A guide to prototyping your RealSense project's controls with physical controllers

[MartyG]

Hi everyone!

I recognize the concern that some Challenge entrants have about not having a camera yet (if they are waiting for the RealSense one or did not enter the 2013 contest and so lack last year's camera.)  

So to help minimize such worry, my company has written a new guide that explains how you can use Unity's built-in "Input Manager" to test some of your controls with physical devices like keyboard, mouse, joypad, driving wheel / pedals, etc so you can get the objects set up and tested and then convert them to RealSense camera controls using our other guide (which is a sticky at the top of the RealSense forum and also linked to at the end of this new guide.)

http://sambiglyon.org/?q=node/1268

Using the Input Manager, you can test any function that involves the movement or rotation of objects, or change the value of variables depending on inputs from the physical controls.  It's really useful for ironing out bugs like animation breakages during complex object movements - bugs that you would not otherwise know about until you had got the camera hooked up.  So using physical controls, you can fix the little problems you find so that your application runs smoothly as soon as you convert it to RealSense controls. 

Hope you find the guide useful!

[steve-vink]

I don't know why you have no responses to this post, an excellent contribution to the community!

I'm not using Untiy for this competition, but the guide is excellent for other scenarios too.

[MartyG]

Thanks Steve!  Yes, this article I posted got lost and forgotten as no-one commented on it and it drifted off the front page of the forum.  Oh well!  My other guide is a sticky at the top of the forum, so I can't complain.  ^_^

I'm very pleased that you found it and got value from it.  Thanks for taking the trouble to respond.  :)

[yosun]

nice, i did a hackish version of this way back in beta almost two years ago.

for the gold sdk, Intel should incorporate similar keyboard controls into the unity plugin editor bindings for debugging. 

[MartyG]

There's always this tug or war battle between the idea of being button-free and the practical comfort of physical buttons.  One RealSense game developer was saying as much in an interview in an article yesterday, saying he made sure to include a button-control in his game.

Back in 2010 when Microsoft introduced the first Kinect, the game developer Lionhead (a Microsoft-owned studio who got early access to the tech) said "Give us back our buttons!"  They soon came to love the possibilities of motion control though.  Shame that 'Milo and Kate' got canceled. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uieh3RfkCng

Some of the M&K tech got re-used in 'Kinectimals', if I recall right.