Project3W16

Air Race

This project is due on February 12th at 2pm and to be demonstrated, as usual, in CSE basement lab 220.

For user input the only permissible device is the Sony Move controller (the extra credit allows an additional 3D device).

Move Setup (10 Points)

To use the controller, you will have to first get its driver to work. There is no official, polished driver available because the device was made for the Playstation. However, we are providing a Windows version of the driver on our MoveInVR wiki page. On the Piazza page is a special note in the pinned area under which you can post questions about the setup.

If you use an Apple computer with OS X these instructions will hopefully get you going with the Move. Please post any problems you run into on the Piazza page and we'll try to help.

Race Track

This UCSD campus model provides the environment for the race track. Load it into your application and turn the buildings and the ground plane into colliders that cannot be traversed.

The race track is a 3D line defined by a sequence of points. During the race, the player has to keep the drone within a corridor defined by the line. The drone has to stay within a maximum distance from the line. Make this distance a parameter defined in a single place in your application so that it can be changed later, and start with a value of 20 feet.

24 hours before grading starts, you will get the competition file, which will be an ASCII file in the XYZ file format, listing the points defining your race track. The coordinate system will be that of the campus model. An XYZ file does not have a header, it only consists of a list of point locations in 3D, in the format X Y Z<return>X Y Z<return> etc. An example for an XYZ file defining two points is this:

-200.0378 100.1279 10.0475
-202.0447 103.1288 10.0905

The example defines two points. The points are separated by a line break. On each line are three floating point numbers. The first three are the x, y and z position of the first point. The next three numbers are the x, y and z coordinates of the second point, and so on. There could be thousands of points in the file. In this project you can assume that the competition file will not have more than 10,000 points.

Here is what you need to do:

• Write a parser for XYZ files. It should be a simple for loop in which you read each line of the file. In C you would use the fscanf command for this. Your parser does not need to do any error handling - you can assume that you will get a proper XYZ file. You do need to recognize when there are no more points in the file (i.e., check for End of File)
• Draw the race track using a method of your choice. You can assume that the entire track will be floating above the campus model and will not intersect with any buildings. For instance, you can draw a sequence of straight lines that connect the points given in the XYZ file. Or you can use parametric curves to smooth out the turns. Optionally, you can visually indicate the tube around the center line, within which the drone must remain. The tube can be drawn wireframe style, or with translucent or even opaque polygons. The goal is that the visualization should allow the player to move along the race track as fast as possible without deviating from the race track. There will be a time penalty for leaving the race track corridor.

Extra Credit: Two Player Mode (10 Points)

Create a split screen view of your application to allow another player to control their own drone and compete against one another. The second player needs to use the input device from the first project. Let's find out if the player's speed depends more on skill or on the input device.

[To be completed Monday afternoon]