Friday 2010-02-25 Development update:Interview by Grégory Lemasson/Discussion Thread

[hugso]

Originally Posted by Caveman

Oleg: Can you comment on Buttkicker support for SOW? It works decently in IL-2, but it's a bit "digital"... Wondering if the sound code programmers will pay special attention to this device to smooth out the transitions from on to off in the low frequency range it's designed to operate in...

Using a Buttkicker for sound augmentation is analogous to using a Track IR for view augmentation... It's a big improvement.

Can you comment?

Just come across this post. I very much agree that vibrations from bass shakers enormously increases immersion. My first mod to my IL2 set-up was to simply to feed audio into my seat. Good, and well worth doing, but what made it much better was to feed in FFB signal to feel bumps and thumps on landing and taxiing and vibrations when entering stall and when flying with gear down etc. This was pretty complicated, involving opening up joystick and filtering signal from motors. This would be enormously simpler if the FFB vibration signal was available as an audio signal, maybe through DeviceLink. This would be fed directly into an amplifier without any need for Buttkicker (which I have to say I have not tried). I would imagine it would be very simple to implement in IL2.

[MikkOwl]

Originally Posted by hugso

This would be enormously simpler if the FFB vibration signal was available as an audio signal, maybe through DeviceLink. This would be fed directly into an amplifier without any need for Buttkicker (which I have to say I have not tried). I would imagine it would be very simple to implement in IL2.

Vibration level is available through device link, and this is (as far as I know) representative of the vibrations that are also used for FF. It is just a number.

You would want some software that could generate sounds repeating at the interval specified to a number it was being fed.

[hugso]

Originally Posted by MikkOwl

Vibration level is available through device link, and this is (as far as I know) representative of the vibrations that are also used for FF. It is just a number.

You would want some software that could generate sounds repeating at the interval specified to a number it was being fed.

I have tried using Vibration Level. We used it to drive a servo motor and it just moved the motor to one position for one level of vibration and then on to another position for the second level of vibration. I used this to drive a mechanical vibrating device on my seat. It was not very good. It is not the same as the signal which goes to FFB. What I am doing is taking the electrical signal fed to my FFB motors, passively filtering the higher frequencies out and it leaves rather nice bumps and rumbles which I feed into my seat. Feels really good, but a lot of tinkering about and modifying was necessary. It could be really easy if this audio signal was available without having to tear my joystick apart. Also I am sure the feeling could be made even better if it was designed in game to be used as audio. It really could be superb, and I would imagine not that difficult to add.