18 replies to this topic

[one2fwee]

Bob Simpson, on Mar 14 2016 - 06:44 PM, said:

Once the FOV is set, if you move your head forward or back dramatically while driving, the Z dimension won't change on your monitor, which is unrealistic.

Yes, that's why you try not to move your head while driving hahaha


Alternatively you could try using something like Freetrack: https://www.free-track.net/english/
I think there are other free diy ones too but i'm not sure. There is also trackir which is exactly the same thing but commercial - so basically there's no point spending loads on trackIR when you can do it for free with a webcam and a few IR leds.

I tried it on my friend's computer years ago and it always felt really weird to me and made me lose feeling of the car because so much is "felt" visually so you miss the slight rotational cues in car behaviour that are drowned out by head movement with head tracking.

Of course, it may have just been due to the fact that his head tracking software was not set up to mirror 1:1 real life head movement but instead was exaggerated so that you could use it to look left and right virtually, while only rotating your head slightly in real life (so you could still see the screen).

I wonder if it would actually be good if set up to be 1:1 with real life movement, something like this: https://www.youtube....h?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
I'll have to give it a try one day. Certainly you'd also need to be able to move the centre of the eyepoint around the screen (rather than it being in the centre) and i'm doubtful GPL (or many / any) games support this but i could be wrong.

[Bob Simpson]

The driving view is of great interest to me and this method seems like a very good way to see things in a realistic perspective.

However I think that there are limitations and compromises which make a realistic view difficult or impossible unless you have a triple screen setup.

First off, instead of doing this setup by putting a cut-out bit of cardboard to see the 42° angle, what I do is use trigonometry.  An angle of 21° to either side means that the distance between those objects ( the flag girls) x2 divided by the distance from your eyes to the screen equals the tangent of the angle formed (tangent of an angle = opposite divided by adjacent sides of a triangle).

So in my case, at 72 cm from the screen, a 21° angle makes the distance:
Tan 21° = screen distance/72
Screen distance = Tan 21° X 72 or…

Using   https://www.rapidtabl..._Calculator.htm

Screen distance = 0.38386404 X 72 = 27.6 cm from the centre.

Double that to find the full distance between the two objects or 55.2 cm for the full width.

So, I have a 24 inch wide screen monitor which is 53 cm wide.  By trial and error, I can set the FOV so that he objects are just past the edges of the screen at 55 cm and I get that at FOV = 40.

Secondly, the problems are:
1) I can’t see my mirrors (essential for online racing) even when I push the POV as far back as possible with GPLShift.
2) I can’t see the dash – especially the Tach which I use for shifting.
3) Sometimes if you're at the front of a race grid, you can't see the starter drop the flag

So I compromise by putting the FOV back as far as I can while still seeing the mirrors and the Tach, which is around 55 to 60 FOV in GEM.

Edited by Bob Simpson, Apr 04 2016 - 01:16 PM.

[Alan Davies]

My head hurts   Can we race now?

[John Woods]

Not yet...still on Skid Fun.


Any method should yield the same result.

Using GPLSA and FOVed years ago found driver head disappeared altogether while using a 42deg FOV back far enough to see mirrors barely at bottom left/right and see tach enough to read rpms.
One day after several months of no driver head racing, (it didn't appear on any Lotus), suddenly it did appear just behind the transaxle, eerily floating creepy along all by itself. Overwriting the Lotus 3do corrects that btw.

Back then, before any ideas about tuning the display, the 19in widescreen LCD display was about 18in in front of eyes.

There is an input/output/perception/conception/input feedback loop that forces us to adapt conception/input to output/perception.
Fortunately for the gaming industry humans are very good at this and can easily apply a fudge factor to distortions of virtual space, especially when the display is close enough to an accurate portrayal.

(A carpenter who knew more than me once told me all work consists of three tasks, measuring, cutting, and joining. To be fast and always accurate, eliminate measuring altogether. This saves lots and lots of time and you never make a measurement mistake and never get caught doing fall backs to correct subsequent cutting and joining mistakes. Then he taught me how to do that and made my job/life much much easier. So as a first priority interest is in not measuring anything unless there is no other option).

Edited by John Woods, Apr 07 2016 - 09:21 PM.