Polhemus Patriot Tracking System: Support/Problem
 

Hello Vizards,

We are just in the process of evaluating World Viz's Vizard for use as a replacement for our very, VERY old and outdated Superscape VRT to conduct psychological experiments in immersive and desktop VR. So far, World Viz looks just like the stuff we are looking for.

However, we are stuck with the support for the Polhemus Patriot Tracking System which we are determined to buy for our new setup. The Patriot (plugged into a usb port) is working well, as we can see from Polhemus' test software. But Vizard just doesn't load the driver (patriot.dls): "** ERROR: Failed to load plug-in: 'patriot.dls'." We both followed the head tracking tutorial as well as changed the head tracking demo files (automatic.py and manual.py) - neither worked. We used the evaluation copy of vizard 2.53 as well as the 3.0 beta 1. We used two different machines (Notebook with T2500, 2 GIG RAM, 256 MB X1600, XP Pro; Desktop 3,x P4, 1 GIG RAM, X700, XP Media Center Ed.). We installed 2.53. installed 3.0, deinstalled 2.53, ... nothing works.

Maybe someone has a working Patriot-Vizard-Installation running, and can give us a hint? I see the guy in this punching demo on Worlds Viz's Homepage uses a Patriot, and the German reseller support has also seen Vizard running with Patriot, so I guess there should be a solution nearby ;).

Thanks in advance, and greetings from Germany,

Frank

--
Dipl.-Päd. Frank P. Schulte

Abteilung für Kognitionspsychologie
Institut für Kognition und Kommunikation
Fakultät für Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Universität Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg

Department for Cognitive Psychology
Institute of Cognition and Communication
Faculty of Social Sciences
University Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Germany

frank.schulte@uni-duisburg-essen.de

In talking with EST, it seems that you are missing the PDI.dll. This DLL, along with the PiCmdIF.dll, should be somewhere the plugin can find it, like in the Vizard bin directory.

Missing DLL: That does not work, sorry...
 

Dear Gladsomebeast,

Thanks for your reply, but I checked and there was a PDI.DLL in Vizard30/bin. I put the PiCmdIF.dll there, too, but it didn't help. I' ve also put both of them together with the patriot.dls in vizard30/bin/lib, vizard30/bin/DLLs, vizard30/plug-ins, vizard30/resources, and also in the py's directory, but that didn't help, either: ** ERROR: Failed to load plug-in: 'patriot.dls'.

What to do now?

Greetings from Germany,

Frank

PS: Just to make sure that the code is ok, here the altered code from the automatic.py:

################################################## ##############
# WorldViz Copyright 2002 #
# This script demonstrates how perform head tracking. #
# #
################################################## ###############

import viz

viz.go()

import vizinfo
vizinfo.add('This script demonstrates how to perform automatic head tracking.\nBy default this script will connect to an intersense.\nPress the \'r\' key to reset the tracker')

#Add a ground plane
viz.add('tut_ground.wrl')

#Add the intersense tracker
########################### IMPORTANT ###############################
# When using the intersense plugin, make sure the intersense server #
# is not running in the system tray. It is known to cause problems #
# with the intersense plugin for Vizard. #
################################################## ###################
tracker = viz.add('patriot.dls')
# FRANK: I CHANGED THAT FROM intersense.dls TO patriot.dls
viz.tracker()
tracker.reset()

def mykeyboard(key):

#If the R key is pressed, reset the head orientation
if key in ['r','R']:
tracker.reset()

#Create a keyboard callback
viz.callback(viz.KEYBOARD_EVENT,mykeyboard)


--
Dipl.-Päd. Frank P. Schulte

Abteilung für Kognitionspsychologie
Institut für Kognition und Kommunikation
Fakultät für Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Universität Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg

Department for Cognitive Psychology
Institute of Cognition and Communication
Faculty of Social Sciences
University Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Germany

frank.schulte@uni-duisburg-essen.de

Problem solved
 

Hi folks,

Just to close that file: I was send some different version of the drivers, and now the Patriot runs perfectly fine with Vizard 3.0 beta 1. (I didnt try 2.53, but I guess it should do the job also...).

@Gladsomebeast: Thanks again!

Frank

--
Dipl.-Päd. Frank P. Schulte

Abteilung für Kognitionspsychologie
Institut für Kognition und Kommunikation
Fakultät für Gesellschaftswissenschaften
Universität Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg

Department for Cognitive Psychology
Institute of Cognition and Communication
Faculty of Social Sciences
University Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg, Germany

frank.schulte@uni-duisburg-essen.de