At the OpenLab we are very fortunate to have a lot of equipment to experiment with. One such setup I recently configured was a 6 degrees of freedom (6DOF) motion platform.
The platform was made by CKAS Mechatronics. It was previously used for other experiments, but we wanted to now hook it up to VR.
1 PC controlling is controlling the platform and 1 PC is powering a HTC Vive. Software provided by CKAS enables communication between selected games and the platform.
The game I chose was Digital Combat Simulator – The makers say, “Our dream is to offer the most authentic and realistic simulation of military aircraft, tanks, ground vehicles and ships possible.” They have done an amazing job and it is free!
One of the “gotcha”s is dealing with the motion cancellation on a moving platform. If this is not done it can be very nauseating. To basically explain this, movements without motion cancellation you would be jumping in and out of the aircraft with sudden movements in VR, with motion cancellation the movements are inverted and cancelled so you are always in the chair in VR and get the g-force effects of the motion platform.
To do this, I found OpenVR-InputEmulator, and used a Vive Tracker. attached to the top of the chair and set it up to use the Motion Compensation mode.
We hooked up some loud speakers to and invited a colleague to take it for a spin!
