Any chance of a VRConfig file

[mmerelles]

2 hours ago, midi48 said:

Quick update, did try this new VR config and obj file . Tried to do a flight manipulators worked fine all seemed ok but twice sim froze at different times, first time froze on taxi 2nd time froze just after takeoff. Not sure if these were related to the new files or something else.  Will test again tomorrow. 

 

Happy to hear this is working for you. I wouldn't think the sim pauses are related to vrconfig but to loading or something related to the sim. But it is nice if you continue to use it and report feedback.

I am waiting a new update from ixeg since some issues/bugs were reported to 1.3 to continue the job.

Anyway i am still testing on my own to perfect sensivity and all that stuff in preparation.

[berilojr]

Great, I have no words to thank you for this mod. This is what this community needs, someone to take action and step forward to help developers, I sewer that I tried but failed due to short knowledge on this matter... Thank you so much!!!!

[Litjan]

Mmerelles is helping us put this into the plane for everyone. Right now we are clarifying with Laminar Research why the cockpit.obj file we exported from Blender chokes up the VRconfig.txt - there is one extra word in there ("none") that we need to support our new way to define our manipulators, but Laminar´s VR code does not handle it well (as you all found out).

So while it is absolutely fine to enjoy what mmerelles is coming up with right now, we will try to solidify this with his help and then include it for everyone by default.

Cheers, Jan

 

[shenherm]

Hi guys,

 

Matheson from SimVRLabs here. My colleague Joe made the original SimVRLabs mod for the IXEG 737 1.21, but I would like to explain some things regarding the latest 1.3 update.

The SimVRLabs mod originally made for 1.21 will NOT work in 1.3 as many of you know. The reason for this is that IXEG overhauled the cockpit.OBJ in 1.3. For those of you who do not know, the cockpit.OBJ of any aircraft is a 3D model that XPlane uses which you mostly do not see. This 3D model contains information about how the user interacts with the aircraft.

A good way to show how this affects each aircraft is by comparing some aircraft. For example, some aircraft use the mouse scroll wheel to interact with knobs and switches, others may require you to drag your mouse up and down or side to side, or some may use a combination of both. The cockpit.OBJ is responsible for dictating this behaviour.

Each knob, switch, button, and anything you can physically interact with in an aircraft is called a manipulator. These are inside the cockpit.OBJ. Some manipulators work better than others in VR, but may not be the best for 2D users. While making a VR mod for an aircraft we always need to ensure that VR users have the best possible experience but without compromising the 2D user's functionality. This is a delicate balance and is the reason why there will never be an XPlane aircraft that works flawlessly in both modes, but we can make it pretty close.

Because of this, we must change some manipulators that don't work well in VR to a more VR friendly type. This is why we include cockpit.OBJ files.

You may be wondering how this relates to a VR_Config.TXT. All that file does is allow us to tune manipulator sensitivity (how much you need to move your controller for the manip to work), and change SOME (very few) manipulators into other manipulator types. Because we can only convert some types using the VR_Config, we have to do the rest in the cockpit.OBJ. We ALWAYS try to use the VR_Config.TXT FIRST before editing the cockpit.OBJ, simply because the VR_Config.TXT only applies the changes and settings when a user loads VR. It does not affect 2D pilots whatsoever.

In the case of the IXEG 737, Joe had to make changes to the cockpit.OBJ as some manipulators were not suitable for VR users. When IXEG released version 1.3 with an overhauled cockpit.OBJ, this rendered our mod broken in 1.3 and useless.

This is not the fault of IXEG. They made their product better than it was before, so they should be praised for their continued development and quality of life improvements.

Jan has said that VR support is planned for the near future. We can't wait to see what's in store for VR users and to possibly lend a hand with that task if needed.

I hope this clears up confusion about our mod and 1.3. If you have any questions, feel free to tag me in a response here or shoot me a message.

 

Cheers,

Matheson

SimVRLabs.com

[Litjan]

Hi Martheson,

thank you very much for the work you did for the previous version! I know it has been a godsend for the VR users of our aircraft - in absence of us providing the necessary files ourselves.

I will certainly look for your input and assistance down the road when tweaking the VRconfig.txt for this aircraft, and hopefully we can implement this in the very near future for everyone out of the box.

Thanks again to you and Joe (and whoever helped make the previous version VR compatible), Jan

 

[midi48]

A Big thanks to you all, for the work that you do for the sim community.  i must admit i was really sad when i updated to 1.3 because of the VR problem, but now i can see that it is being looked at and will be fixed in the near future, i am really grateful to all involved.

 thanks

carl 

[tkyler]

11 hours ago, shenherm said:

In the case of the IXEG 737, Joe had to make changes to the cockpit.OBJ as some manipulators were not suitable for VR users. When IXEG released version 1.3 with an overhauled cockpit.OBJ, this rendered our mod broken in 1.3 and useless.

Towards that end, we are changing a lot of our manipulators to 'more modern ones' that are VR friendly.   Several of these more modern manipulators were implemented after we assembled our cockpit, and many of them simply doing what we were doing in our own code already.

The good news is that these will still work the same for non-VR users, but will allow the VR features of X-Plane to still work without a new cockpit.obj file.  J

NOTE, this is our first go-round with making a VR friendly setup natively and Jan is checking most everything and having good succes, but once this goes out, as usual, feedback is welcome.

[Litjan]

I second what Tom says - we have made big strides and I don´t see any obstacle to providing a good VR experience with our next update.

Jan

 

[shenherm]

Awesome! I'm glad to hear that you guys are excited for VR and are making progress with it.

Awesome work!

 

Cheers,

Matheson

Edited May 30, 2020 by shenherm

[3rdwatch]

Thank you everyone for the responses. It is a little heartbreaking not to be able to fly the update in VR. But it is nice to know that an update will eventually be coming.

[judeb]

On 5/26/2020 at 4:41 AM, mmerelles said:

 

@3rdwatch

 

In order to make the IXEG 1.3 work under VR i had to do 2 things:

1. Create a new vrconfig.txt file from scratch to accomodates their newer manipulators

2. but it didin't work still, after further debugging i realized the ixeg cockpit_281.obj file contains quite a bit of trash characters most likely coming from issues on the laminar's blender exporting tool. So i cleared them up and got it working nicely

I will share my findings with IXEG team for their testing/evaluation, maybe this helps out to save some time/effort to start providing their bird vr ready

 

Please find attached 2 files, both should be placed on the 733 root folder (make a backup first of their original B737_cockpit_281.obj for safety/rollback if required)

 

This is the list of things i already covered (tried to cover the most critical), please test them for some feedback and i will continue to cover the rest of the manipulators on the cockpit

-Both Course selectors

-Heading bug and BANK angle

-IAS

-ALT & VS

-Pilot Copilot & stby Altimeters

-Auto Brake knob

-Nav1 & 2 

-Comm 1 & 2 

-Pilot & Copilot DHs

-EHSI Mode & Range selectors for both pilot & copilot

-IRS system. left, right modes & display selector

-Left & Right engine start knobs

 

 

 

B733_vrconfig.txt

B733_cockpit_281.obj

I'll give them a try. 

 

[tkyler]

14 hours ago, 3rdwatch said:

It is a little heartbreaking not to be able to fly the update in VR

things are not the same as in the past....updates will be much quicker than in the past and more frequent.  This won't be a long wait I assure you.  The mousewheel issue practically demands we update asap.

-tkyler

[judeb]

 
[mention=16221]3rdwatch[/mention]
 
In order to make the IXEG 1.3 work under VR i had to do 2 things:
1. Create a new vrconfig.txt file from scratch to accomodates their newer manipulators
2. but it didin't work still, after further debugging i realized the ixeg cockpit_281.obj file contains quite a bit of trash characters most likely coming from issues on the laminar's blender exporting tool. So i cleared them up and got it working nicely [emoji3]
I will share my findings with IXEG team for their testing/evaluation, maybe this helps out to save some time/effort to start providing their bird vr ready
 
Please find attached 2 files, both should be placed on the 733 root folder (make a backup first of their original B737_cockpit_281.obj for safety/rollback if required)
 
This is the list of things i already covered (tried to cover the most critical), please test them for some feedback and i will continue to cover the rest of the manipulators on the cockpit
-Both Course selectors
-Heading bug and BANK angle
-IAS
-ALT & VS
-Pilot Copilot & stby Altimeters
-Auto Brake knob
-Nav1 & 2 
-Comm 1 & 2 
-Pilot & Copilot DHs
-EHSI Mode & Range selectors for both pilot & copilot
-IRS system. left, right modes & display selector
-Left & Right engine start knobs
 
 
 
B733_vrconfig.txt
B733_cockpit_281.obj

These files work fine for me.

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

[3rdwatch]

7 hours ago, tkyler said:

things are not the same as in the past....updates will be much quicker than in the past and more frequent.  This won't be a long wait I assure you.  The mousewheel issue practically demands we update asap.

-tkyler

Tom,

 

 That is great news. Thank you.

[tkyler]

During development of the VRconfig.txt.....and via discussions with other very helpful folks, we won't be providing a "both throttles" manipulator into this next patch, but will pursue it shortly after.   It may seem straightforward on the surface, but part of our quadrant / throttle lever code is configured to simulate "single engine" operations....and when a user has only one throttle paddle, (very common), then this causes a conflict with the quadrant levers in-sim where the user's one joystick lever needs to move only one throttle lever in sim and not both.   Accomodating both VR and this single-engine operational scenario means we'll have to rework our code a bit to achieve it and so it'll have to wait for the following patch. 

-Tom Kyler

[midi48]

On 5/26/2020 at 4:41 AM, mmerelles said:

 

@3rdwatch

 

In order to make the IXEG 1.3 work under VR i had to do 2 things:

1. Create a new vrconfig.txt file from scratch to accomodates their newer manipulators

2. but it didin't work still, after further debugging i realized the ixeg cockpit_281.obj file contains quite a bit of trash characters most likely coming from issues on the laminar's blender exporting tool. So i cleared them up and got it working nicely

I will share my findings with IXEG team for their testing/evaluation, maybe this helps out to save some time/effort to start providing their bird vr ready

 

Please find attached 2 files, both should be placed on the 733 root folder (make a backup first of their original B737_cockpit_281.obj for safety/rollback if required)

 

This is the list of things i already covered (tried to cover the most critical), please test them for some feedback and i will continue to cover the rest of the manipulators on the cockpit

-Both Course selectors

-Heading bug and BANK angle

-IAS

-ALT & VS

-Pilot Copilot & stby Altimeters

-Auto Brake knob

-Nav1 & 2 

-Comm 1 & 2 

-Pilot & Copilot DHs

-EHSI Mode & Range selectors for both pilot & copilot

-IRS system. left, right modes & display selector

-Left & Right engine start knobs

 

 

 

B733_vrconfig.txt

B733_cockpit_281.obj

done another couple of flight and worked fine . so a big thank you M

[JC_YYZ]

On 5/28/2020 at 11:59 AM, tkyler said:

things are not the same as in the past....updates will be much quicker than in the past and more frequent.  This won't be a long wait I assure you.  The mousewheel issue practically demands we update asap.

-tkyler

That is great news. I have been flying sims for years, but I am new to both the IXEG and this past week, new to VR. I have to say that I can't believe I waited this long to get into VR flying and I am excited to see that you're working hard to bring this unique experience to the update. I want to echo the other posts and thank you for all the hard work you put into this simulations. It can often be thankless work, so just know that it's appreciated.

[Litjan]

Just wanted all VR flyers to know that I have spent pretty much the last 3 days with Mmerelles (Manuel from Patagonia, of all places!) to get the plane VR ready.

We (well, mostly him) made a vrconfig.txt file and Tom is right now converting a lot of manipulators that gave us trouble to modern and VR friendly manipulators.

I know that I said in the video that we won´t support VR control of the thrust levers in 1.31, but it turns out that we will - there will be a "clickspot" on both levers (towards that center gap) where you can grab and push them simultaneously.

The only obstacles remaining to flying in VR that I see now are:

• poor resolution (depending on your headset it can be hard to read exact values off the instruments)
• inability to access the IXEG pop-out menus (need to do your flight setup in 2D)
• Need for rudder pedals (you can steer by grabbing the tiller, but for real crosswind operation you would need hardware rudders)
• Inability to "trim" easily in VR (although you can grab and rotate the trim wheel very naturally in VR, no pop-out handles yet, though)
• Necessity to return yoke to neutral to engage autopilot (it won´t snap back to neutral when you let go as it would in a real aircraft).

We will have a dedicated thread for VR when 1.31 ships to collect feedback and ideas for improvement.

Thanks again for helping, Manuel and also a big thanks to Matheson from VrLabs who also gave us valuable insight and helpful hints in making this happen natively.

Cheers, Jan

 

[TCL]

This is awesome news! Thank you Litjan, Manuel and Matheson to make this happen. Been waiting for the VR support from more than 2 years and now is happening. Many thanks!!!

[JC_YYZ]

14 hours ago, Litjan said:

Just wanted all VR flyers to know that I have spent pretty much the last 3 days with Mmerelles (Manuel from Patagonia, of all places!) to get the plane VR ready.

We (well, mostly him) made a vrconfig.txt file and Tom is right now converting a lot of manipulators that gave us trouble to modern and VR friendly manipulators.

I know that I said in the video that we won´t support VR control of the thrust levers in 1.31, but it turns out that we will - there will be a "clickspot" on both levers (towards that center gap) where you can grab and push them simultaneously.

The only obstacles remaining to flying in VR that I see now are:

• poor resolution (depending on your headset it can be hard to read exact values off the instruments)
• inability to access the IXEG pop-out menus (need to do your flight setup in 2D)
• Need for rudder pedals (you can steer by grabbing the tiller, but for real crosswind operation you would need hardware rudders)
• Inability to "trim" easily in VR (although you can grab and rotate the trim wheel very naturally in VR, no pop-out handles yet, though)
• Necessity to return yoke to neutral to engage autopilot (it won´t snap back to neutral when you let go as it would in a real aircraft).

We will have a dedicated thread for VR when 1.31 ships to collect feedback and ideas for improvement.

Thanks again for helping, Manuel and also a big thanks to Matheson from VrLabs who also gave us valuable insight and helpful hints in making this happen natively.

Cheers, Jan

 

This is great news! Again, thanks for your work and dedication to the plane. I know you mentioned a list of obstacles, but I am sure that most pilots are eager to get their headsets on and flying despite some of those issues. I know a lot of us use external controllers (yoke, rudder pedals) and also configure our flights in 2D before putting on the headset (payload, pushback, etc).

Thanks again and looking forward to 1.31!

[Javier]

15 hours ago, Litjan said:

Just wanted all VR flyers to know that I have spent pretty much the last 3 days with Mmerelles (Manuel from Patagonia, of all places!) to get the plane VR ready.

We (well, mostly him) made a vrconfig.txt file and Tom is right now converting a lot of manipulators that gave us trouble to modern and VR friendly manipulators.

I know that I said in the video that we won´t support VR control of the thrust levers in 1.31, but it turns out that we will - there will be a "clickspot" on both levers (towards that center gap) where you can grab and push them simultaneously.

The only obstacles remaining to flying in VR that I see now are:

• poor resolution (depending on your headset it can be hard to read exact values off the instruments)
• inability to access the IXEG pop-out menus (need to do your flight setup in 2D)
• Need for rudder pedals (you can steer by grabbing the tiller, but for real crosswind operation you would need hardware rudders)
• Inability to "trim" easily in VR (although you can grab and rotate the trim wheel very naturally in VR, no pop-out handles yet, though)
• Necessity to return yoke to neutral to engage autopilot (it won´t snap back to neutral when you let go as it would in a real aircraft).

We will have a dedicated thread for VR when 1.31 ships to collect feedback and ideas for improvement.

Thanks again for helping, Manuel and also a big thanks to Matheson from VrLabs who also gave us valuable insight and helpful hints in making this happen natively.

Cheers, Jan

 

Hello Jan. I started flying almost exclusively in VR from last summer and the IXEG was one of my fav planes. A couple of questions/suggestions here before posting them in the dedicated VR thread you mentioned.

Regarding the resolution, it depends on the VR headset but I get a crystal clear picture with my Rift-S using OVR plugin and locking frames at 27 or 40 and setting supersampling at 1.3.

The yoke, yeah, that was hard to get it center to set AP on. Is it possible to get a back to neutral hotspot? If not, I saw a video of a 737 classic and it had a very distinguish clicking sound when crossing the neutrals positions. That would help a lot.

Thanks for your hard work! Looking forward to getting back into the cockpit.

 

PD: The new manipulators will make Smart-Copilot unusable right? Please let me know if you guys need a nerd using VR for the next 40hrs! Love flying using VR! I can help with the debbug face of the VR config

Edited June 2, 2020 by Javier

[tkyler]

3 minutes ago, Javier said:

PD: The new manipulators will make Smart-Copilot unusable right?

They shouldn't.....none of the dataref names or 'state values' have changed...only the manner of manipulation in VR and with the mouse.  Things should work fine with Smart-Copilot

-tkyler

[Javier]

1 minute ago, tkyler said:

They shouldn't.....none of the dataref names or 'state values' have changed...only the manner of manipulation in VR and with the mouse.  Things should work fine with Smart-Copilot

-tkyler

Got it... Time to gift the IXEG to some friends!

Edited June 2, 2020 by Javier

[Litjan]

1 hour ago, Javier said:

Is it possible to get a back to neutral hotspot?

I am not aware of that. Keeping the yoke at its "present position" seems to be a feature in VR, rather than a bug. I assume that LR has coded it because VR users can not "feel" the displacement of the yoke or stick, so they have a hard time trimming (and of course they can´t click trimming buttons like they can with a joystick).

I think if you memorize the visual position of the yoke at neutral (you can see that pretty well where it connects to the ground) you can center it manually well enough.

I flew a bit with just the VR wands on my Oculus and it worked fine - but obviously needs some getting used to. I would probably prefer to use my hardware joystick, throttle and rudder pedals.

Cheers, Jan

 

[3rdwatch]

On 6/1/2020 at 4:24 PM, Litjan said:

Just wanted all VR flyers to know that I have spent pretty much the last 3 days with Mmerelles (Manuel from Patagonia, of all places!) to get the plane VR ready.

We (well, mostly him) made a vrconfig.txt file and Tom is right now converting a lot of manipulators that gave us trouble to modern and VR friendly manipulators.

I know that I said in the video that we won´t support VR control of the thrust levers in 1.31, but it turns out that we will - there will be a "clickspot" on both levers (towards that center gap) where you can grab and push them simultaneously.

The only obstacles remaining to flying in VR that I see now are:

• poor resolution (depending on your headset it can be hard to read exact values off the instruments)
• inability to access the IXEG pop-out menus (need to do your flight setup in 2D)
• Need for rudder pedals (you can steer by grabbing the tiller, but for real crosswind operation you would need hardware rudders)
• Inability to "trim" easily in VR (although you can grab and rotate the trim wheel very naturally in VR, no pop-out handles yet, though)
• Necessity to return yoke to neutral to engage autopilot (it won´t snap back to neutral when you let go as it would in a real aircraft).

We will have a dedicated thread for VR when 1.31 ships to collect feedback and ideas for improvement.

Thanks again for helping, Manuel and also a big thanks to Matheson from VrLabs who also gave us valuable insight and helpful hints in making this happen natively.

Cheers, Jan

 

Jan,

 

 I know a lot of VR simmers actually use hard wired controls. In my case I have a full 737 quadrant from Jetmax, tiller rudder pedals and a yoke.. When I fly vr I only use the right manipulator for switches. All my trimming etc is on my yoke.

 

Thanks for all the hard work

Edited June 5, 2020 by 3rdwatch