Car Driving Simulator - is Torque a right choice?
by Sonic Tantra · in General Discussion · 09/09/2011 (1:20 am) · 7 replies
Theres a project on which I need some advice. We are planning to make
a Car driving simulator with steering wheel, pedals, shock seat and
perhaps VR headset or 3 screens. This is for real driving lessons and
driving assessment. so its serious gaming project.
I have recently joined a software and electronics engineering company and this would be their 1st project in gaming space.
Coming for a web gaming background, and armed with a team of c++ programmers and electronics experts, i have been given the brave work to build a proposal.
so yes, will we be able to make our own hardware components and make them work with torque?
if not then which engine should i be looking at?
Thanks for ure time!
a Car driving simulator with steering wheel, pedals, shock seat and
perhaps VR headset or 3 screens. This is for real driving lessons and
driving assessment. so its serious gaming project.
I have recently joined a software and electronics engineering company and this would be their 1st project in gaming space.
Coming for a web gaming background, and armed with a team of c++ programmers and electronics experts, i have been given the brave work to build a proposal.
so yes, will we be able to make our own hardware components and make them work with torque?
if not then which engine should i be looking at?
Thanks for ure time!
#2
I'm sure our CEO and head of QA can jump in to confirm, since they worked in the same field.
09/09/2011 (12:32 pm)
Most definitely. I used to work in the serious games sector (training simulations for National Guard). We were using Torque for infantry and vehicle. I saw plenty of sims at I/ITSEC that used Torque and various peripherals, mostly VR headset based.I'm sure our CEO and head of QA can jump in to confirm, since they worked in the same field.
#3
As Doug said, being able to get under to hood (horrible pun I know) and make the engine do what it needs to do for your simulation is a huge plus for serious games.
09/09/2011 (12:43 pm)
I don't recall how long ago it was but I remember a team working on a very similar product using Torque 3D I believe and they seemed to be making a decent go at it.As Doug said, being able to get under to hood (horrible pun I know) and make the engine do what it needs to do for your simulation is a huge plus for serious games.
#4
Thanks a lot for your replies. Appreciate it.
Can I get some inputs on skill sets needed for this project. As we don't have any gaming professionals currently. so i will see if i can train some people, or hire, etc.
09/11/2011 (10:38 pm)
Hey fellas,Thanks a lot for your replies. Appreciate it.
Can I get some inputs on skill sets needed for this project. As we don't have any gaming professionals currently. so i will see if i can train some people, or hire, etc.
#5
09/16/2011 (12:52 pm)
From the developer side, anybody with C/C++ or Java programming experience should be able to understand the Torque game engine quickly.
#6
Like Michael said, we used Torque for vehicle and infantry simulation at the sim company we used to work at. If you're using just off the shelf peripherals for your headset, wheel, pedals, and shock seat then you'll have little to no trouble getting those set up. Those gadgets were usually pretty straight forward and easy enough for any programmer to set up and integrate. The 3 monitor support would be a little trickier as the engine doesn't support it out of the box. So your programmers would need to dive deep into the engine to add that support. That wasn't a requirement for anything I worked on so I never explored it beyond confirming that there were going to be engine changes involved to make it happen.
Now, if you're planning to hook it up a motion platform you may need to take a slightly different route. We experimented with hooking into a motion platform by a company from Korea by adding a shared DLL that stored the pitch, yaw, roll, speed, velocity. Torque would set the variables in that DLL and the motion platforms program could access it.
Depending on how exact you want to simulate the cars there are some different things you can do. If you want to plug in real world specs of a vehicle there is a resource here on the site by another community member that adds gear ratios, torque, etc to the vehicle datablocks so that you can have the exact performance of the engine. This was helpful for me because it took the guess and conversion work out of setting the engine speed variables for the datablocks.
Phew, ok this turned into a bit of bigger brain dump than I originally intended. So, here's the tldr version. Basically, yeah, Torque can do the things you want it to do. With a team of C++ game programmers you can easily extend the engine and mold it to better fit your needs.
09/16/2011 (1:08 pm)
I got stuck helping to fix a build during last week's hour so I didn't get a chance to jump in here.Like Michael said, we used Torque for vehicle and infantry simulation at the sim company we used to work at. If you're using just off the shelf peripherals for your headset, wheel, pedals, and shock seat then you'll have little to no trouble getting those set up. Those gadgets were usually pretty straight forward and easy enough for any programmer to set up and integrate. The 3 monitor support would be a little trickier as the engine doesn't support it out of the box. So your programmers would need to dive deep into the engine to add that support. That wasn't a requirement for anything I worked on so I never explored it beyond confirming that there were going to be engine changes involved to make it happen.
Now, if you're planning to hook it up a motion platform you may need to take a slightly different route. We experimented with hooking into a motion platform by a company from Korea by adding a shared DLL that stored the pitch, yaw, roll, speed, velocity. Torque would set the variables in that DLL and the motion platforms program could access it.
Depending on how exact you want to simulate the cars there are some different things you can do. If you want to plug in real world specs of a vehicle there is a resource here on the site by another community member that adds gear ratios, torque, etc to the vehicle datablocks so that you can have the exact performance of the engine. This was helpful for me because it took the guess and conversion work out of setting the engine speed variables for the datablocks.
Phew, ok this turned into a bit of bigger brain dump than I originally intended. So, here's the tldr version. Basically, yeah, Torque can do the things you want it to do. With a team of C++ game programmers you can easily extend the engine and mold it to better fit your needs.
#7
scott burns hav no words to thank you!!!
cheers fellaz..
ill get my programmers to download torque and start understanding it
09/17/2011 (4:59 am)
thanks all for your replies very helpful and gettin me started on the proj!!scott burns hav no words to thank you!!!
cheers fellaz..
ill get my programmers to download torque and start understanding it
Employee Doug Poston
GarageGames
But I think Torque would be a good choice for your project because you have full access to the source code.
While you should be able to design most hardware components to act as standard input devices, you are free to modify the Torque source code to handle whatever input you need.