I am awaiting delivery of my PointCTRL devices. They are costly and very much first generation, but are said to be a true panache for dealing with clickable cockpits in VR.
It works a bit like a trackIR, but for your hands. It’s like a ring you wear on your index finger with some buttons on it. You put a little cam on your headset that looks at the leds on the finger units. That way it can control a mouse pointer with sufficient precision to drive a fighter jet.
The guy is building them one by one in his garage, using 3D printed bits and sending them off by post. There’s a waiting list longer than the list of mistakes I’ve made.
In anticipation of the viper and its wild weasel role I built a little ditty to get acquainted with the job. I had been neglecting ground based air defences badly in my training.
You don’t need stretch goals to have defined awards, though. Still, there are probably few people looking to get into SF2 for the first time, and I guess this is mostly aimed at those who already own it and just want it to run on the computers they own now.
To me it just looks like another in the seemingly endless line of middleman cash apps (venmo, kofi, cash.me et fucking cetera) just with a Kickstarter-esque landing page.
I really want to see TK succeed here, but I have a feeling he’ll need a stronger crowdfunding setup that at least promises a copy of the updated game to do so.
I took delivery of my PointCTRL set yesterday. PointCTRL is a way of interacting with clicky cockpits in VR that is pretty much like Track IR for your index fingers. You wear two little boxes on your fingers with three buttons, an IR led and a battery on your hands. There’s a little camera you stick on the HMD. The camera sees the IR leds and provides mouse input to the PC. The buttons act like mouse buttons.
This works like a charm. You raise your arm and point at the buttons in the pit, click with your thumb in a motion very close to grabbing a knob. Short of a fully featured simpit with each and every button and knob featured, this is the perfect way of interacting with the sim. It’s even better because it’s so small and unobtrusive. Unlike the complete simpit this does not take up twelve square feet of roomspace when not in use.
The downsides are its arcane procedures to get it calibrated and set up just so. Out of the box it works, but it does need tweakage to the individual setup. Another downside is the price, I paid about 200 bucks for it, and the long wait time. The man is making them at home, a small bunch at a time. It is very much a hobby project.
Anyway, for all of you VR fliers out there, I heartily endorse PointCTRL.
What a neat idea, I am glad to hear it’s working well for you. In thirty years time I can only imagine how archaic all this first-gen VR stuff is going to appear.
Oh yes it is. These are pretty darn raw, including an arcane setup process that really separates the men from the sheep when it comes to PC masterrace shit. But when they work they most certainly do point the way forward. point the way forward, see what I did there? yeah I found that funny too :nerd:
Remember the 50% improvement in VR performance that ED talked about for DCS? Well…
Hey guys, I know most have been waiting for some info on VR Improvements, this is what I have.
While our initial tests showed up to 50% increase in test conditions, it could not be duplicated by most customers. Some customers saw improvements, but it appears that this is dependent on machine specs. After analyzing the VR performance data, it was determined that in order to make large VR performance gains, it would need to be part of a more encompassing engine improvement that includes Vulkan. We will continue to improve performance where we can, but right now the move towards a larger engine improvement is required and being worked on.
Thanks all, I know its not the best answer, but we want to be honest and show that we are not giving up on it, but realize that bigger changes will be needed for moving forward.
