Motion Support for IL-2

[AndyJWest]

I think it might be better if people stopped guessing at what they think the API might provide, and took a look at what it actually does. It provides values for orientation over three axes (pitch, roll and yaw), turn rates around these three axes, and acceleration data for the same three axes. Via UDP, at a maximum data rate of 50 Hz. That is all it does. Because that is what you need for its required purpose - to feed data to motion simulators. It doesn't provide high-frequency vibration data, because that isn't required for motion simulators. I don't know exactly how these seat-vibrator devices work, but I'd have thought they wanted something closer to a continuous audio-frequency signal, rather than UDP data blocks. From what I can figure out from the DCS forum, that is how it works with their sim.

 

If people want such data, I suggest they get together and put forward a proper request directly to Jason, making clear what exactly it is they are asking for, rather than making repeated posts in a thread about an API which has nothing to do with what they want, and isn't suited to providing it.

Edited March 29, 2019 by AndyJWest

[Andre]

33 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

I think it might be better if people stopped guessing at what they think the API might provide, and took a look at what it actually does. It provides values for orientation over three axes (pitch, roll and yaw), turn rates around these three axes, and acceleration data for the same three axes. Via UDP, at a maximum data rate of 50 Hz. That is all it does. Because that is what you need for its required purpose - to feed data to motion simulators. It doesn't provide high-frequency vibration data, because that isn't required for motion simulators. I don't know exactly how these seat-vibrator devices work, but I'd have thought they wanted something closer to a continuous audio-frequency signal, rather than UDP data blocks. From what I can figure out from the DCS forum, that is how it works with their sim.

 

If people want such data, I suggest they get together and put forward a proper request directly to Jason, making clear what exactly it is they are asking for, rather than making repeated posts in a thread about an API which has nothing to do with what they want, and isn't suited to providing it.

Just FYI: The request had already submitted here on the forum and in person to Mr. Williams during the Flight Sim Conference 2018 in Las-Vegas as well as the detailed description by e-mail soon afterwards. The UPD transmission is fine for us, no any continuous audio-frequency signal is required.

I couldn't see any repeating posts in this thread, we discuss what really excites us regarding the game.

Edited March 29, 2019 by Andre

[[PFR]Sarpalaxan]

Well, It's not like Realtheus are sending out the products they sold so maybe by the time they get to it if ever we will have the support.

[spitfirejoe]

Thanks Lord and thanks Jason.....my prayer got an anwer ?

 

I have a full Motion rig with FREX Hyperaxis actuators and I use SimTools. I am sure there will be a SimTools plugin available in the future for IL-2 BOX.

I thank you very much for your Support for the Motion Guys.

 

I hope soon I can try my Motion with IL-2.....dreaming already!

[value1]

If anyone is interested to check the motion with SimTools, here's a plugin. Feedback welcome ?

 

Il_2BoS_GamePlugin_V2.0.0.5.zip

[Gforcefactory]

Hi all,

 

We have just successfully implemented 6DOF motion support for IL-2 in our EDGE 6D system. We are very excited this great title has now full motion support with VR!

 

Thank you 1C-777!! We cannot wait to experience this great adventure with you!

 

Best regards,

 

Team Gforcefactory

[Jason_Williams]

Thank you Value1 for the plugin and Gforcefactory for your fast support as well! 

 

And special thanks to Sergey our lead programmer who made the support quickly once we committed to it. 

 

Feedback from either implementation is welcomed. 

 

Now I need to buy a motion rig! 

 

We have the best community and team in simming. 

 

Jason

[Dutch2]

1 hour ago, Jason_Williams said:

Thank you Value1 for the plugin and Gforcefactory for your fast support as well! 

 

And special thanks to Sergey our lead programmer who made the support quickly once we committed to it. 

 

Feedback from either implementation is welcomed. 

 

Now I need to buy a motion rig! 

 

We have the best community and team in simming. 

 

Jason

 

Reading about prices $8000,- and higher for this 6D seat, I must say I do prefer something simple like an DIY arduino wind simulator or for an DIY amplified bass shaker at the seats bottom.

Jason, I do hope that is also be included your motion .zip file, as I speaking as an complete noob on this topic. 

[Jason_Williams]

Guys,

 

Right now we just support motion, no other types of data. Please, stop asking for bass shakers and other proprietary stuff at the moment. Let's get motion working well, then I can do other stuff. I have to take it one step at a time with my team.

 

Jason

[Dutch2]

46 minutes ago, Jason_Williams said:

Guys,

 

Right now we just support motion, no other types of data. Please, stop asking for bass shakers and other proprietary stuff at the moment. Let's get motion working well, then I can do other stuff. I have to take it one step at a time with my team.

 

Jason

ThankU for explanation, no problem. 

[IRRE_Axurit]

7 hours ago, Gforcefactory said:

Salut à tous,

 

Nous venons de mettre en œuvre avec succès le support de mouvement 6DOF pour IL-2 dans notre système EDGE 6D. Nous sommes très heureux que ce grand titre bénéficie désormais d’une prise en charge intégrale des mouvements avec VR!

 

Merci 1C-777 !! Nous sommes impatients de vivre cette belle aventure avec vous!

 

Meilleures salutations,

 

Équipe Gforcefactory

I greet the team of Gforcefactory

And I am waiting with fervor, the first videos with the reactions of a VR player on one of your platforms.

And hoping that you can make this type of material to the large public.

 

And I thank the IL2 team, from this beginning, in the world of haptic feedback, and I am sure that other improvements will come, like a ffb on the rudder, or vibration feedback, in the future.

[Andre]

12 hours ago, Jason_Williams said:

Guys,

 

Right now we just support motion, no other types of data. Please, stop asking for bass shakers and other proprietary stuff at the moment. Let's get motion working well, then I can do other stuff. I have to take it one step at a time with my team.

 

Jason

Sounds very reassuring. Thank you very much. 

I apologize for my words if I took your intentions wrong.

[spitfirejoe]

Hello Jason, Sergey, Value 1 and GeforceFactory....thank you all for making motion in IL-2 possible!

 

I want to give a very special thanks to "Value1" who made the plugin for Simtools, because I am using Simtools.

Yesterday I installed the plugin and started to create a profile in Simtools. It is my first profile for flight simulation, because before I used my motion rig only for Sim Racing software. I bought my motion rig last year which was built by a genius engineer who's passion is to create the best motion result for sim racing as his hobby. I say that because I want to make clear that my rig is NOT optimized for flight simulation for that reason, but of course very well usable for flying aswell.

 

I have 4 FREX Hyperaxis actuators on each corner of my aluminium profile rig mounted ( 4 DOF ). Additionally I have 1 HYPERAXIS below my SPARCO bucket seat which can turn the seat independently from the rig, that is for traction loss in racing cars and in IL-2 I use this feature for yaw movement.

On the rear of my rig I have a SCN6 actuator mounted which pulls my 5 point seat belt very strongly, that is a great feature for braking immersion in sim racing ( in Simtools for Sim Racing it is activated by the "SURGE" command ). 

Further I have on the left and ride side inside the seat 3 air cushions, in total 6 which gets filled and emptied with air very quickly, another HYPERAXIS actuator pumps air with the help of air tubes and a dedicated construction. This effect helps in sim racing to simulate G-forces.

 

For sim racing ( iRacing, Raceroom, Assetto Corsa and Rfactor2 ) I have created some nice motion profiles in Simtools, for IL-2 BoX I started now and I am still not finished, I need a bit more tweaking.

The pitch and roll effect works just great and improves the immersion a lot. I must say that I do "race" and "fly" on PC only in VR, without my VR headset I can not enjoy the simulation at all and the combination of VR and motion is another level of immersion.

 

Starting the take off roll on a "round field" grass runway in IL-2 was a heavy experience yesterday with motion. The motion effect was much too much and I nearly fell off my seat.

The rig tries to emulate every small bump and whole from the airfield. First I thought that the "HEAVE" effect was too much, but later I found out that the PITCH and ROLL effect did the heavy shaking during ground rolls. In Simtools I needed to activate some filters, I used smoothing on pitch and roll channel and it feels much better now.

 

I have a question @ value1

What does the "SURGE" effect in the Simtools plugin of IL-2? For what can I use it and which axis (actuators ) should it be connected to? 

As said before in sim racing I use it for the braking and acceleration effect and I activated the surge besides the 4DOF on my "seatbelt pulling". But for flying?

 

If someone is interested to see how such a Simtools profile looks like, I can post pictures of it.

 

Down you see the actual status of my motion rig.

Anybody from the community who stops by in Frankfurt ( I live 20 minutes away from the airport ) is welcome to do a test flight in my house.

 

Best reagrds Joe(rg) 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 1, 2019 by spitfirejoe

[value1]

3 hours ago, spitfirejoe said:

Hello Jason, Sergey, Value 1 and GeforceFactory....thank you all for making motion in IL-2 possible!

 

I want to give a very special thanks to "Value1" who made the plugin for Simtools, because I am using Simtools.

You're welcome! and thanks to @Jason_Williams for providing the API!

3 hours ago, spitfirejoe said:

I have a question @value1

What does the "SURGE" effect in the Simtools plugin of IL-2? For what can I use it and which axis (actuators ) should it be connected to? 

As said before in sim racing I use it for the braking and acceleration effect and I activated the surge besides the 4DOF on my "seatbelt pulling". But for flying?

Well, when flying you will also feel braking and acceleration. Probably for even longer than when racing. This might be an issue, because you cannot mimic such long times typically with a simulator. Try pitching the seat up or down to see, if it feels like acceleration. At the end, it's a matter of tweaking your profile until it feels "natural" for you in your seat/platform.

[Gforcefactory]

Hi all,

 

Today we have tested IL-2 Sturmovik on our EDGE 6D system. Note we did not yet do any tuning; just applied the standard settings of the system.

 

 

Comments are welcome :).

 

Team Gforcefactory

[spitfirejoe]

@value1  thank you for answering, my rig works perfect for sim racing and I get a lot of immersion when I brake, accelerate or shift gear in cars. With IL-2 SURGE does not work so far with my rig while braking, maybe I did something wrong in my profile. I will look into it.

 

@Gforcefactory  very well done, looks impresive, your motion solution works for sure much better for flight simming than my one, but for sim racing mine is perfect for me....looks like I need another dedicated motion solution from you for IL-2 ?

I am looking forward to more videos

[Himmselbuster]

Hallo Joerg,

wow, what an impressive motion rig!

 

I always fly a round first and watch the virtual axes in Simtools.

Here you can see which axis deflects when, so that you can easily assign it.

Unfortunately it doesn't work with flight recordings like with DCS, so you have to fly yourself all the time.

Best without VR glasses!

 

Gruß, Thomas

[spitfirejoe]

Hallo Thomas,

 

thanks, which kind of system do you have? 4DOF and which kind of actuators? Do you have made a good simtools profile already?

I am still in the process of testing, yesterday I did a flight record because I wanted to see the motion on my TV screen while watching the recording and I found out that while playing the recording that the movement is not supported. That makes it a bit more difficult to tweak the profile settings for the motion.

I tried DCS once, but never with motion. DCS did not work for me personally, I prefer IL-2 for WW2 warbirds, for my opinion the best simulation. DCS would make sense for me if I want to simulate with an A-10 or F-14.

Have fun with motion.

 

Gruß  Joerg

[Himmselbuster]

Hallo, Jörg,

 

I have the P3 from Dofreality with 3 axes. I had tried IL2 yesterday, but now I have to fine tune it. Yes, unfortunately there are no movements during the flight record,

but without VR glasses and in the window mode it works also "live" quite well.

In DCS I like to fly the BF109 and the Spitfire! Here Simtools shows what it can do!

The cockpit is already shaking in idle, the rolling, the braking, the moving in the air ...... everything feels very good.? Let's see if I can activate it all somehow with IL2.

 

Gruß, Thomas

[TWHYata_PL]

Hello @all

 

Just leting you know that simtool IL 2 plugin is working even with simple 2 Dof platform

 

, 2:01 - IL 2 gameplay

 

 

Edited April 17, 2019 by TWHYata_PL

[spitfirejoe]

Nice to see that your motion is working now.

Have fun Cheers

[savagebeest]

Hi guys, this is awesome. I plan to order a 6dof from dof reality. So what do i need to do in order to get this working with IL2 bos? Simply plug my platform in and play? Im sorry if that was a dumb question. Any help is great. Thanks

[value1]

19 hours ago, savagebeest said:

Hi guys, this is awesome. I plan to order a 6dof from dof reality. So what do i need to do in order to get this working with IL2 bos? Simply plug my platform in and play? I'm sorry if that was a dumb question. Any help is great. Thanks

Hi @savagebeest

You'll need some software like SimTools and the plugin above:

On 3/30/2019 at 12:32 AM, value1 said:

If anyone is interested to check the motion with SimTools, here's a plugin. Feedback welcome ?

 

Il_2BoS_GamePlugin_V2.0.0.5.zip 38.01 kB · 6 downloads

I'm not sure if DOF Reality comes bundled with SimTools but SimTools is certainly compatible with it.

You'll first need to tweak the motion. Have a look in the xsimulator forum.

[savagebeest]

Thanks for the response. Yes i spoke the guys at dof reality and it comes with the most updated simtools. Thank you. 

[frenchfly]

Hi guys,

 

I spent the weekend playing with different settings on my 2dof rig, I found that using extra1 for pitch and extra 2 for roll works much better for simulating gforces. these settings use angle rates at degrees per second. for example when I bank left my rig moves to the right which what you body does in reality at those speeds, same with the pitch if I pitch the plane forward my rig moves back. I only use a limited percentage of my axis limits for this so it's not too exaggerated. You'll notice that if you use the regular roll setting and try a barrel roll to the left your seat will bank left till it hits its limit than moves to the extreme right when you reach the other side of your barrel roll, this breaks the immersion. When using the extra 2 setting it will shove your seat to the right simulating g forces and stay there till you roll is done.

 

hope this makes sense and helps some of you.

 

thanks to the dev team 

 

F

[spitfirejoe]

Hello frenchfly.

 

I did not try the Setting till now, but for me it does not make any sense in theory what you said. If you bank left your rig banjs to the right? Sounds weird for me, BECAUSE.......the main Problem in STATIC Motion Simulators is that you still stand statically at one place, even when the rig moves and due to this fact it is physically impossible to simulate G-Forces like in real.

 

If I fly normal maneuvers with normal pitch and bank angles my rig must follow exactly the direction like in real and not to the other side.

 

If I fly a Barrel roll with Motion, I have exactly the Problem which you described.

[frenchfly]

Well I know it may seem weird but if you were to do a barrel roll in a high speed aircraft I can guarantee that your body would push to the opposite side of the seat, same with pitching forward. After flying with these settings for a few missions I was absolutely immersed. This was suggested to me by a pilot friend and I find that it works for me personally.

 

Using these settings is the same as using sway and heave in a car racing settings (turn left and your body sways right), with the limitations of my rig this is a good compromise in my opinion

 

F

 

 

[spitfirejoe]

I will try your Approach and will see what happens.

thanks for sharing

[frenchfly]

I forgot to add that I don’t think my approach would work very well without VR since it helps add to the sense of movement. 

 

F

[frenchfly]

I tried the Tanks last night and the motion was spot on, even though I didn't know what i was doing:)

[spitfirejoe]

Yes I use VR only aswell, so no Problem.

[hexpod]

Thanks a lot for the extraction data.

 

Excellent starting point thank Value1 and il2 dev team.

Edited April 27, 2019 by hexpod

[hexpod]

Two questions to developers.

1.)

 

those nice cabin turbulences modelized visually (cabin shakes) are not preset in the provided telemetry.

 

would it be possible to add another telemetry slot so we could apply them on the motion platform?

 

2.)

with simtools plugin I have the feeling that surge and sway are inverted.

 

when you fire the guns or modify the engine thrust, the sway is moving instead of surge.

 

Please, could someone check if it’s inverted in the game or inside the plugin ?

 

Thank you very much !

Edited April 25, 2019 by hexpod

[hexpod]

On 4/23/2019 at 8:19 PM, frenchfly said:

Well I know it may seem weird but if you were to do a barrel roll in a high speed aircraft I can guarantee that your body would push to the opposite side of the seat, same with pitching forward. After flying with these settings for a few missions I was absolutely immersed. This was suggested to me by a pilot friend and I find that it works for me personally.

 

Using these settings is the same as using sway and heave in a car racing settings (turn left and your body sways right), with the limitations of my rig this is a good compromise in my opinion

 

F

 

 

 

You guarantee? Well. I would rather say that you do not feel the barrel, but you feel when you enter the barrel. If you have to choose between angular positions and angular velocities, yes, indeed you can get better result if you choose sturmovik’s “Spin_x y, z” variables (velocities) from the simtools “extras” BUT in the right direction.

 

So your body do not feel the spin but the changements of spin velocity.

In the outer space, with closed eyes, you would not notice anything while spinning at constant rate except the gyroscopic effect which would “stretch” your body in every direction.

 

on the earth it’s the same with exception of the gravity component you have to take in consideration.

 

It’s similar with the pitch, you don’t feel the slope (the angular position) but you feel the thrust. This thrust can come from your engine or from gravity so usually, the best thing to do for your platform’s pitch and roll, is to mix the angular velocities with the translational accelerations. 

 

After feeding your pitch and roll with angular rates (velocities), you add the right amount of surge to pitch and sway to roll.

 

Ex. This gravity component, which should be normally present in translational accelerations, mixed with angular velocities, can pitch your platform down when you violently reduce the engine thrust EVEN if your aircraft is still climbing.

 

it can seems counterintuitive at the beginning, but with some experience, it will become obvious.

 

cheers

Edited April 26, 2019 by hexpod

[frenchfly]

Can you post a screen shot of your simtools axis settings so I can see how they compare to mine.

 

Thanks for the info

 

F

[hexpod]

In your case it will be completely different because using 6-dof kinematic plugins, designed for 6dof platforms only, we are mapping entire dofs and not the single actuators in the axis assignments. Nevertheless you can see what’s the logic behind it and try to maybe find a way to apply it for your 2dof.

 

So this is my 6-dof axis assignments, assuming the sway and surge are inverted.

 

To check if my assumption is correct, we will have to wait for the response from the developers. @Jason_Williams @value1

 

From what I know, the standard axis order in simtools is roll-pitch-heave-yaw-sway-surge.

 

As you can see, I am making an exception using roll-pitch-heave-yaw-SURGE-SWAY

 

 

 

 

Edited April 26, 2019 by hexpod

[frenchfly]

I'm not familiar with 6dof set-up but I thought you would have to spread out your settings more instead of having everything under DOF1 like that. Maybe @value1 can chime in.

[hexpod]

1 hour ago, frenchfly said:

I'm not familiar with 6dof set-up but I thought you would have to spread out your settings more instead of having everything under DOF1 like that. Maybe @value1 can chime in.

 

As I wrote above I don’t need to spread it out because I am mapping the dofs not the actuators.

 

You need to spread it out because you don’t use the math plugin. So you have to construct the dofs from single actuators.

 

I agree the labeling is confusing but the matrix I presented above is right.

 

For a 6-dof - DOF1 - 6 are the cue slots where the Axis1 - 6 considered as entire DOFs for all actuators. It’s different indeed

Edited April 26, 2019 by hexpod

[value1]

4 hours ago, frenchfly said:

I'm not familiar with 6dof set-up but I thought you would have to spread out your settings more instead of having everything under DOF1 like that. Maybe @value1 can chime in.

I have matched

• Surge_Output with Acc_y

• Sway_Output with Acc_x

• Heave_Output with Acc_z

Not sure, if this is right – it looked somewhat right from the data I received from the UDP stream.

Should I switch Acc_x and Acc_y?

Edited April 26, 2019 by value1

[frenchfly]

I'll test this when I get home from work and let you know. Hexpod seems to think it's off but I'll isolate those forces individually later to be sure.