OVRDrop - Feasible for map?

[[CPT]CptJackSparrow]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/586210/OVRdrop/

 

15$ And it seems you can import desktop windows into VR games. I heard of it from someone in another thread here (sorry, I can't for the life of me recall his name).

 

It does list a few "it wont work with" on the steam page, and I was wondering if any of the more longer term, longer experienced VR folks could chime in on if this could possibly work inside il2.

 

The main reason I ask would be for using il2missionplanner.com within VR in a shrunken window. I don't mind dropping the 15$ to be the guinea pig.

 

 

 

Forgot the main url for it.

 

http://ovrdrop.hotrian.com/

[TG-55Panthercules]

Sounds interesting, but unfortunately I have zero history/experience with either OVRdrop or the IL2missionplanner thingy.  Furthest I got was putting a copy of the BoS map on my iPad so I could use it during flight (pre-VR days), which was very cool but obviously useless now that I'm only flying BoS in VR.  (Still use it for RoF, at least until somebody figures out how to make RoF work in VR).

 

While it seems like it would be cool if it works, given how I've spent years trying to make sure as few other apps as possible are running while playing games like this it kinda goes against the grain to think about having to run another couple of apps to make something like this work.  But, it's probably worth a look.

[=EXPEND=Tripwire]

Yeah I suggested it in the other thread as a potential option due to having seen guys using it in OnwardVR and Assertion Corsa for twitch chat, and Elite Dangerous for watching TV shows or looking up commodity trading websites while space trucking.

 

Not sure of the CPU overhead on such usage. Attaching the map to your leg or the back of your tracked VR controller sounds like a pretty cool potential use case, especially if you can still interact with that map too.

 

I've not tested it yet though unfortunately.

[[CPT]CptJackSparrow]

When I get back from Houston, I'll buy it and give a whirl. =)

[TG-55Panthercules]

Decided to get it tonight and give it a try.  Downloading it now - maybe I can save you the $15.

 

Wish me luck

[[CPT]CptJackSparrow]

I've yet to see a Hearse with a Uhaul behind it.

 

Please report your findings, I'll buy it too. I'm keen to hear how it is.

[TG-55Panthercules]

Woohoo - Buy it    

 

It's going to take some more experimentation, and it's not exactly the most intuitive program I've ever slogged through, and not everything worked exactly right on my first test, BUT after a variety of false starts I did manage to get a little mini-map to pop up (and go away) down inside my cockpit (sort of) while flying around in my Bf-110 E-2 in BoK.  And I didn't have time to run any performance tests so I can't say for sure, but I didn't notice any undesirable side effects while just flying and looking around.

 

I don't know if there's any way to take a screenshot of what I'm seeing inside BoK in VR, but here's a screenshot of the OVRDrop settings screen which will give you an idea of how to start playing around with it:

 

 

Key:

 

1. The little window for your map app/image - I didn't have any good/suitable copy of a BoS map handy, so I used one from RoF just to demonstrate - presumably this would be the window for the IL2missionplanner thingy mentioned somewhere above.  There's supposed to be some way for OVRdrop to crop the unwanted borders and capture only the map, and I think it's supposed to have something to do with the entries in the top left corner that are partially covered by arrow #2, but I couldn't figure out how to make that work yet.

 

2. Clicking this drop-down will let you select which of the programs/windows you currently have open on your PC that you want to be displayed in your VR game - in this case, I selected the Paint window that had my map image open in it.

 

3. Clicking in the Hotkey Settings box in upper left opens up this box so you can assign the key used to open and close the overlay (map) window in your VR screen - I've entered "M" and activated it by clicking the box next to it (puts the check mark in it).

 

4.  By default, it was showing the map window at the top center of my view in VR - by entering numbers in these 3 boxes I was able to reposition the map window down towards the right corner of the cockpit.

 

5.  By clicking in this box you have choices about how the window will be anchored.  By choosing "Screen", it kept the map window down near the right bottom corner of my VR "screen" (so always down-right, but it moves with me as I move my head around).  I tried the choice to anchor it to my right touch controller, which was actually pretty cool if maybe I could strap that controller to my right thigh, but in practice didn't work very well.  I think the "world" selection is supposed to let it be fixed in position in the cockpit regardless of where you look with your headset, but I couldn't figure out how to make that work that way yet.

 

6.  Be sure to save a new preset/profile once you get it close to where you want it, so you won't have to start over again.

 

7. Not noted on the screenshot, but somewhere (in the Additional Settings near the top left) I believe you need to tick the box for the Windows Settings for the target application that says "Window Always on Top".

 

Anyway, more work needed, and probably not for somebody not willing to tinker around a bit to get it working, but I think this is going to be really cool as a workaround until the devs get around to augmenting the in-game map mechanism some day (if they ever do).

 

BTW - here's the start-up procedure I found most useful for working on this stuff:  First, start whatever program will display your map image and size it to be about the size you want it to be on screen (leave it open - do not minimize it).  Second, start SteamVR.  Third, from your desktop (not in VR), start OVRDrop.  You can then peek under your VR headset from time to time to check how things look as you're making the settings changes in OVRDrop, but you will probably want to actually work outside of VR to make those changes to OVRDrop.  Once you get everything looking about right, then you should be able to start BoS/BoM/BoK and get under your VR headset for real.

 

 

[EDIT]  Things that didn't work exactly right in my test:

 

1.  I had no sound - didn't have time to check to see if maybe something changed in the way Steam VR usually switches the sound from my speakers to my Rift - since Steam VR was already open for the test (whereas usually I start BoS first and it starts SteamVR) I think it may have been related to that somehow.

 

2.  Although my Logitech joystick profiler software was configured for my POV hat to pulse out the letter "M", and OVRDrop recognized that (I used the POV hat to enter the "M" as the toggle key), I could not get it to work in the game.  Pressing the M key itself worked, but obviously I'd want to be able to assign it to a controller button so I don't have to fumble around for my keyboard while in VR.  Not sure what the problem was (I unassigned "M" in the BoS setup screen so there wouldn't be any conflict, so that wasn't it).  (I think this was user error - upon further investigation it seems likely that I didn't save/select my joystick profile correctly before starting the game.)

Edited September 5, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules

[=EXPEND=Tripwire]

To see the output you would need to use the option in SteamVR to mirror your HMD output to screen. The game display showing per eye won't show the OVRDrop injection.

[TG-55Panthercules]

Update on playing around with OVRDrop.  Some good news, some bad.

 

I did manage to figure out how to fix the map location to the "world", so it stays in one place down in my cockpit regardless of where I look, and I figured out how to make the crop window function work so that I could get rid of the browser edges and just get it to show the map portion of the IL2missionplanner site, and I also figured out how to rotate the map window "flatter" so it looks more natural and easier to read down there - as reflected in this mirror screenshot:

 

 

The screenshot of the OVRDrop settings screen below illustrates some of the new settings:

 

 

Key:

 

1.  I used a browser window with the map from the IL-2 Mission Planner site to use a BoS map this time.

 

2.  Entering the numbers in these 4 boxes cropped off the controls, bars and text along the left, top and right sides so that the only thing showing was the actual map portion.  You can zoom and drag the map around in that window (before starting BoS) to get exactly the desired portion of the map showing in the map window.  I have not figured out whether it's possible to actually interact with the map while BoS is running.

 

3.  I changed the selection here to "world" so the map window will stay fixed in one place in the virtual world (i.e., down in the cockpit) regardless of where you move your head/headset - not sure why it didn't seem to work last night but it worked today - probably because I didn't have the right numbers in step 4 last night.

 

4.  Entering these numbers for X, Y and Z placed the map window where I wanted it - down in the cockpit as if it were on my knee board or something like that.

 

5.  Entering this number tilted the top of the map window away from me, so that the map appears to lay "flatter" across my "legs" and is easier to read.

 

 

The bad news:

 

1.  There seems to be some real sensitivity as to which window has focus or is "on top" or which programs are started in which order or something.  I had to experiment a few times to make sure the map image was what was in the overlay window in game.  Sometimes, I would get the split screen image of BoS down where the map was supposed to be - I got it working but I'm still not sure exactly how to replicate what worked.

 

2.  I still could not get my Logitech profiler software to make my joystick pulse out an "M" that the game would recognize as the map toggle key - tried running it as administrator, but no help.  Pressing the M key on kepboard still worked (once I got the programs started/stacked correctly - sometimes I would have BoS in my headset seemingly active but not really, as it would not recognize either the M key for the map toggle or the P key to unpause, but when I got the right programs correctly active, it worked).

 

3.  I still have no sound in my Rift during BoS - tried checking Control Panel and manually setting the Rift to default playback, but no luck.  Checked volume in BoS settings and it was OK, so I'm going to have to do some more troubleshooting to see what's happened to my sound setup. [EDIT - just found that volume in my Windows systray was set to zero - not sure how that happened, but I suspect that's why I couldn't hear anything. ]

 

 

So, it's still pretty fiddly and I really hope the devs can get around to just fixing the mini-map mechanism in BoS to work like RoF and eliminate the need for this, but in the meantime I still think there's good potential here - it as really nice flying around in a QMB over Stalingrad in VR being able to check the map against the landscape easily.

Edited September 5, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules

[TG-55Panthercules]

Small additional tweaking - I noticed that the VR zoom function in BoS doesn't affect (doesn't work for) the map window overlay, so I went in and made the map window a bit larger and closer to me so it would be easier to read, while still basically being out of the way down inside the cockpit.  It was also easier to get working correctly this time around - probably just a matter of (a) getting more familiar with the process and (b) not making such radical changes just to start it up to play (so less chance of changing something that screws something else up).  Also, I think part of the problem I was having before was that I had switched BoS to "fullscreen" for some testing (unrelated to OVRDrop) earlier and it was still set that way for my most recent test above - I changed it back to untick "fullscreen" and things worked much better this time.

 

I did notice that some of the settings seemed to be saved and still be the same as my last session, but some did not (e.g., the "world" setting had changed back to "screen" and the tilt number for the map window had gotten smaller and had to be adjusted for some reason), so I recommend keeping a screenshot handy of whatever final settings you arrive at so you can check to make sure they're they way you want them before you fire up BoS and try to fly.  And I did confirm that my sound is back to working fine in the Rift - must have been that volume thing getting set to zero for some reason before.

 

My latest OVRDrop settings screenshot is below:

 

 

Key:

 

1.  I enlarged the map by just resizing the browser window (dragging with mouse) - OVRDrop seemed to be OK with that and made it bigger while still retaining the cropped effect without making me re-enter new numbers in the crop boxes.

 

2.  I needed to tweak these location numbers slightly to bring the larger map up to where I wanted it - very easy to do by just clicking the +/- signs on these sliders - and you can peek under your VR headset while you're doing these adjustments to see the effect you're getting (again, without having started BoS yet).

 

 

Bottom line - it was very cool cruising around Kuban checking my map (almost got shot down though as I forgot it was going to spawn me almost on top of some enemy ships).

 

 

Now I just have to try to figure out why BoS (or perhaps more correctly, OVRDrop) isn't seeing the "M" sent from my joystick (is it possible that BoS grabs exclusive control of the joystick and prevents OVRDrop from knowing that it's trying to send an "M"?), and also run a few benchmark tests to see if there's any noticeable performance hit.  

 

[EDIT] Ran a couple of quick benchmark tests - nothing rigorous, but so far it doesn't look like there's much of a performance hit with having OVRDrop and the map window running (at least with the relatively maxed out settings I'm using with BoS for VR) - maybe a couple of FPS slower on average, but nothing significant so far.

Edited September 6, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules

[curiousGamblerr]

This is really cool. Awesome to see the planner in VR without me lifting a finger  good stuff Panthercules!

[TG-55Panthercules]

OK - I was running some additional tests after the new hotfix (2.012c), and saw the following:

 

1st test set (normal VR benchmark settings from benchmark thread, without OVRDrop/map running):  

Frames: 5040 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 84.000 - Min: 55 - Max: 91

 

2nd test set (same benchmark settings, but with OVRDrop/map running):  

Frames: 4517 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 75.283 - Min: 45 - Max: 91

 

So, at those (generally mid-level) VR benchmark settings, running OVRDrop and map seems to have a pretty significant impact on FPS performance, both in average and minimum (contrary to what I was seeing with my higher-level graphics settings last night).  Will re-run those tests with higher settings and see how they look after the hotfix.  Also going to run some tests with the HUD/mini-map in game, to see what impact that has.  [EDIT - well, I wanted to run those tests but there doesn't seem to be a way to turn the HUD/mini-map on during the playback of the benchmark track, so unless I just missed something that makes that possible there won't be any way to test it that way.  May just have to run some QMB and see if I can tell the difference that way.]

 

[EDIT]

 

In order to assess the FPS hit of OVRDrop/map when using my mostly maxed out settings (except Shadows = 3 rather than 4), I ran some more tests using the benchmark track:

 

Without OVRDrop/map running:  Frames: 3394 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 56.567 - Min: 44 - Max: 91

 

With OVRDrop/map running:  Frames: 3069 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 51.150 - Min: 43 - Max: 84

 

SO, at benchmark settings this causes about a 10% drop in Avg FPS and about a 18% drop in Min FPS, but at mostly maxed out settings it causes about a 10% drop in Avg FPS and about a 8% drop in Max FPS.

Edited September 6, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules

[TG-55Panthercules]

One thing to watch out for when you're trying this - I've noticed a bit of odd flakiness in terms of which program has "focus"/is active.  There have been a couple of times (often, just after I clicked to select the benchmark track to play in BoS) where BoS seems to lose focus and it won't respond to my mouse attempts to click play for the track (or anything else I try to do in BoS at that point).  When I peek out from under my headset, it looks like somehow the browser/map window has become active.  If I click on the BoS tab on the task bar along the bottom of the screen, that seems to return focus to BoS and everything works again.

 

I'm not sure exactly what's happening, but I think it may be related to the fact that I'm running BoS in a small window (1024x768) per the benchmark settings - I think what's happening is that when I try to get the mouse over to the play button it's actually going outside the 1024/768 BoS window and I'm clicking on the browser window (that happens to be over there) instead.

 

Going to be away from my BoS PC for a few days, but when I get back I'll run some tests to check this theory (I think I can make my BoS window big enough to eliminate this issue, without having much if any performance impact).

Edited September 7, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules

[EAF19_Swoop]

Very interesting and hoped to find some solution. Thanks for finding and testing it lads.

 

Will watch this space.

[TG-55Panthercules]

Since resizing my windowed BoS resolution to be larger (I went from 1024x768 to my full monitor resolution, 1920x1080, just to be sure) I have not had any repetition of the "losing focus" issue when moving my mouse around on the menu screens in BoS that I was describing above.

 

I'll be running some more experiments to see if I can figure out how to use this with my old .pdf map process I used before instead of using IL-2MissionPlanner (unless I can figure out how to draw on the latter's map to do things like mark the front lines, wind direction, and other things I could do with my .pdf maps that I haven't figured out how to do with IL-2MissionPlanner yet).  Just having an unmarked map available in VR is still better than nothing, but I do miss the ability I had before to annotate the map to my liking before taking off. Trouble is, that old method was for RoF and on my iPad and I'm not sure if I can port that over to my PC successfully.  Hopefully there's some way to do that on IL-2MissionPlanner that I just haven't figured out yet.

 

Are there any good .pdf copies of the BoS/BoM/BoK maps out there somewhere? I haven't been able to find them on my searches so far.

Edited September 16, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules

[EAF19_Swoop]

Can you interact with the map in game, moving it along as you fly with a mouse or do you choose a section of the map you are going to fly in and set that?

[TG-55Panthercules]

Can you interact with the map in game, moving it along as you fly with a mouse or do you choose a section of the map you are going to fly in and set that?

 

Actually, yes you can.  I've only tried a little zooming/recentering myself, but AFAIK you should be able to perform any of the functions the broswer/tool will let you perform (e.g., put markers and map out flights) while you have the map screen activated.  I can't really do that with my current settings because I have told OVRDrop to mask off the portions of the browser screen that have all the tool buttons so all I see in game is the map itself, but you could easily adjust the mask settings to leave those things accessible if you wanted to do so.  Check this thread for a discussion of how you can make it easier to play with the map while in-game:  https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/31293-game-navigation-vr/

[EAF19_Swoop]

Thanks alot, its something a few of us in my Squad have been battling with in VR. Wish we could resize the ingame map.

[TG-55Panthercules]

OK - while waiting for the next version of the IL-2MissionPlanner site to see if some of the requested features (like removing the labels) might be adopted, I decided to try a couple of other things.  First, I found a post where someone was making .png files of the BoS/BoM/BoK maps available (can't remember who ATM).  With those in hand, I can open them up in PhotoShop, mark the flight paths, front lines, wind speed/direction and anything else I want on them for the upcoming mission, and then save that down as a .jpg file.  Then I open that .jpg file in a little window in Windows' Photo app (having already tailored the crop settings in OVRDrop to display/crop that window appropriately), and now I have a fully marked/customized map to display in my cockpit in BoS in VR.  Very cool.

 

I tried to do something that was going to save several steps, at least while I'm flying PWCG missions - I was just going to leave PWCG open on its own mission briefing page (which already shows the mission map with the flight paths, front lines, etc.) and inject that into my cockpit via OVRDrop.  Would have been an elegant solution, but I ran into a problem - for some reason, OVRDrop does not seem to be able to detect the PWCG java app as an open window, so it's not possible to choose it from the dropdown list in OVRDrop that determines what will be displayed in VR.  I don't know enough about either OVRDrop or PWCG to understand why that is (or more precisely, isn't) happening or how to fix it, so I guess I'll be sticking with using the PhotoShop-edited .jpg maps for now.  At least that method has the advantage of working with any kind of mission, and not just PWCG ones.

Edited September 27, 2017 by TG-55Panthercules