Talk about anything

Tomcat Will you be adding support for FreeTrack or TrackIR?

The company that makes TrackIR is pretty bad.
I was planning on adding TrackIR support (back maybe 15 years ago) to my student game engine (for my students, not me as a student). The legal requirements made me give up, having to sign NDAs and then write wrapper code to hide all of their SDK because even the header file contained proprietary secrets. WTF? All it needed to be was a binary dll and header that exposed a couple of functions. Which is what it basically was, but they were paranoid.

They also forced Eagle Dynamics to remove support for competing head tracking products like Freetrack from the DCS flightsim series under threat of being blacklisted by the drivers.

They are so paranoid about third party software that their camera won't turn on unless the software sends it a copyrighted haiku and a registered trademark, so they can sue people for supporting the hardware unofficially.

They even went around demanding forums censor mentions of Freetrack (which some like Ubisoft did).

There's a LOT more: (false patent claims, sock puppet accounts to bash competitors, editing Freetrack's wikipedia page, etc)
http://naturalpointofview.blogspot.com/p/trackir-anticompetition.html

I have no idea if they changed their ways and became developer friendly.
Ok, rant over.

Tomcat I fully respect your stance against using Steam. Yeah, I was more referring to a VR headset with a wire- like SteamVR.

It would be nice if there was a universal one that just works. I doubt it would be easy to make one, however. How much goes under the hood of a headset? The lenses on the Oculus Quest 2, at least, magnify so much, that they can burn in the sunlight- and I'm certain there are other crazy aspects we don't even think about. Most likely, internet connection is a must due to the use of a gyroscope, and then whatever screen(s) you need to give an image. I say screen(s) as double screens could offer a 3D image fit for theaters. It would be pretty stellar, IMO.

On a more positive note: Tilt Five has no social media accounts, no store, no login of any kind. Just install a small driver and you've got an AR headset running.
Very cool device.

Tomcat Highly interesting, but very low resolution.

That's pretty hi res for AR. Most of the older glasses were like SD resolution.

Yep, pretty low res. But the experience is pretty unique. No screens to look at/through.

I got to demo this AR table thing years ago, and it was amazing. Way better than VR. It used a large flat screen 3D TV, I think around 55" or 65", laid flat like a coffee table. You wore 3D glasses, and there was some sort of tracking system (maybe using QR markers on the glasses). I want to say the screen was 1080p. And there were a few game demos on it, like a military one with tanks driving around a city. But it appeared as a real hologram. It was fully stereo 3D, and the objects adjusted as you moved and looked around the table. It was crazy. This is like the real hologram experience everyone wants. Sadly, I can't find a video of it. I recall it was on YouTube, but the product never released, it was just a tech demo.

Wouldn't it be better to create a separate theme for VR? ️ That would probably be relevant.

Tomcat Yes, but no one even has a thread titled VR except me. I'm all alone there.

What do you all think about graphics like this?

https://3dkyle.itch.io/security-booth-directors-cut

It's true, though. What we think would look good might not be your style. IMO, if you find a style you like, run with it.

Let me play newbie again for just a moment...

Okay. I'm all alone in Godot VR, and Unity seems to be more and more of a joke. I mean no disrespect, I used to love Unity, but they changed so much, I can't even implement Unity Ads into games anymore? Plus, learning Unity Ads from the last time I looked was behind a paywall.

So... I guess I can try building PC games or Android with Godot, and Android sounds better as my assets are typically not very high poly... Now, it would be fun and all if I understood anything about the Admob plugins. There are four different ones? I tried one, and got this lovely screen.

I have no idea as to why there are so many toggles here on this test screen, or what it does? I was hoping to just implement rewarded video ads. Can anyone please explain a little of what I'm doing, or to a nice tut?

cybereality This stylization of early 3D games has its fans.
I think this is just one of the forms of graphic style.

Yeah, the original Assassin's Creed still has good graphics. I think around then, like Xbox 360 was the peak of gaming. You had games like Fight Night, Assassin's Creed, Modern Warfare, Bioshock, Mirror's Edge, etc. All those games still look good today. And the gameplay itself is not dated, they are all still good, even better than some newer games. So I would be happy with that quality. I guess my issue is I don't have 5 years to work on an indie game. I'd like to ship something with the stable release of Godot 4.0, so I want to scope something that can be completed in 1 year. Which means I will either have to make it a small area (like say one house, something like Resident Evil or Gone Home) or an open world with retro 3D graphics (like GTA 2 or similar PS1 games). But the idea is that I would work on smaller 6 month to 1 year max projects, not invest everything in some 5 year epic game.