Second Life FlyCam Raw Footage - 20070918

...video sample of some raw footage...

Old motherboard IDE channel failure. Bought
a new board...but no game port. That's good
because the joystick I was using, giving to
me by someone throwing it in the trash, was
flaky!

So I bought an el cheapo USB gamepad ($US12).
Plugged in the USB, fired up SL and started
tweaking the Flycam parameters.

Here's a little raw footage from the first
day of playing with the controller:

http://blip.tv/file/383092

I'm impressed by how much precision I can
achieve...between the settings and finger
power.

It's a lot better than my old joystick. This
gamepad has an "analog/digital" switch. Switching
to analog gave me two more axes. Nice!

- Infrared Wind

It is one of those features that Machinima creators have been begging for... it opens a whole new window of creativity. Whats more, it's a cheap feature to use.

Excellent job there Infrared, your work was already one of the best in SL, how you get better I don't know, but this recent clip must give you a hone to your work.

I believe, once they fix the memory leaks, this tool will allow for greater production (no more stalling and jumping to 0,0,0 of the adjoining sim at inoportune moments LOL).

I found out what the 'Auto Level' does, even though it can be useful to turn that off a times. Never found out how to map the awe and pitch funtions onto my Logitech Gamepad, or what the 3D mouse does. LL doesn't seem to want to provide instructions which is a crime in itself.

cool! I didn't about this feature until recently. Definitely gonna check it out. The panning is so much smoother and consistent than the motion you get with a mouse.

Thanks Wind, I watched that and ideas began to flow, impressive stuff and after a morning struggling with f/path I'll check this feature out

Would this controller be similar to what you have & potentially have the same results?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/DUAL-ACTION-DIGITAL-AND-ANALOG-USB-PC-JOYPAD-GAMEPAD-UK_W0QQitemZ200155898200

Let me know, very interested in your work, looked great

Thanks

Stacey

xxx

Yep...that's basically the same controller. One important thing I didn't
know until after I bought the gamepad is mine has a mode change
button which switches between Digital and Analog mode. Analog
mode will give you two more axis so you can use both "joysticks".

From the photo at eBay it looks like it has the mode switch.

I'll be posting a screen cap of my FlyCam settings soon. They're
quite different from anything I've seen posted.

- Infrared

Sounds good, I am looking forward to trying these settings with my new controller

Thanks

Stacey

xxx

Got my controller but the axis is all messed up ...

left controller moved left = move forward
left controller moved right = move backwards
left controller moved up = move left
left controller moved down = move right

right controller moved left = move up
right controller moved right = move down
right controller moved up = sping left
right controller moved down = spin right

Buttons dont do anything lol

Any ideas how to make this stable & more useable?

Thanks

Stacey

xx

You'll probably need to remap the axis with the FlyCam Options panel.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Flycam

- Infrared

I think I got it ... although I was unable to map Pitch & Roll ... dont know how to tie them in lol

On your game pad, were you able to tie in pitch and roll as well as the others?

Thanks

Stacey

xx

Without knowing if there even is a API call set for those functions, I couldnt map those onto my Logitech Gamepad which has more buttons than the Empire State Building elevator. I made up profiles, asigned keys etc, nadda.

x2...zoom didn't work for me either.