Tag: FlyDangerous

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I’m wondering how to present ultra wide screenshots for a while now, because most people will not have an ultra wide display at hand or not run their browser in fullscreen on such a device. A scaled down version with retained ratio also just don’t really cut it:

Now what if we could wrap this in some sort of 360° image? This isn’t really 360°, of course but you get the idea. A quick search usually yields JS libs like Pannellum (https://pannellum.org/), which look great for this use-case as well and yes we could also solve this in CSS by using an animation and go for a little camera ride.

What if we could optionally also make use of a gyroscope though? You know, that sensor every mobile phone, tablet and VR device comes along with. So the user could device where to look just by moving the device around?

This was when I stumbled over A-Frame (https://aframe.io), which is basically a library for building 3D AR or VR experiences and while I may only scratching it’s surface with my quick tests here it does deliver exactly what I was looking for.

I built demos for various games today and I don’t know how long I’ll host the files here but they all follow the very same code pattern that I’ll add in the end:

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-elite-dangerous.html

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-fly-dangerous.html

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-nms.html

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-rebel-galaxy-outlaw.html

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-spacebourne2.html

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-starcitizen.html

https://beko.famkos.net/aframe-x4-foundations.html

Please be aware that I’m loading a ~5mb blob of JS code directly from A-Frame in the demos so don’t check them out if that is a problem for you. The image asset adds another whopping MB so please be patient. The best experience is on a mobile phone where you should be able to look around by moving the phone left and right. It works on a desktop browser too where the mouse can be used to look around.

Here is a code snippet that shows hows it’s done:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <script src="https://aframe.io/releases/1.4.1/aframe.min.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <a-scene loading-screen="dotsColor: #ff6a00; backgroundColor: black">
    <a-assets>
      <img id="sky" src="./wp-content/uploads/2023/03/elite_dangerous_odyssey_for_my_valentine.jpg">
    </a-assets>
    <a-entity id="rig" position="-8 0 0" rotation="0 90 0">
      <a-entity id="camera" camera="fov:45; zoom: 1" far=90 look-controls></a-entity>
    </a-entity>
    <a-text color="#fff" value="Elite Dangerous ...on a canvas" width="3" position="-10.5 -0.5 1.5"
      rotation="0 135 9"></a-text>
    <a-curvedimage src="#sky" height="20.0" radius="10" theta-length="180" rotation="0 180 0"
      scale="2.5 1 2.5"></a-curvedimage>
    <a-sky rotation="0 0 0" position="0 0 0" color="#000"></a-sky>
  </a-scene>
</body>
</html>

Feel free to copy this snippet and play around with it. Just keep in mind that you have to use _local_ assets too or they won’t show up. Make sure to read the documentation too and play with the built in inspector opened with the key combination ctrl + alt + i.

And yes I’ll happily take a CSS only variant too but I really doubt that’s possible without loosing features like gyroscope data usage.

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FIY Should update within 24h https://youtu.be/RIGkmqzJdfQ

It’s a 6dof racing game with a flight model similar to .

It does have a version but the world gen lib is single threaded on Linux so Proton may be a better choice for now.

It also features access to full ship telemetry and head tracking including OpenTrack via UDP thanks to my nagging 🤪

No idea about VR. Apparently it works but I can’t test that.

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I usually play on Linux PC. I switched to Proton because I was eager to see some upcoming changes, like support, on the public_beta branch. And while this works[1] I was once more flabbergasted how complicated it is to set my desired display resolution of 5760×1200. I’m using a multihead setup with several displays and as usual the game engine would not let me _simply_ set that. Even in windowed mode (I mean I get that this won’t work with fullscreen).

There are several ways to work around this, especially with Proton, but I was looking for the prefs file I know from Linux. I found it in the end in the file compatdata/1781750/pfx/user.reg (that’s like the Windows registry but as plain file read by Wine) where the values are stored as dword under [Software\\StarGoat\\FlyDangerous]. In hex. 

"Screenmanager Resolution Height_h2627697771"=dword:000004b0
"Screenmanager Resolution Width_h182942802"=dword:00001680
"Screenmanager Resolution Use Native_h1405027254"=dword:00000000

So 0780 and 04b0 are in the end 5760 and 1200. And sure enough, on the next game start I get _my_ desired resolution:

Sadly when I change settings in the game this gets overwritten again – so keep a backup around and drop it in again. This may even be added to a script – let’s see how long until this gets on my nerves and I automate that.

For the interested: This is how the same thing looks on the native version in the file ~/.config/unity3d/StarGoat/FlyDangerous/prefs

<pref name="Screenmanager Resolution Height" type="int">1200</pref>
<pref name="Screenmanager Resolution Width" type="int">5760</pref>
<pref name="Screenmanager Resolution Use Native" type="int">0</pref>

Why games|engines in 2023 still seem to have ideas about screen layouts is frankly beyond me.

[1] Headtracker quick test recordings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13L0GlQyf_Q / https://tube.tchncs.de/w/fTYSUc9fTBmnTLHp2fpW4n

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Fly Dangerous on Steam by Jay FaulknerJay Faulkner (store.steampowered.com)
Extremely high skill-ceiling 6dof flight racing in a variety of environments with leaderboards, multiplayer and VR support

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1781750/Fly_Dangerous/ released today as early access. It’s free, fast, opensource and has . The flight model is inspired by games like (Newtonian flight model). Oh and it has . o7

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Fly Dangerous 5.0 was released and it is packed with new features like reflections on the ship, Steam leaderboards and ghosts! So you can basically race against yourself or others from the leaderboards!

As usual I gave it a spin and had a blast.

First things first though. The Linux version defaults to OpenGL and this resulted in like 25 FPS for me and the input of my X52 Pro (mapped as XBOX controller) was so laggy that I could sip coffee during each course correction. This was when I remembered the magic parameter -force-vulkan from other Unity games and from here it was smooth sailing. Eventually I ended up with the game start options obs-gamecapture for recording, mangohud for some FPS info and -force-vulkan for… well, FPS.

obs-gamecapture mangohud %command% -force-vulkan

As usual YMMV.

The flight mechanics changed a little bit and @jayleefaulkner explains this in great detail in the video Alpha 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2sn26HVY7o so I’m having a learning curve ahead of me… again!

Anyway, I’m not doing too bad after some rounds. Only issue left is that I can not disable the flight assist for some reasons. Probably a bad binding but I was eager to play so I went with it.

Fly Dangerous (on Linux PC) – with Vulkan

Oh and did I mention that this little gem is still for free and even opensource?

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Fly Dangerous - Ship Sound Design - Update 1 by Mono Hive (youtube.com)
Preliminary sketch of sounds for Fly Dangerous. Intro: 0:00 Ambience Breakdown: 2:46 Ambience Mix: 7:49 Thrusters Breakdown: 8:55 Thrusters Mix: 12:59 Throttle Up breakdown: 13:38 Throttle Up Mix: 17:49 Throttle Down Mix: 18:17 Roll Yaw Pitch: 18:28 Boost Breakdown: 18:57 Boost Mix: 26:39 Download link: https://jukibom.itch.io/fly-dangerous Join the discord: https://discord.com/invite/4daSEUKZ6A

Fascinating, a peek behind the scenes of sound designing for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h9iq9gFx6c

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I sure am playing a lot of space pew pew over the last months. Took a lot of screenshots too and it’s kinda hard not to drown my timeline with screenshots every day. Today I sifted through the pile and found a bunch I’d like to share (some again) so here is a little gallery of (mostly) space simulation games I play on my Linux PC. And I’ll keep making that point until I can browse the web without getting daily reminders by random strangers claiming that gaming on Linux PC is not possible. Cuz it is.

Star Citizen

Added on 5th January 2022 and played with whatever Lutris thinks best. I really was going to hold out on Star Citizen a little longer but I got it as a gift to my birthday. My GPU is definitely at it’s limit here. Will probably have to give it some more time. I mean it’s Alpha and all but hey, it _does_ work.

Elite Dangerous

This I play mostly under Proton with the Primary Buffer Panel whenever possible. It’s just the most fun this way (kids love it too).

 

X Games, mostly X4 and X3: Rebirth

The more recent X series have native Linux builds but work also perfectly fine with Wine.

 

Slug Throwers: Diaspora: Shattered Armistice and House of the Dying Sun

Both run via Lutris and with Proton-GE and usually with my DIY Headtracker.

 

Relaxing ones: No Man’s Sky, Fly Dangerous and… FlightGear (yeah, not space, I know – there’s a spaceship MOD tho :P)

FlightGear runs native on Linux and Fly Dangerous does have a native Linux build but due to an issue with terrain generation being single threaded I use Proton for this one too until this is solved. No Man’s Sky runs perfectly with Proton.

I play all of the above with my X52 Pro H.O.T.A.S. and some with my DIY headtracker stretched over three displays in a so called multihead setup. Let me know if you’ve any questions how this can be set up.

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