Sources

To get or generate data

What is the purpose of source modules

Source modules, get values from games, other applications, or values generated inside Mover.

Values are always in the same units across sources to allow them to be compared and with the objective to make the same setup work in more than one game.

The values are what I call pure values. There's no crop, filter or effect over them.

Only some of the values are calculated inside Mover when they are missing from the source (like calculating acceleration from speed).

Mover has a fixed list of values that are updated by the sources.

Not all values are used by all the sources. So available values depend on the source.

The reason to do it, is to allow the selection of values, to be the same in all the sources, and to make the setups work on all the sources, just like we made for the units.

There's many values, and one way to see them is to open a loop source and look at the list of values available (that list can increase at any update).

How do source modules get data from games

To get data from games, you might have to perform some setup to enable it. Check the instructions for each source, to know if this is needed and how to do it.

In the name of the sources, you have the following acronyms to indicate the way we get data:

UDP
Sources of this type get the values over the UDP protocol.

It's a network protocol, so with those sources you can have the game/program running in a different machine and access it's values over the network.

For that, you just need to specify the port used by the game/program.

Usually, all the ports indicated are the default ones, but you can change them in the module as long as they match the one from the game/program.

UDP has a particularity, when we get the data, the data is consumed and is no longer available. So if you have more than one software reading the data, Mover allows you to get it and send it again to another port to be read by another application.

So you are going to have a receive port and a forward port in the options of those sources.

In the forward port, you can set the IP to where you want to send the data.

Use the IP of the PC that receives it, or 127.0.0.1 if it's in the same PC or use 255.255.255.255 to send it to all PC's in the network.

TCP
Like UDP, it can be used over the network, but with a different protocol.Here you need to specify the IP of the machine running the game/program.

If that's on the same machine use IP: 127.0.0.1. and the port specified by the game/application.

MMF
This stands for memory mapped file, also known as shared memory.

To use those sources, the game/program needs to be in the same machine of Mover.

Has the name says, it's a file in memory that is updated by the game/program and read by Mover.T

his is the fastest way of getting data.

HOOK
This means we get data directly from the game memory.

Al-thought they work well, any game update causes the change of the memory locations, so the connection will be lost each time an update is performed by the studios.

Ideally this should be used in older games, without updates, but Mover uses it in recent games.

So the connection is not always possible, and you might have to wait for a new Mover update to get connection again.

DLL
This means the source requires a DLL to get the data.

Then it uses MMF or UDP to send that data to Mover.

The source window

In the right figure, we have an example of a source for PCARS2.

On the bottom left we have a list of the received values. That list is updated when we receive data.

We can have more than one column when the source is in reality two sources.

This happens in air crafts, when we are can separate values for the air craft on the ground or in the air, allowing us to treat those values in different ways in the pose modules.

On the image we have the connect/disconnect button.

Notice inside the button a checkbox. That checkbox is to have auto connection when the game data is detected.

The red circle is the record button.

You can record the received data in a file, to share or to play it later in the player source.

On the right, we have a column with the source options.

So by it's title, we can see this source gets data by UDP.

That's why we have a field to insert the port used by PCARS2.

The default ports are usually the default ports used by the games/programs.

Like I said above, being an UDP source, we can also forward the data to another application.

In the options we also have the COR correction and a filter for the COR correction.

To know more about it go here.

Record data received by source

Use the red circle above the list of values, to start/stop recording.

Data is saved in a file with extension *.MoverRec. You will be asked for a location where to save it.

If the source includes multiple sources, all of them are saved.

To replay the recorded data, use the source player.

Soft transition on connect/disconnect

One of those features that when we have it we forget about it.

Imagine we are playing a car game and we enter a track from the menu, the car that had a yaw of 0º can suddenly have 60º yaw on the track and this causes a jump on the rig.

To overcome this problem, Mover tries to detect those changes in the sources and transitions the values from zero to the current value when we enter the track and transitions to zero when we leave the track.This happens also if we pause the game or remove focus from the game.

That transition is performed with a time defined in the options of the main window and reflected by the color change in the button where:

  • Yellow is 0% transition, no data.

  • Orange can be 50% transition with data.

  • Red is 100% transition with data.

Unfortunately, not all situations can be detected. So be cautious and always keep this in mind!

Sources with air and ground

This is used in some of the flight simulators.

The source is in reality two sources, one active while in the air and the other when the plane is grounded.

Mover detects witch one of them is active and preforms a transition from one source to the other.

This allows the creation of different poses for each situation.

If you want to ignore this feature, just add the two sources at the same time in the pose module. The sum of the two is like having only one.

Sources with this feature, allow you to setup the speed of transition from air to ground and from ground to air.

The value you set in the white fields is the increment in percent/100 at each calculation loop, so bigger the value faster the transition.

Bellow each value we have the percent used of each source that changes to yellow when changing.

Transition to ground is usually faster to get the effect faster without smoothing it to much.

The available sources in Mover

Sources calculated inside Mover.

Good for testing rigs and experiment with filtering.

Games directly supported by Mover.

See how to setup the games.

Use the joystick devices to generate movement.

Useful for games not supported by Mover.

Play recorded sources and data recorded by Phyphox.

Get data from Simtools.

Get motion from the sensors on your phone.