Question How to setup Simtools for a sim that doesnt use linear actuators??

I want to build a sim that does not use linear actuators for movement, instead, plan to use 3 motors for 3DOF(yaw,pitch, roll), similar to

how to set up the axes in simtools? All the documentation is for using linear actuators.

what feedback positioning do you have ?

Simtools does not care if the actuators are linear or rotational

those chains look dangerous !!

I didnt understand your question sorry.... I am planning to use 3 industrial
motors with a rotary encoder to close the loop / identify positioning. I plan to use a gearbox instead of a chain drive anyway, so that danger isnt relevant for my case..

I am basically confused about the axis assignment screen. What am i supposed to enter in the percentages?

The 3 motors will directly correspond to yaw, pitch and roll.
The pitch axis can be used to simulate surge as well, by calculating the resultant total acc. vector (g + lateral acc.).
The yaw axis can be used to simulate sway since the torso is a little offset from the axis of rotation.
Heave is completely unsupported in such a config.

Simtools is not designed to control the simulator directly. You would use a separate controller SMC3, 'Thanos' etc and then a motor driver.

I am currently using 3 28byj steppers driven by uln2003s to create a testbench of sorts.. would smc3 work with the test setup?

I think what you would want to do is axis limiting for one axis by starting the limiting at 0 and then in axis testing put it at 100% then work the axis limiting slider slowly up so it doesn't hit its limit. Do that for each axis. Then you can start assigning the forces you want on which axes you want. The forces on an axis should total 100% to use 100% of the travel you set with axis limiting. Divide them up how you see fit.

correct me if i'm wrong, but what i am taking away from your post is that for a linear actuator, using the axis assignment screen you can bind a % of the total travel/stroke possible in the installed linear actuator for a particular direction /dof. In the design i want to pursue, for roll, pitch, yaw there is no limit in the travel..the motor (and the user) can continue to rotate indefinitely...

similarly, for simulating the sway accelerations using the yaw axis, i would not have any max limit in the amount of travel that is possible...for surge, the limits will be less than, but tending to +/- 90 degrees for a ground vehicle, can be different for an aircraft i guess but thats more to do with real world physics than any limitation of the sim

has a design like what i want to do been implemented by anyone using simtools earlier? please check out the video i posted.. I would really appreciate being able to speak with someone who has done this, will save me a lot of time

Anyways is there a way to extract the real time acceleration vectors for all dof from the game(s) posted on a socket/port or something? From what i can see i will need to write my own arduino sketch for sim control

I was explaining how I set it up to work with the YawVR which isn't using linear actuators either. I forgot about your unlimited axes when explaining so axis limiting would be left at 100. I only have unlimited yaw and limited pitch and roll. You'll want to use a plugin that using euler angles or heading data when using an unlimited axis. Marc Fdx here has done some work on things in code for the YawVR interface so force data most plugins use can spin our yaw axis unlimitedly or to do the opposite having euler angles act like force data when we want to limit yaw. Sounds like you'd probably need this ability to apply both kinds of data to a single unlimited axis.

I was just thinking, converting the data does take some tuning though, so you probably wouldn't end up in sync orientation wise after a spin or two. But luckily he has also done some work on auto recentering when needed so might not be a big issue. Well the big issue is being able to implement the code like he has been able to to for us YawVR users.