BAM FP BAM OpenVR Guide (by TerryRed)

[Gimli]

Sooooo....

...anyone try out Oculus Air Link?

I only briefly tried it on my older PC, and it seemed to work nicely. I found the games I couldnt get to work on VD wireless worked perfect on Air Link.

Another thing that Air Link does.... it works with Open Composite (VD wireless does not). That means you can use it with BAM Open VR and not need to bother with SteamVR at all for FP.

I honestly havent tested it o my newer VR PC yet.... but I'm curious if anyone else has tried it out with FP-BAM and was kind of results,etc.

I'm been busy working away at Silent Hill on RF2.

I tried Airlink and Open composite yesterday and it seems to work nicely for FP.
I couldn't figure out how to enable my blue tooth controller....it was paired with my Quest 2 but not passed on to the PC side of things and so it wouldn't work in FP.

The blue tooth controller works perfectly through Virtual Desktop so I went back to that for now.

I have asked Rav to enable coding of future pinball events based headset position in VR for various reasons and I think this will open up some really cool developments in BAM VR

I am making a VR version of Avengers Bumper Pool and it is very cool standing next to life-sized animated Avenger Models like Hulk and Thanos !

I download the Star Wars Pinball game for Oculus Quest 2 and love it !

 

[AnonTet]

"This is not the game you're looking for" I keep repeating for myself :D

VR rules for pinball and I'm really looking forward for what's coming in future BAM VR.

 

[Gimli]

"This is not the game you're looking for" I keep repeating for myself :D

VR rules for pinball and I'm really looking forward for what's coming in future BAM VR.

It has a lot of potential for sure as basically all the existing BAM features automatically work in the VR environment and so it likely would be possible to have a VR template to copy into FP tables
to add items such as an immersive Games Room Environment and Animated 3d characters.

You can walk around or use VR controller/ Blue tooth controller to move around games room.
Integrating headset positioning with FP events will be very helpful
And then perhaps integrating better use of the VR controllers might be a direction to go as well

 

[Gimli]

@kevwolf69
@Warrie
@leojreimroc
@TerryRed
@AnonTet

I just tested Air Link with and without Open Composite with various versions of BAM OVR on Oculus Quest 2.

My conclusion:
No new significant gains with Airl Link /Open composite
Virtual desktop works better with blue tooth controllers and has more options to configure and tweak


I find as before that regardless of using Air Link with or without Open Composite (To bypass Steam ) that the judder problem exists in versions of BAM OVR after 315

On my system using Open Composite seemed to create judder even in version 315. So Open Composite offered no benefit to me.

Using Air Link instead of Virtual desktop seems to work fine with version 315 but it currently has no tweakable settings as far as I can tell.
Virtual Desktop is the clear winner here as it has a ton of settings you can tweak.

Also as far as I can tell although the Quest 2 allows blue tooth pairing of controllers this does not currently get passed on through Air Link.
Blue controllers paired with Quest 2 do work perfectly however with Virtual desktop

The judder occurs in fast graphic intensive games and is minimal in my simple billiards sim

 

[AnonTet]

So, still nothing on what might be causing that judder and Airlink is not a solution (or at least a workaround). Not good news.

 

[Gimli]

So, still nothing on what might be causing that judder and Airlink is not a solution (or at least a workaround). Not good news.

It is my understanding that Rav changed nothing directly in VR in the version that came after 315 so it must be some other feature that INDIRECTLY altered things just a hair. A proverbial fly in the ole ointment
It would be nice to leap frog whatever features were implemented in the offending version and add all the subsequent stuff.

On a side note Air Link does work much better than the Link cable for Oculus PC based games

 

[AnonTet]

Actually:

[14 mar 2021] v.1.5-329 Added xBAM.MouseX, xBAM.MouseY to script (mouse move control), added ball.SetVelocity, ball.SetPosition, ball.SetOmega, update of open vr api to ver. 1.16.8

 

[TerryRed]

would that be the openvr dll in the BAM plugins folder?

Try changing that file only back to the older version

 

[Gimli]

Actually:

That is version 329
i am concerned about version 316 -318

 

[AnonTet]

My point was only mentioning that there was a change. If if works or not I have no clue.

VR in this PC is disconnected at the moment. But it doesn't matter much as I can only test htc vive (very old one) and valve index headsets anyway.

 

[Gimli]

My point was only mentioning that there was a change. If if works or not I have no clue.

VR in this PC is disconnected at the moment. But it doesn't matter much as I can only test htc vive (very old one) and valve index headsets anyway.

It doesn’t as some of the previous posters commented.
I would blame it on my lame system except at least 4 others report the exact same findings.

Rav suggested a couple of things based on the cpu frame rate , video sync and hardware side of things but that doesn’t address that there was a clear turning point based on software.
specifically version 316 , 317 or 318
316 was a beta version that I dont have.

Additionally I test for the judder bug on a blank “new table” before a ball is even launched.

So very low graphics demand , not new renderer , no shadows , no models , no music etc....

So again it would seem the bug has nothing to do with cpu or frame rate etc...

 

[Gimli]

I forgot to try something .
This was ravs response initially
“
In version v315 there was fixed "physics world size" error introduced 2 or 3 years ago.
Change in physics world size may have inpact on physics simulation results and cpu time consumed by newton lib.
You may try to experiment with xBAM.Physics.ExtendWorldSize param or tweak physics FPS in XML for table. Anyway if you change params to decrease CPU time usage and get more FPS rendered, you will change results in physics simulation.”

As 315 seems to work fine I didn't try this

 

[Gimli]

I forgot to try something .
This was ravs response initially
“
In version v315 there was fixed "physics world size" error introduced 2 or 3 years ago.
Change in physics world size may have inpact on physics simulation results and cpu time consumed by newton lib.
You may try to experiment with xBAM.Physics.ExtendWorldSize param or tweak physics FPS in XML for table. Anyway if you change params to decrease CPU time usage and get more FPS rendered, you will change results in physics simulation.”

As 315 seems to work fine I didnt try this

 

[AnonTet]

For the sake of history the timeline for this is -> here. If you can still find or have some older versions you can test according to the info rav posted.

 

[Gimli]

For the sake of history the timeline for this is -> here. If you can still find or have some older versions you can test according to the info rav posted.

thanks I tried all of these:

' v311 and older               -X,   +X, -Y,   +Y,  -Z,   +Z
xBAM.Physics.ExpandWorldSize 1000, 1000,  0,    0,   0,  300

' v312                         -X,   +X, -Y,   +Y,  -Z,   +Z    <- broken
xBAM.Physics.ExpandWorldSize 2000, 2000,  0,    0,   0, 2000

' v313                         -X,   +X, -Y,   +Y,  -Z,   +Z    <- little broken
xBAM.Physics.ExpandWorldSize 1000, 1000,  0, 1000,   0,  300

' v314 and leter               -X,   +X, -Y,   +Y,  -Z,   +Z    <- BAM "Correct"
xBAM.Physics.ExpandWorldSize 1000, 1000,  0,    0,   0,  300

And they seemed to have no impact on the jutter one way or the other
It seems like a sensitivity setting for the cameras on the VR unit...if I have the headset on snuggly it improves the jutter slightly
I don't know if bam.dll has any VR specific settings , I will have to ask Rav

 

[kevwolf69]

Apologies for dredging this back up, but I've been out of the loop regarding this issue. When it became apparent that FP wasn't playing well with my Pinsim I became rather frustrated with the whole thing and focused mainly on VPX which of course works flawlessly. My frustration coming from the fact that I'd built a Pinsim primarily to play Terry's beautiful Halloween table in VR. So my question is, was there any solution to this issue? To all the guys contributing to the investigation I take my hat off to you...!

 

[AnonTet]

FP and VR are pretty straight forward. I've played it since my htc vive and even worked with a gtx 1050Ti (that's not even vr ready) perfectly well albeit not at max settings obviously.
What was the problem again?

 

[kevwolf69]

The original problem of this thread was the VR shakiness and the poor head tracking of the tables in FP when using a Quest 2. I'm running a RTX 2080ti funders and as soon as I bootup any table in FP the whole table starts to swim when I shift my head causing nausea. I recall yourself and Gimli doing a lot of work trying to nail the cause of the issue but I see the last time there was any feedback to this thread there hadn't been any movement. Thanks...

 

[kevwolf69]

Sorry for the misinformation, this thread is originally Terry's guide on how to set up a Q2 for FP VR. It kind of got hijacked when this issue started being reported.

 

[Gimli]

Sorry for the misinformation, this thread is originally Terry's guide on how to set up a Q2 for FP VR. It kind of got hijacked when this issue started being reported.

I haven’t looked at the issue recently as virtually all fp tables run well with version 315

Only tables using newer bam features are affected

 

[TerryRed]

Yah, the problem stems from FP-BAM OpenVR not quite working properly with Oculus products, so I think the problem comes more from the Oculus side than FP. Everyone using native SteamVR headsets seem to have no problems.

I haven't done anything VR for a while as I've been sick with nasty Vertigo, so VR is the last thing I can think about :)

 

[AnonTet]

Right, can't help with Oculus but I now recall the issue.

/edit
I hope you can get rid of that Terry. Get well soon

 

[kevwolf69]

Thanks guys for the feedback. I know Oculus recently did an update for their PC tool so I may have another mess around with my settings and see if anything has improved. Oh and a speedy recovery to Terry.... Stay safe all.

 

[AnonTet]

@kevwolf69
So, did you get to test recent updates?

 

[cmt26]

I have been trying to get into FP and VR, unfortunately with the latest bam and files, the issue persists. I assume it is the same issue, where moving your head slightly also shifts the table around. Making game play a bit difficult.

My PC is not cutting edge, but is able to handle VPVR and play well, so I figured FP would be similar, but no luck.

I originally tried playing with a linked usb cable, and my frame rates were around 40 (only have a usb 2.0)
I purchased Virtual Desktop and the frame rates jumped to 60, thus, it appears using VD is the optimal way if you have no USB 3.0.

Unfortunately, the jitter, remains on both Link and VD for me. I also attempted placing the Bam.dll from version 315, and it seemed to improve a little? But that might be psychological?

I believe this jitter issue has also appeared on VPVR when I have played, but I think after updated shader files it fixed the issue for me. I am not a developer and have no clue how it works, but appears something in those glshader files helps oculus render things a bit better. I know the issue also had a nvidia related issue. I am curious if that is a similar issue with FP and VR, with oculus and nvidia conflicting somewhere.

I hope to eventually upgrade my GPU, but unlikely considering the costs, but I also am reading people with better GPU than I are also struggling with this jitter issue.

Hopefully this project is still progressing and hopefully this jitter issue will be solved, I appreciate all those working on it.