OpenVR-WalkInPlace

An OpenVR client and driver that tracks real-time 3D VR devices and applies virtual movement using linear analysis of mlpack data models with armadillo libraries.

As long as the real-time tracking sample is within a variance of the recorded model, virtual input will be applied. Scale of input can be customized.

Features

• Movement Data Model recording, of HMD, tracker and controller devices
• supports Walk In Place Locomotion
• supports Arm Swinging Locomotion
• Or any other HMD,tracker movement pattern that can be recorded and matched in a data model

Upcoming

• Linux support
• HMD Relative Direction Override to any tracked device Relative Direction

Installer

Download the newest installer from the release section and then execute it. Don't forget to exit SteamVR before installing/de-installing.

Documentation

Configuration Examples

Follow this for basic initial setup https://github.com/pottedmeat7/OpenVR-WalkInPlace/tree/master/docs/screenshots/full_setup/Readme.md

Data Models

You can record a data model of your HMD, tracker and controller movement rates to use to match the similar movement in real-time. You can Create, Apply, and Delete the data models. The current applied Data Model, will the one saved into a profile if you create one. You can also choose any pre-recorded data models without a profile as well. If you name a data model with the name "default" it will be the initially loaded data model once you start SteamVR.

Data Model Recording

Follow the on screen popups instructions when recording a new data model. The recording process is from slowest to fastest movement of all devices. There will be 5 steps in the following order, Slowest Pace (5 seconds), Slow Scaling up to Medium (5 Second), Medium Paced (5 Seconds), Medium Scaling up to Fast (5 Seconds), and Fastest Pace.

As you record the touch values are recorded in the following order Slow (0 touch value), Slow to medium (0-0.5 touch value), Medium (0.5 touch value), Medium to fast (0.5-1.0 touch value), and Fast (1.0 touch value)

Mostly it will be your controller values that are used to determine where in the model to pick the corresponding touch value from. The HMD and trackers mainly determine if you are walking at all according to the model.

If you find that you move to quickly to soon, try re-recording a model with more significant arm swinging.

Apply Data Model

Make sure to "apply" the data model before Enabling WIP or trying to view the data model as well.

Show Data Model Page

This shows the HMD model, the model touch values, and the current real-time sample (in green)

This is an example data model of the controllers values from slow pace to fast pace

Show HMD, Show Trackers, Show Controller, Show Touch Line

These show the models of each device. The Touch Line is the values inserted from 0-1 of the progress during the recording. The touch-line will be scaled, prior to input, to be between the values in the "Touch Pace Options". Ie. From Min-Max.

Other Options

Touch Pace Options

These values control the degree of movement applied in game. Some games will use the touchpad axis differntly, for slow games sometimes there is only 1 degree of movment. Some games use the entire axis from the center, 0, to 1

If you find the walking with just the HMD is too sensitive you can set the "Walk Touch" to 0 this will require your HMD and arms to swing in order to trigger a step via triggering the "mid" or "max" touch value.

Enable WIP

This checkbox either enables or disables all detection and virtual input

HMD Type

Choose which HMD your using

Input Type

There are a few different methods of inputs used by games

• The standard "Touchpad" locomotion games, that use from 0-1 on the touchpad (or joystick) for forward movement speed, often these games also have a "click to sprint" function.
• Some games use touchpad locomotion except you have to press and hold the touchpad while moving your finger from 0-1 use the option "Touchpad (pressed)" for these games
• Anything else such as Teleport games, using "click to sprint" with the minimum touch value set to 1.0 will generate a click for any valid movement match

OVRWIP Controller

All touchpad input goes to the OVRWIP Custom Controller you can rebind this input to other controllers and buttons using the SteamVR Input Bindings. You can access SteamVR's input bindings by going to the VR dashboard -> Settings -> Controller Bindings then select the ovrwip_controller and bind to any inputs you like. For these bindings to work you must also go to the "Extra Settings" tab and select either bind to left or right hand.

SteamVR Bindings for OVRWIP Controller

Follow the screenshots here to setup bindings for the OVRWIP controller https://github.com/pottedmeat7/OpenVR-WalkInPlace/tree/master/docs/screenshots/steamvr_bindings/

buttons to disable/enable WIP

These options can be used to disable/enable virtual movement when your holding or not holding the button selected. I recommend not using this feature then you dont have to hold any button.

example configuration

Enable / Disable Device page

Track HMD?

This will enable/disable the tracking and analysis of the real-time HMD movement. If disabled it will ignore the HMD data in the current data model and will only utilize the thresholds of the tracker movement.

Track HMD Rotation?

This is a enhanced check to track if the rotational velocity values of HMD YAW and PITCH are within the maximum recorded values of the current data model.

controller selection for pace only

If you have more then 1 controllers, you can select another combination of 1-2 controllers to be used as the 1-2 tracked hand(s).

controller selection compared to model

If you have more then 1 controllers, you can select another combination of 1-2 controllers to be used as the 1-2 tracked feet.

tracker selection for pace only (untesed)

If you have more then 1 trackers, you can select another combination of 1-2 trackers to be used as the 1-2 tracked hand(s).

tracker selection compared to model

If you have more then 1 trackers, you can select another combination of 1-2 trackers to be used as the 1-2 tracked feet.

//# ### Direction devices - work in progress //# This will allow customization of direction of movement using any of the devices. Just as many games use the controller as the direction device, although some use the HMD direction.

Profiles

If you like your current settings for a game and want to save them you can click "New Profile" it will take the current settings and save them with the profile name of your choice. If you want to update a profile with new settings you need to select the profile and delete it and re-create a "New Profile".

If you name a profile with the name "default" it will be the initially loaded profile once you start SteamVR. If you dont want to automatically enable walk in place locomotion on startup save the default profile with "enableWIP" unchecked.

Other settings

You can modify the size and length of the real-time samples to shorten or lengthen the needed data to either start or stop movement you have to edit the ini file found at C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\pottedmeat7\OpenVRWalkInPlace.ini and add any of the following variables to any profile you'd like with the standard syntax of profiles in the file Before changing these try to understand how changing these affects the matching decision for starting and stopping movement A quick summary is the start sample is used before any movement has been applied, ie. the first step The ongoing sample size is for when your movement has fit the model previously the following samples require less data The max sample size is just the limit before data points are removed from the sample

walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\maxHMDSampleSize=16
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\startHMDSampleSize=12
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\ongoingHMDSampleSize=4
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\maxTRKRSampleSize=19
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\startTRKRSampleSize=14
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\ongoingTRKRSampleSize=8
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\maxCNTRLSampleSize=12
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\ongoingCNTRLSampleSize=10

You can change the needed accuracy of the matching algorithms by changing the following variables The velocity variance changes are pretty straight forward as the velocity is what is graphed in the model and the real-time samples. Changing the variance just sets the error allowed for each data point

walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\hmdVelVariance=0.07
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\trkrVelVariance=0.07
walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\cntrlVelVariance=0.07

This value is the value that checks the direction of the acceleration ie. up or down (this is what forms the wave like pattern in the tracking data). This value is the percentage of data points that the sample needs to match the model, ie. 75% (0.75) of the ups and downs of the sample wave need to match at any point of the model, and be within the velocity variance. walkInPlaceProfiles\<profile_index>\hmdAccelPercentAccurate=0.75

Graph Page

The graph page will show you realtime values from the HMD, controllers and trackers. If you have WIP enabled the graph page will display small squares yellow for walk detection, orange for jog detection and red for run detection.

Any Issues Check out the Logs

Overlay UI Log here C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\pottedmeat7\OpenVRWalkInPlace\VRWalkInPlace.log Driver Log here C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SteamVR\drivers\00vrwalkinplace\bin\win64\driver_vrwalkinplace.log

Setting up To Re-Build the project from Source

You do not need this if you just want to use the WIP overlay

Boost

• WINDOWS
  1. Goto https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost-binaries/1.65.1/
  2. Download Boost 1.65 Binaries (boost_1_65_1-msvc-14.1-64.exe)
  3. Install Boost into OpenVR-WalkInPlace/third-party/boost_1_65_1
• LINUX
  1. Go to https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.65.1/
  2. Download boost_1_65_1.tar.gz
  3. Extract the files into OpenVR-WalkInPlace/third-party/boost_1_65_1

Qt

1. Goto https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/5.9/5.9.0/
2. Download Qt 5.9.0 (Either windows .exe or linux .run file)
3. Run the Qt installer (I installed it to c:\Qt or /home/<user>/ on linux)

mlpack, openblas and armadillo and ensmallen

• WINDOWS
  1. https://www.mlpack.org/doc/mlpack-3.0.4/doxygen/build_windows.html
• LINUX
  1. https://www.mlpack.org/doc/mlpack-3.0.4/doxygen/build.html sudo apt-get install libmlpack-dev

Building

• WINDOWS Build 'VRWalkInPlace.sln' in Visual Studio 2017
• LINUX from a shell run ./build.sh and ./build.sh install

Building installer

1. go to https://sourceforge.net/projects/nsis/files/NSIS%202/2.33/
2. download and run the nsis-2.33-setup.exe
3. go to OpenVR-WalkInPlace/installer
4. right click the installer.nsi file and Compile NSIS Script
5. the installer exe will be built into the same directory

Uninstall

1. Run "C:\Program Files\OpenVR-WalkInPlace\Uninstall.exe" will remove everything

License

This software is released under GPL 3.0.

#Credits @article{mlpack2018, title = {mlpack 3: a fast, flexible machine learning library}, author = {Curtin, Ryan R. and Edel, Marcus and Lozhnikov, Mikhail and Mentekidis, Yannis and Ghaisas, Sumedh and Zhang, Shangtong}, journal = {Journal of Open Source Software}, volume = {3}, issue = {26}, pages = {726}, year = {2018}, doi = {10.21105/joss.00726}, url = {https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00726} }

• Conrad Sanderson and Ryan Curtin.
  Armadillo: a template-based C++ library for linear algebra.
  Journal of Open Source Software, Vol. 1, pp. 26, 2016.

• Conrad Sanderson and Ryan Curtin.
  A User-Friendly Hybrid Sparse Matrix Class in C++.
  Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Vol. 10931, pp. 422-430, 2018.

Conrad Sanderson and Ryan Curtin. Armadillo: a template-based C++ library for linear algebra. Journal of Open Source Software, Vol. 1, pp. 26, 2016.

Conrad Sanderson and Ryan Curtin. Practical sparse matrices in C++ with hybrid storage and template-based expression optimisation. Mathematical and Computational Applications, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2019.