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Found this and thought it might be interesting to those using infra-red based tracking. The pre-built at £40 seems a good deal, buying bit locally looks like it would be about £60.
Compatible with free track so should work OK in GPB.
No more camera probs, processor overhead or LED viewing angle issues :-), might even try this myself...

http://www.edtracker.org.uk/index.php

Had a quick look around and the 2 boards for home building can be had for less than £20 if you shop about 

It has struck me as odd that as we are all beta code testers the running games do not seem to output any debug info after a core.exe crash. I guess core.exe errors are just untrapped code bugs or due to unexpected events occurring outside the GPB engine (network probs). It is usual to log these to find the patterns that caused them and resolve the code problems.

Is it possible to generate a circular buffer type debug stream (say the last minute) that the developers might use to resolve some of the issues. An event like the owner club race seems ideal as a tool to track down the problems.

Love the feel of speed in this vid. very impressive riding
https://youtube.com/v/inc9cGasgsA

I was thinking something more like 'browse by image' web page style (flickr) and update-able by the MOD owners themselves, as you note, trying to keep track of all the MODs  on the forum would be a huge task.

Maybe a good start would be a simple standardized MOD submission file with the required images/data to allow them to be indexed easily (programmatically). I remember GP500 (and many other sim games) mod submissions always had a text file with pertinent info and a few people managed to build mod management programs around this.

The whole web programming thing passed me by (old fart used to C) so I'm not sure i could be much help unfortunately.

With so many mods in development does anyone think it would be possible to have them listed with relevant images, user comments and compatibility (GPB version) so that you could browse through?

If it could be supported by registered forum users (wiki style) editing and maintaining it might not be too once the framework was complete.

I know its a big ask and would need some one who knows how to do 'web stuff' but i do feel a bit lost  trying to decide whats worth adding in and i can only see it getting ever more confusing.

The bike MOD is great but it would be nice to know a bit more info on each individual MOD in the package.

Awesome !!

keep going. Shark must lean too yes.

You don't get more realism than realistic injuries.

I have put a couple of £ on the donations chair.   

Had to raid the piggy bank for some bacon butty money this morning, hence the huge pile of coins in the background.. 

At the moment its taking the steering angle to set the bar position, it is 'relatively' simple to swap this for bar torque for a simpler typical force feedback arrangement. I have wondered if you could 'mix' the 2 signals together (probably in my PC software host program) and have bar position with added 'force feedback'.

The raw signal from the feedback potentiometer used by the steering servo is already a suitable 0 to 5 volt signal that could be fed directly to the game steer input.

Posted this due to the comment that it would be nice if the Shark desktop controller (very nice implementation by the way) could also lean. Hopefully this video demonstrates that this can be accomplished relatively easily with an added 'roll' platform for the existing controller.

It might also be interesting to rotate the Shark controller( redesign the desk mount)  to place the bars into a more typical 'vertical steering angle rake' position rather than the current car steering wheel horizontal position. I think it might feel a bit more 'natural' in this orientation.

At the moment i'm driving with a joystick and its following the bike model steer and lean - this has been an important step in making it safe and getting the rig truly under control with the sims control deflection outputs (crashing the bike was way too dramatic at first and would probably have lead to real injuries, the added mini moto steering damper solved a lot of issues, cheap but wish it was adjustable though). Already lots of software and circuit board mods to get this far.

I just need to connect up my Bodnar board now for the brakes/throttle/buttons and steer inputs now. The original concept is to have torque steering, the steering stem is already instrumented and works as a transducer. This all means more circuit board building though for all the signal conditioning.

A lot of fun so far, just need to keep building!

Just realized if you watch with audio the 'squeaking' and 'clanking' noises are from the tap wrench handle im using as a (loose) clevis between the steer motor and bar stem rubbing on the frame (its temporary and will eventually be replaced with a taper pin). The bearing and controls are actually very smooth :-)

Just a little tease - still messing with my ideas and it is a lot of work to get right, working in game though :-) Next step is to get the input controller side working.

https://www.youtube.com/v/YfeA1X4z21s

Got a device into an old ten turn potentiometer body, almost made for the job and just needed a bit of filing to make flats for the magnets, sweep is 180 degrees gives 100mV to 5volts, rotation is continuous with the next 180 degrees going 5volts back to 100mV. Seems you could make excellent cheap sensors using 3d printed bodies based on this configuration. Next step is to use this for my servo feedback sensor and see what improvement i (hopefully) get 



https://www.youtube.com/v/ZQpUIBAEqYg

That on bike view is too weird , the rider does not seem to move at all but the bike swings around underneath them. Very strange considering the rider animation is not too terrible when viewed in third person.

Motion sickness anyone

Love the audio in the Darley Moor video - that what GPB on bike should sound like, good intake roar when the engines loading up and then screaming at speed.

Some serious weirdness with the tyres and handling, does not seem to matter if your on the track, grass or kerbing the bike holds a perfect line. Im sure more than once the bikes were keeping a perfect turn even with the front wheel off the ground, which is odd.

I will be interested to see how long this holds your attention, its the lack of riding challenge that kills my interest in these type of simugames  once the eye candy effect has worn off. Bike and rider models are nice though, scenery is nothing to shout about really.

Nice to see a female rider option looking good in leathers - the spectators really annoy me though! sure they could have done better with crowd detail.

Any chance of some on-bike first person video?

Yep, 2.5mv/G, guessed it would allow less exotic (expensive) magnet choice. Only just ordered so it will be a few days before i can try them out.

The linked thread suggests 160-180 degrees usable rotation and i suggest using them with a single dual op-amp zero and gain circuit to derive any electrical output range you need, i.e bi-polar or uni-polar. I have used the same circuit to convert the uni-polar 0-5volt output from my microcontroller to +- 10volt bipolar input on my servo controller and it works great. One side of the op-amp generates a buffered offset voltage and the other side the required gain range.

I borrowed this circuit idea and it works perfectly with any low offset (precision) op amp


@DD what range of gear MOD can you manufacture? can you get less than MOD0.5?

Might have to take you up on that if the sensors are any good but i will have to improve on my usual 'fag packet' drawings though. Noisy carbon track pots and gearing are not the way to do the servo position feedback, i have found the noise level (pot crackle) means you have to keep the feedback loop gain lower and the gear backlash (only found mod 1 gears locally with 6mm bore  and using smaller bore will mean making new parts) causes the drive to 'step' slightly. I think the hall effect device is probably the best long-term solution.

Not bothered about anyone using my ideas, it's just a bit of fun for me building these things:)

Progress is good on the steer axis, ghost rider is happily steering my powered bars while i play the sim and the whole contraption is now under reliable control - wrecked 2 microswitches and bent several 6mm high grade steel steering lock bolts in the process though Instrument cluster is finally complete with permanent circuitry and ready to mount on the rig as well, a job i have been meaning to complete for a while now.

Will try and post a progress video if i get a chance at the weekend.

Great to hear your finally up and running with the business, i will keep an eye on your web site for developments.