Can't get DOFreality to connect and work

sorry probably the wrong place to post this.
I have a DOF reality that i want to run from my Simtools.

i'm trying to connect to it in the interface and nothing is running.
i have set the COM to COM4
baudrate: 115200
bits: 8
pirity: None
stop bit: 1
Rate: 10ms

Output: <Axis1a>......

anyone have an idea what to try? right now the motors will not move at all

thanks i did check DOFReality and they said they would not help since they only support officially Racing Sim, not SimTools.

this is what the settings look like below.

Yes in the Device manager, when you plug and unplug the motion simulator COM4 shows up so we know that its com4.

technically it should be pretty straight forward i thought.



One things i will have them try is to make sure Race Sim is not still running in the windows Processes.

We have changed the BitsPerSec to 500000, 9600 etc and still no go.

any help would be nice.

here is the BS response from DOF Reality. if anyone knows how to get this working on Simtools that would be very helpful. We do not want to use SRS. i did find and notice that out bit-range was 8 and not 10. hopefully that works.

>>We can’t provide any manual or configuration details for SimTools.
DOF Reality motion platforms are officially supported only with Sim Racing Studio (SRS).
Support for SimTools was discontinued in 2023, and there are no public COM-port parameters or serial protocols available anymore.
Our STM-based control units communicate exclusively with SRS using a closed protocol.

thanks, i'll try that and cross my fingers.
Yes its pretty sad if they locked it down and it no longer works for simtools. I love simtools and sold my G-seat when SimXperience did the same thing with their protocol. i ended up creating my own g-seat from servos and 3d prints that i'll share shortly. simply the fraction of the cost and works awesome in Simtools.

i do have one question on your reply. you show [A<Axis1a>]... we were doing it like this <Axis1a>
what is the difference having the "A" and the []'s does that do something more i don't know about?

if there statement from their support team is true, Talk about literally biting the hand that fed you.

ok i think there is still some good news. Today the flight school was able to get SimTools talking with DOFReality P6. It appears the COM still works with the right settings above. Now on to the next phase for them.
Note: couple of things, the P6 is requiring two ports, COM4 and COM3. so the axis setting output <Axis1a>....<Axis3a> is required for each controller.

if there is a way to make them all on the same Axis1 that would be great


does anyone know these settings?

Hello Rocket fire,

I use simtools too, with a NJ motion compact R. Not long ago I was (just to take a look at what it is) in "com" tab. I made some modification to some parameters to see what kind of settings ca be applied.....saying to myself, "no problem, I won't save"
But I saved....(stupid me)
Of course there was no motion anymore, and i didn't made any screenshot before.
I was about to contact NJmotion, but before I went to "plugin manager" then REPO, and clicked on NJmotion REPO, it loaded base settings adapted to my nj motion and it worked.

I assume you don't have a REPO for your DOF reality on simtools, but there is "community repositories" where I think you can find and test different configurations from simtools community and see if any works?

Charles

ok, i wanted to give a update and ask some questions.

As i stated before we were able to get the simtools to communicate with DOF reality 6 using the following settings. What is important in our finding is that the DOF Reality work on 10Bit, so make sure the output is set to 10bit. The COM port will be whatever your system assigns.

BitPerSec: 500000
Data Bit: 8
Parity: None
Stop Bits : 1

Output: 10
Output type: is Binary ( this is old picture so it shows hex)
Interface output : [A<Axis1a>][B<Axis2a>][C<Axis3a>]
Output: 10ms - we have tried 20ms and that made no difference that we could tell.



Ok now with the DOF Reality you have to use 2 interfaces as they use two motion drivers (left and Right)
each motion driver will connect to a port. in our case it was COM3 and COM4. each interface will only drive 3 axis which is why you only see 3 interface-outputs assigned.

Note, this works and drives the 3 corresponding motors when you run "test settings", then slide the axis assigned. again works fine.

however we are still having issues getting the 6 DOF to move right in the game settings. This could be because of our mapping of the axis's or not? this is where we need some advice.

notice that we have on the Output <A axis 2a, B axis 1a, C axis 3 a> so the order is 2-1-3.
what we found in the DOF Reality was that the left bank or right bank motors are listed as (front #1, middle #2, and Back #3)

however when we ran the axis slider, Axis 1 actually moved the middle motor, Axis 2 actually moved the front motor. So we thought this seemed backwards. (we might be wrong which is why the game plugin is not working)
so thinking we were wrong we change the Interface output as the image shows so that Axis 1 moves the front motor, axis 2 moves the middle motor, and axis 3 moves the rear motor.

to do this we had to change the interface line.

again, this might be were everything gets messes up in the game plugin but we are not sure yet. any comments or help would be great.

i will post a new message with the game setup here

Now that we have successfully be able to communicate from DOF reality 6 to simtools.
Setting up the game plugin has been a challenge and still does not work properly.

any feedback is welcome!

Our issue is that once the game plugin has been configured, The DOF reality is not moving properly and showing erratic behavior. When you move the pitch, or even Heave test sliders, the motion jump one direction, then opposite direction and back to center. given the axis work in the interface COM setup as my post above, it appears the issue is in the game setup most likely .

Here is how we set that up so far.




from this screen shot you can see that we measured all the mechanical settings and enter them in.
Not sure if this is right or not? but we had to setup 2 "axis assignments" A and B. this was because we had 2 COM interfaces COM3 and COM4 or Left side motors, and right side motors. the mechanical settings are the same for both.

now since each "axis Assignments" only controls 3 motors . We setup "axis assignment A" for the left motors, and "axis assignment B" for the right motors. this meant that the "swap direction" check boxes only corresponded to the first 3 since there were only 3 motors per axis assignment.

again, we are guessing here so this could be wrong but need some input from others.

Now when you click on the "Sim Config" gear icon you are taken to the axis mapping.




Now per the documentation, each axis seems to be derived by the motion in the orange as shown here.

since we assume (someone please correct me if i'm wrong) there are two needed Axis assignments A & B, since we have motor side A and motor side B. we set Axis4A on both assignments to "heave 100%" as a test only.

here is the problem, when we move the "heave" slider in the "test settings" the chair does not move all the motors up. instead we get this weird jump up, then down, then back to center.

what we do not know is ????
1. Do we really need to have two "axis assignments" A and B?
2. is our COM4 and COM3 setup wrong? do each have only axis 1-3 setup and map to Axis assignment A & B

since its unclear in the documentation, we are eager for some feedback?