FP i get errors in shaders compilers. So only proble is: after exit from table i have to exit from FP.
One more tip for stereo 3D. In [Config]->[Rededifne Keys] You can asign one key to turn on/off stereo 3d mode. So You can:
1. Select stereo 3d mode,
2. Set it "off" on table start
3. After load and start table You can use one key to turn on/off.
Right now i can't do tests with active shutter glasses (i don't have right monitor to test it).
If You use active 3d display or You have still problems with stero 3d i will need more info to reproduce problem (gfx card model, drivers version)
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There is no one good rule.
First: when You set scale X/Y/Z = 1.25 table is "little to big". Some parts are off screen. You can use "Tanslate X/Y/Z" to decide what is outside screen. Probably on all tables, You can't move table to place wher You see flippers and top of table. Solution is to set angle for example to 5 deg. This way top of table is little deeper inside screen. Because You can look "under" top edge of display, when You move table little forward. Almost whole table is visible.
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