PPJoy and Unity

I'm trying to get some alternative input devices working with Unity, but Unity doesn't seem to want to cooperate. It can receive mouse input, and it can get input from other gamepads, just not from the PPJoy virtual one.

Any ideas why this might be, and how I could get it working?

Tbanks.

More Info:
In the Input Manager it doesn't matter what Joy Num I choose, it always gets the input from the working gamepad.
Before joystick input / mouse input only worked the first time I ran the game through the editor, after that it was like the game couldn't get focus. Today I'm not encountering this problem.
I can see that the joystick I'm trying to use does work via the control panel.
I'm using the Unity Trial in Windows. v.2.5.0f5

 

Does anyone have any idea? Any thoughts? Anything?

 

I hate to dig up and old topic, but I am also now having the same issue.

Can anybody advise on this, pretty please?

 

Hello, I'm currently having the same problem. Did anybody find a solution?

That's really strange because all my games can use the PPJoy virtual joystick, but Unity doesn't seem to recognize it.

Is there any solution (other virtual joystick softwares?) or is it impossible to use the PPJoy virtual joystick with unity?

 

I too have the same problem using PPJoy with Unity. I'm running unity 2.61 on windows xp. I'm able to connect other joysticks (like the xbox 360 one) just fine.

Has anybody done any research that could lead us in a possible direction. It seems so strange that unity wouldn't be able to recognize a virtual joystick. I looked all over for this problem and this is the only place I could find that it comes up.

Do you think it could be possible to find a C# library that can grab the virtual joystick information and pass it on to Unity?

Lets try and figure this out team I'm pulling my hair out over here.

 

Yep, I'll just repeat that I too am having this problem.... hmmm. It's really weird. It's making me realize that glovepie works differently than I imagined.

 

I imagine that you could get glovepie to send something through osc and then have c# take in that data through a port.

 

I too am having the very same problem... Unity seems to be unable to grab a PPJoy device...

Mapping the output through GlovePIE then sending it through OSC seems to be a huge hassle... I'm already capturing video input usinf freetrack, so that would mean a 3rd app running just to get input into Unity..

This really should be addressed... PPJoy is a very versatile tool and unity would be that much better if it supported virtual devices.

Cheers

 

Well, I've done just what livemixlove said and set up glovePie to grab input from the TrackIR and send OSC messages to Unity with the values...

This approach works well, despite the added hassle... But, there are some quirks one needs to work around...

Apparently, GlovePIE has trouble sending OSC messages... meaning it doesn't properly format the data it's sending... so any floating point or negative values are poorly converted and result in bad values (they don't match the desired output)...

So this renders sending any floats or negative values impossible with GlovePIE...

So what I've done to correct this problem was this (a major kludge, IMO, but it got the job done)

first, since glovePIE doesn't support floats, we have to work with integers. But to preserve the accuracy of the values (which range mostly from -0.5 to 0.5), we have first to multiply them by, say 10000, then round the result... this will shift the floating point up 5 decimal places, so then we can round them and remove the float altogether...

ok, that's takes care of the floaters, so now for the negative values...

Since we also cannot send negative values through OSC using GlovePIE, we have to add an offset to compensate... adding +5000 to the rounded value will shift it to half the positive range, so now the values will range from 0 to 10000 (and not from -5000 to 5000).

Ok, now we can send this through OSC and not get bad results... but these values as they are won't do much good in Unity (we were dealing with values from -.5 to .5), so now we have to undo these operations in Unity to get workable values again...

So what I've done was to first remove the offset (subtract 5000), then divide the result by 10000 again, so the value can return to it's original state...

It's necessary to make sure you're using floats in unity though... the values as they come in from the OSC message are integers, so first we must pass them on to a float, then divide by 10000, otherwise the result will most likely be a big round zero.

Anyways... this approach, however complicated, does work in the end... I used a trackIR but it should work with a PPjoy device too...

Hope it helps

Cheers

 

I found a similar workaround to the problem. I’m using a programming language called processing (http://processing.org/) to grab the virtual joystick data and then pass it to unity using UDP. I do find it odd that we need to go through such great lengths to do something so simple but at least it works.

Here is the code I used:

Processing Code

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. /**
3. * you will need to download an install the following libaries
4. * in order to run this code:
5. * UDP: [url]http://ubaa.net/shared/processing/udp/[/url]
6. * procontroll: [url]http://creativecomputing.cc/p5libs/procontroll/[/url]
7. *
8. * @author Andy Saia
9. */
10.  
11. // import UDP library
12. import hypermedia.net.*;
13. //import procontroll library
14. import procontroll.*;
15. import java.io.*;
16.  
17. // define the UDP object "udp" must be the name of the project
18. UDP udp;
19.  
20. String message  = str( key );   // the message to send
21. String ip       = "localhost";  // the remote IP address
22. int port        = 6100;     // the destination port
23.  
24. // define controllers
25. ControllIO controll;
26. ControllDevice device;
27. //make control Sticks for pitch and roll
28. ControllStick yawPitch;
29. ControllStick rollStick;
30.  
31. void setup() {
32.  
33.   // create a new datagram connection on port 6000
34.   // and wait for incomming message
35.   udp = new UDP( this, 6000 );
36.   udp.log( false );         // <-- printout the connection activity
37.  
38.   controll = ControllIO.getInstance(this);
39.   device = controll.getDevice("PPJoy Virtual joystick 1");
40.   device.printSticks();
41.   yawPitch = device.getStick(0);
42.   rollStick = device.getStick(1);
43. }
44.  
45. void draw()
46. {
47.   String pitch = Float.toString(map(yawPitch.getY(), -1, 1, -180, 180));
48.   String roll = Float.toString(map(rollStick.getY(), -1, 1, 90, -90));
49.  
50.   message = (roll + ", " + pitch);
51.   print(message + "\n");
52.    
53.   //send joystick data every frame
54.   udp.send(message, ip, port );
55. }
56.  

C# Unity3d Code

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3.  
4. using System;
5. using System.Text;
6. using System.Net;
7. using System.Net.Sockets;
8. using System.Threading;
9.  
10. public class UDPReceive : MonoBehaviour {
11.    
12.     // receiving Thread
13.     Thread receiveThread;
14.  
15.     // udpclient object
16.     UdpClient client;
17.  
18.     // public
19.     // public string IP = "127.0.0.1"; default local
20.     public int port; // define > init
21.     public bool DebugMode = false;
22.  
23.     // infos
24.     public string lastReceivedUDPPacket="";
25.     public string allReceivedUDPPackets=""; // clean up this from time to time!
26.  
27.     public float cameraYaw = 0.0f;
28.     public float cameraPitch = 0.0f;
29.     public float cameraRoll = 0.0f;
30.    
31.    
32.    // start from shell
33.     private static void Main()
34.     {
35.        UDPReceive receiveObj=new UDPReceive();
36.        receiveObj.init();
37.  
38.       string text="";
39.       do
40.       {
41.           text = Console.ReadLine();
42.       }
43.       while(!text.Equals("exit"));
44.     }
45.     // start from unity3d
46.     public void Start()
47.     {
48.        
49.        init();  
50.     }
51.    
52.    
53.     // OnGUI
54.     void OnGUI()
55.    {
56.        if (DebugMode)
57.        {
58.            Rect rectObj = new Rect(40, 10, 200, 400);
59.            GUIStyle style = new GUIStyle();
60.            style.alignment = TextAnchor.UpperLeft;
61.            GUI.Box(rectObj, "# UDPReceive\n127.0.0.1 " + port + " #\n"
62.                     + "shell> nc -u 127.0.0.1 : " + port + " \n"
63.                     + "\nLast Packet: \n" + lastReceivedUDPPacket
64.                     + "\n\nAll Messages: \n" + allReceivedUDPPackets
65.                  , style);
66.        }
67.    }
68.      
69.     // init
70.     private void init()
71.     {
72.         if (DebugMode)
73.         {
74.             print("UDPSend.init()");
75.  
76.             // define port
77.             //port = 6100;
78.  
79.             // status
80.             print("Sending to 127.0.0.1 : " + port);
81.             print("Test-Sending to this Port: nc -u 127.0.0.1  " + port + "");
82.         }
83.  
84.         receiveThread = new Thread(
85.             new ThreadStart(ReceiveData));
86.         receiveThread.IsBackground = true;
87.         receiveThread.Start();
88.  
89.     }
90.  
91.    // receive thread
92.     private  void ReceiveData()
93.     {
94.  
95.         client = new UdpClient(port);
96.         while (true)
97.         {
98.  
99.             try
100.             {
101.                 IPEndPoint anyIP = new IPEndPoint(IPAddress.Any, 0);
102.                 byte[] data = client.Receive(ref anyIP);
103.  
104.                 string text = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data);
105.  
106.                 if (DebugMode)
107.                 {
108.                     print(">> " + text);
109.                 }
110.                
111.                 lastReceivedUDPPacket=text;
112.  
113.                 stringParser(text);
114.                
115.                 // ....
116.                 allReceivedUDPPackets=allReceivedUDPPackets+text;
117.                
118.             }
119.             catch (Exception err)
120.             {
121.                 print(err.ToString());
122.             }
123.         }
124.     }
125.  
126.     private void stringParser(string data)
127.     {
128.         String[] stringArray;
129.         //parsing data into string array
130.         stringArray = data.Split(',');
131.         //converting from string to float adding to roll and pitch varibles
132.         cameraRoll = System.Convert.ToSingle(stringArray[0]);
133.         cameraPitch = System.Convert.ToSingle(stringArray[1]);
134.     }
135.  
136.     // getLatestUDPPacket
137.     // cleans up the rest
138.     public string getLatestUDPPacket()
139.     {
140.        allReceivedUDPPackets="";
141.        return lastReceivedUDPPacket;
142.     }
143.    
144.     void OnDisable()
145.     {
146.         if ( receiveThread!= null)
147.         receiveThread.Abort();
148.  
149.         client.Close();
150.     }
151. }
152.  

I’m planning on making a full tutorial on this project when I’m done with it. I’ll post a link when all the bugs are worked out.

 

Any chance you'd be willing to post or share an example of how you got this to work? I seem to have glovePie working for grabbing the TrackIR values, but the UDP stuff is giving me fits.

Anything you could offer would be much appreciated...

 

I've been trying a bunch of different experiments and it seems that HarvesteR's solution is the best. Sending OSC directly out of gloviePie eliminates the use of another program like processing. Also I've been sending floats and negative numbers out of gloviePie just fine by converting them to strings and then back to floats as soon as they get into unity.

I put together a bare bones example that simple passes mouse position from gloviePie to Unity. You should be able to easily modify it. Let me know if you have any trouble getting it to work.

 

Just to bump the topic...

I'm having the same problem -- Unity does no recognize virtual joysticks, and it's the only application I've encountered that doesn't.

Many thanks to those who figured out a work-around, but it would be great to see this issue address in the next release.

 

Also bump, still a problem with virtual joysticks, need 3d connexion input..

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