Chatting with AnKor, still trying to figure out how this CFS3 engine does things and looking for clues about how to improve performance, he put me onto something: the way TrackIR works with WOFF is apparently a little strange. If I understand him correctly, it does not stay in lockstep with the game's framerate. Coincidentally I've recently been trying to improve my TrackIR settings to resolve a specific issue, which is when I try to look too far up and over either shoulder, the 3D world flips to a straight ahead view.
Well today I put the two things together in my mind. WOFF does not have any "roll" capability in the 3D view, but TrackIR is not necessarily aware of that. What if it's trying to tell the game view to roll but getting no response? Wasted processing cycles, right? So I went into my all time favorite TIR profile and examined the settings. Sure enough, there was a "roll" curve programmed in there. I've never even thought to touch it before now. So, I tried zeroing out all the roll settings by dragging the points to the bottom to create a zero flat line. The end result in WOFF is pretty fantastic. I've always had a feeling that TrackIR was behaving slightly weirdly in WOFF. This fixes it. HUGE improvement in the feel and flow of head movements. Now, I'm hoping there isn't something else in my settings that this depends on, but with a bit of luck, it will similarly improve any TrackIR user's experience.
I've uploaded the profile here .... https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5kXGwty9rYiT2xEdVNrNFU0ZzA. PM me if you don't know or can't find what location to put it in. On my machine it's here... C:\Users\Harry_H\AppData\Roaming\NaturalPoint\TrackIR 5\Profiles
Please, if you use TrackIR, do give this a try and tell me if it improves things for you. Be warned, I've purposely limited the range that you can turn to look behind you, for the sake of realism, but you could edit that to suit your own taste fairly easily (PM me if you need pointers for that).
Ive just taken a flight using your profile and..i like it Harry. Like you said you,ve limited the range behind..id like a little more so il PM if thats ok
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.
Very cool. I'm a bit of a Luddite, but I'll see if I can give this a go.
Thanks, Harry!
You're welcome! Once you've placed the profile in your NaturalPoint directory, you should be able to select it as the active preset in your TrackIR client, prior to launching WOFF. I'm sure you'll figure it out but if you get stuck, PM me.
I've flown three missions this afternoon including one in WOTR - incredible difference in smoothness of the game. Still occasional stutters but that's another issue
. Coincidentally I've recently been trying to improve my TrackIR settings to resolve a specific issue, which is when I try to look too far up and over either shoulder, the 3D world flips to a straight ahead view. H
Hi Harry,
I will check out the profile, but the above is what happens when the TrackIR camera looses one of the three IR reflectors. You can recreate this at any time by just covering up one of the sensors with your hand.
Adjusting the sensors and the camera position can help this, but if your profile does not turn the view quick enough before you head moves the sensors or of range, you will be back at square one.
It is really a combination of both.
I say this because I have been using the same profile for years and out of the blue starting having this issue. Took me a while to figure out somewhere along the line I had inadvertently bent the IR sensors out of position.
Regards.
Last edited by Stache; 06/15/1902:57 AM.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A. Einstein
. Coincidentally I've recently been trying to improve my TrackIR settings to resolve a specific issue, which is when I try to look too far up and over either shoulder, the 3D world flips to a straight ahead view. H
Hi Harry,
I will check out the profile, but the above is what happens when the TrackIR camera looses one of the three IR reflectors. You can recreate this at any time by just covering up one of the sensors with your hand.
Adjusting the sensors and the camera position can help this, but if your profile does not turn the view quick enough before you head moves the sensors or of range, you will be back at square one.
It is really a combination of both.
I say this because I have been using the same profile for years and out of the blue starting having this issue. Took me a while to figure out somewhere along the line I had inadvertently bent the IR sensors out of position.
Regards.
Thanks Stache, but I've had this problem forever. It's never been serious enough for me to bother addressing, but I'm just now working on the last few aspects of WOFF to make it as near-perfect as I can. In the process of doing that I just happened to have discovered the "roll" thing and that has made a huge difference for me. Try it for yourself and let me know!
Harry, instead of fiddling with the roll curve, wouldn’t it be better just to uncheck the checkbox beside “roll”? In fact, by turning it off you probably could save even more processing power, because TrackIR doesn’t even have to check that “flat curve”. Man, I hate flat curves.
"Take the cylinder out of my kidneys, The connecting rod out of my brain, my brain, From out of my arse take the camshaft, And assemble the engine again."
Harry, instead of fiddling with the roll curve, wouldn’t it be better just to uncheck the checkbox beside “roll”? In fact, by turning it off you probably could save even more processing power, because TrackIR doesn’t even have to check that “flat curve”. Man, I hate flat curves.
Actually I just went a checked this and I did already have the checkbox for roll disabled... bu changing the settings still made a huge difference... so I dunno what's going on there.
Harry, I couldn’t tell the difference with the checkbox on or off, but I haven’t tried zeroing the curves. What made big difference for me was the “Smooth” slider. I was testing it at values of 40 and forgot to change it back. I couldn’t figure out why WOFF was so choppy even early in the war. I recently had a look at those settings again and realized I had it so high (you would think the higher the number the smoother it should be). After reducing it to 10 or a much lower value, WOFF returned to its old smooth running. Another big frame rate increase for me was removing the airfield mods. I hate to do it because all locations are wrong on Lou’s map now. But with my aging system I was able to go from 40s to 100s. That is a huge difference. I wish we still could have the airfield locations “correct” but without all the accoutrements like the figures, workstations and the dog. I bet you that dog it’s a whole bowl of framerate for breakfast. As I understand, the airfield mod is all or nothing.
"Take the cylinder out of my kidneys, The connecting rod out of my brain, my brain, From out of my arse take the camshaft, And assemble the engine again."
Harry, I couldn’t tell the difference with the checkbox on or off, but I haven’t tried zeroing the curves. What made big difference for me was the “Smooth” slider. I was testing it at values of 40 and forgot to change it back. I couldn’t figure out why WOFF was so choppy even early in the war. I recently had a look at those settings again and realized I had it so high (you would think the higher the number the smoother it should be). After reducing it to 10 or a much lower value, WOFF returned to its old smooth running. Another big frame rate increase for me was removing the airfield mods. I hate to do it because all locations are wrong on Lou’s map now. But with my aging system I was able to go from 40s to 100s. That is a huge difference. I wish we still could have the airfield locations “correct” but without all the accoutrements like the figures, workstations and the dog. I bet you that dog it’s a whole bowl of framerate for breakfast. As I understand, the airfield mod is all or nothing.
OK you definitely need to zero out the roll settings. The checkbox apparently does nothing :/ . Please do try it!!! Yes, smooth and speed settings need to be fine tuned to preference also. An you will find the slower the speed, the more limited your head turn range will become, so then you may need to readjust your yaw settings. Tinkering with WOFF is like working on a vintage sports car engine
I love the airfield mod and I have it enabled. I'm sooo happy with my settings right now. Just need to fix the clouds (yeah, fat chance).
Not sure if it will make a difference or not, but I noticed your values for Axis 2 (Roll) are not exactly 0 other than in the center. This probably happened when you were editing the profile through the TrackIR UI. The xml file can be text edited, and you can make them actually be completely 0.
p.s. It turns out that you can completely delete the section for Axis 2 as well and it still works with TrackIR just fine.
Not sure if it will make a difference or not, but I noticed your values for Axis 2 (Roll) are not exactly 0 other than in the center. This probably happened when you were editing the profile through the TrackIR UI. The xml file can be text edited, and you can make them actually be completely 0.
p.s. It turns out that you can completely delete the section for Axis 2 as well and it still works with TrackIR just fine.
Excellent idea, thanks. Are you seeing good results overall by removing roll?
I wasn't really having a problem the way it was before, but this doesn't hurt anything in my case.
OK, well I don't see the profile available to load if I edit it and remove Axis 2. I've edited each point on the curve inside trackIR and they are now all at 0.1. Seems to be the minimum.
Hi Harry, the point I was trying to make is that the issue mentioned is not dependent upon only the profile.
As for seeing behind, this also dependent upon what the current zoom view is. With the view zoomed out, you can see behind to the opposite side farther. i.e. when looking to the left you will be able to see farther to the right of the tail plane when the view is zoomed out.
With your first profile, I also found it was quite easy to see to the tail plane and beyond by just turning by head while at the standard zoom. With my profile I actually have to get some shoulder movement involved to see that last little bit. I did find your profile was more limiting when looking up.
Of course with triple screens - my setup is not ordinary.
My profile has roll checkbox enabled.
Originally Posted by HarryH
Originally Posted by Stache
Originally Posted by HarryH
. Coincidentally I've recently been trying to improve my TrackIR settings to resolve a specific issue, which is when I try to look too far up and over either shoulder, the 3D world flips to a straight ahead view. H
Hi Harry,
I will check out the profile, but the above is what happens when the TrackIR camera looses one of the three IR reflectors. You can recreate this at any time by just covering up one of the sensors with your hand.
Adjusting the sensors and the camera position can help this, but if your profile does not turn the view quick enough before you head moves the sensors or of range, you will be back at square one.
It is really a combination of both.
I say this because I have been using the same profile for years and out of the blue starting having this issue. Took me a while to figure out somewhere along the line I had inadvertently bent the IR sensors out of position.
Regards.
Thanks Stache, but I've had this problem forever. It's never been serious enough for me to bother addressing, but I'm just now working on the last few aspects of WOFF to make it as near-perfect as I can. In the process of doing that I just happened to have discovered the "roll" thing and that has made a huge difference for me. Try it for yourself and let me know!
Last edited by Stache; 06/16/1901:17 AM.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A. Einstein
Thanks, Stache. You're right, of course, things change with different zoom levels. I'm realizing that everyones' machines are different, and everyones' preferred "experiences" are not necessarily aligned with mine. So, although my only interest is to help people improve their systems, my efforts at providing pointers and sharing my own discoveries may or may not result in satisfaction.
WOFF's now absolutely awesome for me. No way does it feel like a game engine that's 15+ years old any longer. The frustrating thing is, I can't capture video at a high enough resolution with a matched frame rate, to be able to show everyone what I'm enjoying so much. That's too bad. I'm down to one stutter every 25 minutes or so, regardless of the action level. Clouds are behaving better than ever (less popping less jaggies) head tracking liquid smooth except for the very occasional and only very slightly detectable hesitations and I think I've finally got to a place now where I can just fly and have massive fun.
Another awesome thing: if you haven't already, check out what JJJ has just implemented in the ME. Now we have a way to get great performance even in the later stages of 1918, without sacrificing detail settings or immersion.
Happy Father's Day all. Make sure to get some stick time