Leap Motion - Control Idea - Cockpit Use

You could go one better and map the physical positions of each button, knob and dial. Place a hand and upper-arm model in the scene that's rigged to the Leap's skeleton tracking. When you touch a button or knob, it pushes/flips. When you touch a dial, you can rotate your hand to rotate the dial.

The only risk would be (and I haven't played DCS but from what I've seen this sounds like it might be a problem) if the skeleton tracking had a little hiccup and a rogue finger went swinging about and flicked a switch it shouldn't, sending you plummeting towards the ground. :P

Well keep in mind that I'm not talking about "generic" gaming here. The cockpit environment would be modeled after a specific aircraft. It wouldn't work well at all for something you could use for multiple aircraft types.

You can easily dump $1k or more just for the avionics for something like a G1000 equipped Cessna 172 cockpit. If you can skip the twin 10.4" LCD panels, steam gauges and the 7 segment displays in the radios, you've eliminated about 70% of the build cost.

You're left with handful of dual-concentric rotary encoders (for the radios), the standard flight controls (yoke(s), throttle/mixture/prop, flaps, trim, and rudder pedals) and then a set of button collars for the G1000s.

The technique could be used to allow people to create modern fighter cockpits that would otherwise not be financially practical. Take the F/A-18E for example. That thing has got 3 color MFDs positioned such that you can't fake them by stuffing a 19" LCD behind the instrument panel. A similar problem exists for the F-15E, and you'll spend a _pile_ coming up with the four custom LCDs that the backseater uses.

If you get a chance, check out the GA simulators made by Redbird. You could halve the size of the thing by going to an Oculus for the visuals and a Leap Motion for the hand guidance. Subtract out the motion onset cues that would affect the HMD and you'd have a winner on your hands. The savings on something like a Redbird would be _substantial_. The flight deck would shrink by about a third when you can delete the LCD panels used for the outside visuals.

Using virtual controls in a training environment wouldn't work out well. There's a class of simulator called a Cockpit Procedures Trainer. It has no motion, no visuals and very little by way of avionics. What it DOES have is just about every button, knob and switch that the "real" aircraft does. Think of it like Button Simulator 2014. :) It's designed to teach "switchology" - procedures that the flight crew (or single pilot) goes through for any number of situations. You're trained frequently enough on systems like this that when some event happens (engine fire for example), your hand is half-way to the right control before you even finish the thought about what you need to do next. The tactile feedback that physical control provides is very important in these kind of training scenarios because it helps to build muscle memory.

If you're playing a game like Star Citizen where the cockpit is packed with holographic control panels, then the Leap Motion would be practical to use for activating those kinds of controls where there literally is no physical device to interact with.

g.

yeh thats not at all where I was going with the idea, I just want virtual arm emulation where my hand can interface with the virtual knobs..I would like to play this wherever I am using the rift and not just in my basement. I want to use it on vacation, on trips, upstairs while the wife watches the tele.

It's just a different use case is all. The requirements for the hard-core nuts like me are vastly greater than the casual gamers.

When you go so far as to whack the nose off of a 737 in order to turn it into your own personal flight simulator, you've got the bug pretty bad. :) (To me a 737 is a target. I've got an F-15C. :D )

g.

"mptp" wrote:
You could go one better and map the physical positions of each button, knob and dial. Place a hand and upper-arm model in the scene that's rigged to the Leap's skeleton tracking. When you touch a button or knob, it pushes/flips. When you touch a dial, you can rotate your hand to rotate the dial.

The only risk would be (and I haven't played DCS but from what I've seen this sounds like it might be a problem) if the skeleton tracking had a little hiccup and a rogue finger went swinging about and flicked a switch it shouldn't, sending you plummeting towards the ground. :P

This.

You can have a `press and hold` button on your HOTAS setup which then allows you to interact with the switch, flip it, press, rotate etc so you don't have accidental presses as no one likes a jittery VR hand. :mrgreen: