Forum Discussion
[Hypothetical] Input Device API
I just had a thought... There seem to be two big issues with controllers for VR right now: 1. There are so damn many of them 2. Oculus have hinted very strongly that they will be releasing a con...
Yeah, I'm with mystify on this one - it's all very well to have the API serve, say, the quaternion of the rotation of the wrist joint to an application, and the API calculating that value based on the input of a STEM controller if you want the stem controller to be controlling the rotation of the wrist. But if you want to use the STEM rotation to control the look-rotation of a camera for some VR cinema viewer (just hypothetically), you're shit out of luck.
Not only that, but say you're developing a motion control system that doesn't output a rotation at all, but uses some revolutionary new way of tracking motion. Suddenly you find that your device needs to be specifically supported by Oculus in the Input API, and you have this huge barrier to entering the market.
That being said, I do think that manufacturers of 3D input devices should standardise on a format to output values in. For example, when I'm outputting the euler angles from my Wiimote, they are given in values from -180 to 180. If I'm outputting the same angles from my iPad via Control, they're given in -π/2 to π/2 (from memory). That kind of thing is what really shoots developers in the foot when it comes to developing for multiple devices. If a dev could just say 'wrist rotation of avatar is controller by gyroscope 1', and gyroscope 1 can then be set to such-and-such device, the whole process becomes easier and faster.
But that's a whole separate issue. :P
Not only that, but say you're developing a motion control system that doesn't output a rotation at all, but uses some revolutionary new way of tracking motion. Suddenly you find that your device needs to be specifically supported by Oculus in the Input API, and you have this huge barrier to entering the market.
That being said, I do think that manufacturers of 3D input devices should standardise on a format to output values in. For example, when I'm outputting the euler angles from my Wiimote, they are given in values from -180 to 180. If I'm outputting the same angles from my iPad via Control, they're given in -π/2 to π/2 (from memory). That kind of thing is what really shoots developers in the foot when it comes to developing for multiple devices. If a dev could just say 'wrist rotation of avatar is controller by gyroscope 1', and gyroscope 1 can then be set to such-and-such device, the whole process becomes easier and faster.
But that's a whole separate issue. :P