Quote from Flame CZE :

It depends on the steering wheel you use.

In LFS, each car has it's own steering wheel rotation set - road cars have 720°, GTR's have 540° etc. (full list here). If you have a wheel with an adjustable rotation, like Logitech G25/G27, you need to set the same amount of degrees in the Logitech Profiler to match the rotation in game, or set the wheel turn compensation in LFS to 1.00 and 900° in the profiler. In the latter case, you will not have those "ff stops" on both locks, but you will not have to fiddle around with the rotations every time you change your car (well there is an app which changes those values for you but that's not the point).

If you own a wheel with a fixed rotation, then I'm afraid it's not possible to match your wheel's rotation to that in game. Some wheels have only 360° or so, which means if you take a car with more "real" rotation, you will experience what you described in your post.

I hope I'm right with everything

Unfortunately my Microsoft Sidewinder Force Feedback wheel doesn't have adjustable rotation, but hopefully it would be a fairly easy change for Scawen to add an option to match the visual rotation in-game to the player's wheel (without any change to handling etc).
Cheers,
DD

Would have posted some feedback after the E10 patch, but I've just been having too much fun racing - in 30+ years of playing racing games and sims I've never enjoyed driving anything as much as LFS in the Rift . Thanks so much for all the work you've put into the Rift support - it's really paid off m8. Anyway, now that I've managed to tear myself away I do have some more feedback on E11:

1. The aspect ratio correction works really well and is a great feature - with it enabled I've been racing at 1920x1080 rather than 1920x1200, improving FPS at no cost as the black strips at the top and bottom of the screen aren't visible in the Rift.

2. The head and neck modelling also works great -it's a fairly subtle effect if you're not looking for it but it makes head movements feel much more natural.

3. The default settings are pretty good, though I tend to reduce the FOV slightly to 112 degrees and raise the head height so the slider's set around 70-80% to the right as my eyes seem too close to my shoulders at the default position (gauged by looking at my virtual shoulder in the rift then tilting it off my face so I can peak at my real shoulder and comparing the relative distances).



Feature requests

1. It would be really great to have an option to match the rotation of your virtual driver's steering wheel to your real steering wheel rather than the car's. This would be a purely visual change but would greatly increase the immersion for Rift users and improve the illusion of inhabiting your virtual driver's body, an illusion which is currently slightly spoiled when you rotate your real wheel 90 degrees but see your virtual driver rotate the virtual wheel two or three times as much.

2. By adjusting the interface x centre and y scale settings (to 0.17 and 0.80 respectively) and setting the HUD FOV to maximum, HUD distance to minimum and HUD aspect ratio to 16:9 I've been able to position the in-game HUD elements so they no longer clash with most of the cars:

hud01.jpg
hud02.jpg
hud03.jpg

As you can see, the minimap, position and lap info look a bit like they're projected onto a large pane of glass stuck to my right wing mirror so they don't get in the way when looking forward but can easily be seen by glancing to the right out of my side window. The drawback of these settings are that the menus are stretched horizontally wider than I'd like and the flag and split time messages are slightly off-centre, as are the virtual gauges in chase view:

hud04.jpg

IMO these sacrifices are well worth not having the in-game HUD clash with your car in 3D, but they wouldn't be necessary if we could adjust the interface x scale setting to values bigger than 1.0, effectively stretching the HUD horizontally (which would negate the need for moving the interface x centre to the right), and if we could have separate settings for the HUD and the menus (allowing the menus to be drawn with less distortion).

3. Some objects very close to your head like the V-shaped head rest extensions, the roll bars above you, or the cockpit sides in open wheelers are over-aggressively culled:

clip01.jpg
clip02.jpg

Would it be possible to tweak the near plane clipping to eliminate this issue?

Many thanks,
DD

Last edited by DickDastardly, Tue, 17 Dec 2013 17:29.

Quote from Scawen :

Today I'll look into the default FOV value. I'm trying to make the Rift support work well when you first try it out.

I'm also interested in your opinions on good default settings for the HUD distance and HUD scale (which will appear as HUD width in the next version). I set the default value of HUD distance to 50cm so that most of the HUD is not behind any part of the 3D world. HUD scale was 0.6 which looked OK at 90 degrees FOV but I'm wondering if 0.6 is a bit too small when your FOV is near 110.

Another thing which would be really useful is the ability to distinguish between the menus and the HUD (i.e. the stuff you see whilst racing like the minimap and your position), as good settings for one aren't necessarily good for the other.

Ideally it should be possible to set x,y,z coordinates and size for the menu and for each HUD element independently, the aim being to be able to position each element in such a way that it doesn't clash with parts of your car. In the open-wheelers this is not such a problem but in enclosed cars the minimap etc tend to clash with the ceiling or window struts. (By clashing I mean being drawn overlapping a part of your car but with a stereoscopic depth which suggests the HUD element is further away than the part it occludes, thereby giving the impression that the car must be partially transparent or insubstantial and making the simulated world less convincing).

Cheers,
DD

Quote from Scawen :

Thanks for the feedback on the virtual monitor for replays thing. In my test version where I can press CTRL and swing around using the mouse, it looked a bit odd to see the HUD moving while the world stayed put. Seen in the Rift it would be the HUD staying put while the world moves where you look, which sounds quite bad! But it's reassuring that you say it's not too much of a problem, and I'll put that further down the priority list. Well I'll rub out the star beside it on my notes.

Ah I see the problem you mean now - I assumed you were under the impression that the lack of headtracking in the TV view would cause nausea in VR which it doesn't for me as I keep my head stationary when in the TV view (and normally also toggle the HUD off when watching replays), but if I leave the HUD on and move my head there is indeed an issue as you describe whereby the HUD seems to move in the opposite direction to that in which I move my head. Perhaps this could be solved by reverting to the old HUD behaviour in that one view (i.e. have its position locked to your head/screen rather than the world)?

Quote from Scawen :

The other high priority is to get to grips with the FOV calculation. I haven't looked into it properly but there are notes about it in the Rift SDK document. There is an EyeToScreenDistance that is reported by the SDK and is discussed as part of the FOV calculation. So it should be possible to calculate the correct FOV. With lower priority it may be possible to automatically reduce the render size a little for people who use the Rift with the screen a bit further from their eyes and can't see the edges. So a slight reduction in your case but not in Dick's case. Low priority as you are not running out of memory and probably have no frame rate problem either. Your FOV estimates in E8 and E9 will help check that my calculations (based on the Rift documents) are coming out correctly.

Questions :

1) How does the Rift SDK get the value of EyeToScreenDistance? Do you have to enter it manually or does it measure it in some way? I see (from one thread) the default distance is 0.041 [EDIT : apparently this value doesn't change when you use the physical adjusters and is hard coded for each type of Rift so that doesn't sound too good at the moment]

In the current devkit there is no way for the Rift to automatically get this value as the distance can be manually adjusted and there are no sensors which report its setting (although iirc Oculus did mention an aspiration to read data on this and your IPD in a future more configurable consumer version). As a result I don't think it will be possible for LFS to automatically set the appropriate FOV (although a reasonable default setting can be chosen and this will then have to be tweaked by the user).

Incidentally I've just measured the distance from the screen to the part of the lens nearest the eye and mine's set at nearer 50mm than the 41mm default value you quoted. The 41mm setting must be with the screen set as close to the lens as it will go, which means that at this default setting users can see even more of the screen than I do (making any reduction to the viewable area even more undesirable). Note also that if used as an eye-to-screen distance these measurements assume your eyeball is actually touching the lens.

Quote from Scawen :

2) Did anyone try predictive tracking? There was hardly a mention of it before so it seems like it works ok at zero. But maybe 10 ms or so could be an improvement?

I've experimented with values of 0, 10 and 20ms but tbh didn't see much difference. I generally leave it set at 20ms.
Cheers,
DD

Last edited by DickDastardly, Sun, 1 Dec 2013 20:12.

Quote from Scawen :

Interesting - thanks! It must mean that in the full wide (E8) view, you also get some kind of cutoff effect near the top of your nose, where the inner part of the view is cut off by the line separating the left and right eye views. I guess the full E8 view must look as if there is a curved piece of cardboard sticking out of your face from the top part of your nose that is between your eyes, restricting how far you can look right with your left eye and how far left with your right eye? Because just at that point, that view goes no further than the E9 view.

The inner border of each eye's view is interesting in that your brain filters it out by merging the views from each eye. You can see this yourself even without a Rift by looking at your nose with both eyes open - you'll barely be able to see it. However, if you shut one eye then you'll now see the side of your nose much more clearly.
Cheers,
DD

P.S. On the "Not yet done" list, the first item "Replay cameras (TV view) must be put on a virtual monitor" is unnecessary -this view doesn't really cause any problems in the Rift and actually looks pretty cool in VR (once you realise that headtracking is disabled and therefore stop moving your head). The only really crucial items remaining IMO are "Move eye position depending on the orientation (simple neck model)" and "Render mirrors in 3d" which is less important but would still be cool, particularly to help shame AAA developers with budgets thousands of times higher than that of LFS into also rendering mirrors correctly .

Last edited by DickDastardly, Sun, 1 Dec 2013 04:14.

Quote from Scawen :

OK, just interested to see if this version does restrict what you can see.

Just tried the new patch and it does indeed restrict my view quite considerably. It's as if I'm looking through a rectangle cut in a black sheet of card held fairly close to my face i.e. the borders of my vision are now straight edged rather than the natural rounded edges you get from looking through the lenses (and I can obviously also see less of the world).

It occurs to me that a good way of setting the size of the drawn areas would be to change the colour of the undrawn areas to something very eye catching like flashing magenta when the player is dragging the corresponding slider, then they can adjust it until they can no longer see any magenta (no matter which way their eyeballs are pointing).
Cheers,
DD

Last edited by DickDastardly, Sat, 30 Nov 2013 22:42.

Quote from Scawen :

So that I know roughly what a good render size looks like, can you post a Rift screen shot from another game that seems to fill the entire area that you can see, but doesn't draw too many wasted pixels?

I did hear that some games render too little and you can see the edge, so it would be good to see what that looks like too...

EDIT : Thinking a bit more, it seems that the obvious choice would be to make the images meet in the middle with their curved edge, instead of being made so big that the images reach the left and right of the screen. Examples :
Torque 3D : http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22225
Half Life 2 : http://www.roadtovr.com/how-to ... ulus-rift-gameplay-video/

It looks like this method would easily cover the entire visible area shown by just2fast's red dots :
https://www.lfsforum.net/showt ... php?p=1832656#post1832656

And in that case no need for any user options...

The amount of the screen you actually see in the Rift is very dependent on which lens cups you're using, the distance you set the screen from your face (which is physically adjustable), how deep set your eyes are, your IPD, and which direction you're looking in (you can actually see further to the edges of the screen when looking straight ahead than you can when your eyes are rotated to the side).

I see significantly more of the screen than just2fast so please don't reduce the size of the drawn area as doing so will artificially restrict my FOV (and that of anyone else who wears the Rift with the screen very close to their eyeballs). The main reason that LFS's Rift support is leagues ahead of other implementations (including Valve's) is that your FOV is so much better so please don't change it (or if you do, at least add a menu setting to enable those who want to to retain the current size of drawn area).
Cheers,
DD

P.S. First impressions of the new patch are excellent - I love the way the HUD is now locked to the car as this makes reading the map (and the menus) much easier. I do agree with Strien, however, that it would be useful to increase the maximum HUD size (by maybe 50%). Also, thank you for adding the /rift toggle option .

Last edited by DickDastardly, Sat, 30 Nov 2013 20:53.

Quote from just2fast :

Some thoughts regarding 1280x800 vs. 1680x1050.
While the native resolution feels fine, with 1680x1050 there is noticeable eye strain!
That means even if the radio of both resolutions is the same (1,6), it displays different on the Rift.

I did a test.
I chose 1280x800 and sat in the BMW Sauber F1 looking with my head pointing directly on the steering wheel (BMW logo).
Then i rolled my eyes to the left and the right (head keeps still pointed forward). In this way i could see a some part of the mirrors.

Then i chose 1680x105 and did the same. However with this resolution i could see both mirrors completely!
I also had the feeling the picture is slightly squeezed horizontal.
Conclusion: be very careful choosing an other resolution then the Rifts native one!
:

That's really weird. I see exactly the same FOV etc when viewing at 1680x1050 as I do when playing at 1280x800. The gif below toggles between a screenshot at each res (although obviously the larger one has been resized to 1280x800 for comparison purposes). As you can see they're identical apart from a very slight difference in head position (which presumably came from the rift tracker drifting slightly between shots as it sat on my desk).



One thing that occurs to me is that you may have set up your screen cloning incorrectly in your nVidia/AMD settings. You want the source of the cloning to be the rift screen not your (probably 16:9) desktop monitor.
Cheers,
DD

Quote from Maelstrom :

Setting the resolution to 1680*1050 is a sure way to get a head-hick as it isn't the rift ratio. The correct resolution for this size of screen is 1600*900.

Actually the Rift's native resolution is 1280x800 i.e. 16:10 (not 1280x720 which would be 16:9) so 1680x1050 does scale correctly. You can easily test this yourself by comparing 16:10 resolutions in-game (which look correct) with 16:9 resolutions (which warp as you roll your head).
Cheers,
DD

Feedback

Thanks very much for giving the rift tracker priority over trackir, this has solved the problem I had with headtracking not working and LFS is now easily one of my favourite rift experiences. After changing my fov to 112-115 and tweaking the head position slightly the sense of scale is also excellent and gives a really convincing illusion of inhabiting your virtual driver's body. Another thing I really like about your implementation is the fact that you extend the visible circles all the way to the sides of the screen -many demos or games I've played don't do this and consequently needlessly restrict the fov of those (like me) who wear our rifts with the lenses very close to our eyeballs. Head drift also seems to be significantly lower than just about any other rift enabled game I've tried. I'm not sure if this is due to some ninja coding on your part or just a result of the game and my rift both using the latest SDK but either way it's a big improvement (although having the ability to reset head position via a button is also very welcome and something that many other devs omit).


Feature requests

1. You've already mentioned you're looking into adding neck modelling, predictive tracking, 3d mirrors and headtracking in chase view. Could you also add tracking to the top down heli view? This would work as if your back is strapped to the base of the heli so that if your real head is looking straight forward relative to your torso, your virtual head would be looking straight down at the car. Tilting your real head up would tilt your virtual head to look at the track in front of the car whilst tilting your real head down would tilt your virtual head to look at the track behind the car.

2. Some very visually distracting moiré patterns are visible when playing LFS in the rift, particularly on the metal barriers with 4 horizontal ridges. Obviously this is due to the rift dev kit's low resolution rather than any fault of the game but perhaps a temporary fix could be implemented (until the higher res consumer version comes out) by creating a version of this texture with half the number of horizontal ridges which would automatically be used when the rift is enabled.

3. Would it be possible to add an option to display the minimap at the top center of the screen rather than just the top left/right? This would ideally enable us to display the map over the sun shade area so it's not blocking the main forward view of the track and is neither clashing with the mirror (as the top left option does) or clashing with side window struts etc (as the top right option does).

4. If you ultimately use a menu system like Hawken's (i.e. a large rectangular virtual screen locked to the world with your head positioned facing the center of the rectangle and headtracking enabled) then the ability to zoom whilst looking at the menu is likely to be useful (either by using the mouse wheel or perhaps by holding down the right mouse button). An alternative approach which could be worth experimenting with would be to map the menu to the inside surface of a hemisphere or half a cylinder (either of which might negate the need for a menu zoom option).

5. There doesn't seem to be a way to directly assign a key or wheel button to toggle the rift on or off via the controls menu. (I was able to assign rift center and toggle buttons using the text aliasing system in config files but simple "Center Rift" and "Toggle Rift" assignable options in the controls menu would be more user friendly i.e. in the same way that e.g handbrake is assignable without any typing or file editing. (I'm not sure anyone needs separate buttons for "Rift on" and "Rift off").


Tips for rift users when playing 0.6E6

-Setting the resolution in-game to 1680x1050 seems to improve image quality fairly significantly. This is the highest resolution available in-game which matches the rift's 16:10 aspect ratio and will be downscaled automatically in the rift to 1280x800, effectively giving you more anti-aliasing. (Avoid using 1920x1080 as the mismatched aspect ratio introduces warping as you roll your head).

-As just2fast mentioned you'll need to adjust your fov for best results. I find a value between 112-115 works best although this may vary slightly depending on which lenses you use and how close you set the lenses to your eyes.

-Default head positions generally seem to set your eyes directly above your neck. More natural results can be obtained by moving the head position forward slightly in the menu.

-Set FPS to display on the right of the screen. (This has the side effect of moving your race position and lap info down a bit making them more visible).

Cheers,
DD

Last edited by DickDastardly, Sun, 10 Nov 2013 23:31.

Quote from Scawen :

In the code it looks like like LFS may be trying to get tracking from the TrackIR even if it is switched off. I could easily fix this bug, but to check if this is the problem, could you search for the file NPClient.dll and temporarily rename it to something else, then start LFS?

I've renamed npclient.dll and npclient64.dll in my trackir5 folder but that didn't help. (I also have Opentrack installed and renamed both identically named dlls in that folder too but again it didn't make any difference).
Cheers,
DD

The test program seems to work fine, giving values from +-180 for yaw and roll, and +-90 for pitch:



Cheers,
DD

P.S. I do have a TrackIR, but it's not connected and I don't use InSim. I'm testing Single player in the default in car view.

Hi Scawen,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly m8. In answer to your questions, I am using the latest Oculus SDK (v0.2.5) and the latest Rift firmware (v0.18). I'm not seeing any light red messages in the top left corner at any point and I have the Look function in view options set to "Axis" (though I've also tried the other settings for that variable with no effect).
Cheers,
DD

P.S. If I go to the control options page, under "Select function to assign axis" it says "none" for Look heading, pitch and roll. Should I be seeing something else there (like Rift heading/pitch/roll)?

Last edited by DickDastardly, Fri, 8 Nov 2013 11:39.

First off, thanks very much for working on Rift support -I'm really looking forward to getting back into LFS in VR. I do have a problem, however, in that the headtracking isn't working for me.

I've downloaded and extracted the LFS_6E5.exe and LFSORDLL.dll files into my C:\Sims\LFS directory (which is where I have the game installed). When I run the new executable I can enable the rift 3d view in the menus and this seems to work fine but I'm not getting any headtracking at all. Is there an option in the menus I've missed to activate the tracking?

I've tried running the executable as downloaded (i.e. LFS_6E5.exe) and I've also tried renaming it to just LFS.exe (having backed up the original version) but this doesn't seem to make any difference. I've also checked that no other programs which use the Rift or any kind of headtracking are running (and I've disabled any anti-virus/spyware programs).

If I try and delete the LFSORDLL.dll file while the game is running I get a message saying that this action can't be completed because the file is open in LFS.exe (which seems to suggest the exe is at least finding the dll okay).

I've also noticed that if I launch another Rift enabled app whilst LFS is running then headtracking won't work in it either (which seems to suggest that LFS is making some kind of connection with the Rift, at least enough to block other apps from reading the tracker).

Any other suggestions would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
DD

P.S. I'm running LFS with an S2 license in Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit with an i5 2500K with 8GB of RAM and two GTX460 (and the latest drivers).

Last edited by DickDastardly, Fri, 8 Nov 2013 06:38.