Hello Zaelu, thank you for your feedback and showing your willingness to expand the aircraft list that supports an always visible pilot. I’m answering to each paragraph:
- Yes, you found it out yourself
- Just because for you there is no obvious need for a VR pilot at the copilot seat, I don’t wanted to restrict it, I want to give as much freedom as I can. Keep in mind that this is not an “all or nothing” setting:
You fly solo?: Chose the “Invisible” Copilot
You have a Copilot?: switch on a default (Non-VR) copilot.
You fly as FO in an airliner ? set the copilot to VR.
There are some other rare occasions when you want a VR (Headless) pilot besides you, now you can. Think about a Moviemaker. Now you are able to take shoots from the copilot point of view while having the Body visible. You are free to mix and match as you like. The invisible ones are male or female, so you can pick up the radio voice you need.
A solution would be that the distance at which the headless model shows to be way smaller… around the shoulders maximum…
I tried many things to get this working, switching off/on the head by distance (about 15cm). So there is no need of a second VR pilot set. But there are too many variables that make it too difficult for each single plane. Head Visibility is not easily trigger by a single factor. It is interlocked inside the model files of each plane. The LOD setting is only working at greater distances, as it is calculated by how much percent of an object is shown on screen. And right now the mod is only in controls of the whole interior of the cockpit, and its behavior changes from aircraft to aircraft. And as it is used now in my edited files, it kicks in at about 2m. This is the nearest point I have found that it works. I wanted it to be around 20cm, as you also suggest. Maybe someone comes up with a hack that doesn’t require editing each aircraft by its own. It has to be a LOD setting that only effects a child_model of the Head or similar. But up to now, a second set of avatars is needed, and the user has to choose by his own what kind of combination of pilot and copilot he needs.
ps How to modify the gltf files to help with the project?
To edit the files, I do it all with Notepad++ and rely heavily on the “find” and “compare” plugin. And I follow loosely this tutorial: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/ed5w_g_8jJY more info in this topic.
I plan to write down a general instruction how to do and load up the files and post the needed file structure, so we get more planes and I can include aircraft I don’t own. Furthermore, I want to establish a second step that I integrate the files only if they are successfully tested by a second person.
This is the workflow I have in mind:
a Person has demand for Aircraft X. Someone edits or only loads up the first two LOD files for the interior. Someone edits it with the Pilots and shows a picture and/or video that it works in the cockpit. I take these files and the info about the file structure of this Aircraft I do not own and put a mod with a layout.json together and load it up into the forum again. Only after it is tested successfully, It will be included in the greater mod.
ps 2
I have found the error in Photos by Kev model.
in the PHOTOSBYKEV_VR.xml file the line 9 has reference to ROTORNUT44 instead of PHOTOSBYKEV and should look like this:
Good find, this give me confidence to thrust you in further collaborations. I found this error also already, will integrate in the next occasion. To be honest: I was very sloppy on my final tests, it was around 1am and I had several drinks at the time and called it “good enough” for a first draft. I’m quite proud of me that there isn’t much more that I have messed up.
From flightsim.to:
I wish the gotfriends pilots were as they implied first… rigged with inverse kinematics and connected to controls… But they’ll do for now.
However there are some minor things that maybe can be improved or fixed.
You can’t blame GotFriends for that (at least not for the planes they didn’t make by their own). The bindings of the skeletal model of each avatar isn’t done inside the avatar files. Each one of them has the ability to do this, like it is done in the F18 and Guimbal Cabri G2.
This movement of the avatar is coded inside the model files of an aircraft. And if an aircraft developer doesn’t bother about it, it won’t show up.
I already tinkered with it. My goal is to bind at least the left arm to the yoke in a Cessna 152, and maybe also the legs to the rudder. But it is very time-consuming, and I need a lot of trial and error. I was successful with one leg after several hours, but stopped this as I realized that the next update can break it easily and everything has to be reedited individual for each aircraft. And my overall knowledge isn’t sufficient, to do it reliable. Maybe I will come back to it at a later date, but I’m still hoping that this will be mandatory for each developer that is talking that they care about VR (…).
So here is capture how it is in the Cabri and F-18, so others understand what we’re talking about. This function adds so immense to the immersion (when done right) :
If I get more responses than the usual thumbs-up to this mod, I will open up a Topic to ask for a community computing effort to expand the Aircraft list. But as it looks right now, we aren’t going far. There are not many downloads and only three replies after a week (!), maybe they just don’t know what they miss… Naive me thought that this has a much bigger demand in the VR community… Time will tell.
Kinda frustrating when comparing DCS with MSFS and how VR is implemented and care is given. But when looking at the numbers and responses, I also can understand the team of MSFS and that they’re concentrating on other things and don’t "waste"money for VR. It’s all about using your development time cost-effective in the end. And while writing it, I realize that I spend way too much time for this myself