From ARVP
If you have problems with the simulator, John is the one to contact.
[edit] Installation
I'm running Windows 2000, Java 1.6 and Eclipse on this machine (it's a bit old). I'm not sure what the installation will require for other platforms.
Download Java3D from https://java3d.dev.java.net/binary-builds.html The 1.5.1 binary installer for Windows is what I used. I think the installer will set up all of the necessary paths, etc.
If I remember correctly, you should be able to just load the source into Eclipse and run it after installing J3D. If not, I'll try to go through the setup again on my machine and see what needs to be done.
[edit] Notes
The motion model is representative of what's planned for this year: orthogonal xyz motion and yaw are allowed, but there is no roll or pitch control. The comments in the org.arvp.PlaneThrustActuator interface describe the sense conventions that I've chosen. (These are mostly chosen to match what Java3D does, but it's not hard to change them.)
All accelerations are instantaneous. So, if you put say "full throttle forward" you immediately start going forward at the maximum speed. Obviously this needs more work.
The image on the top is a world camera. You can control it using the mouse, but I don't find it very intuitive (I've just kept the J3D defaults). You can also control it with the keyboard: UP and DOWN move you forward and backward, LEFT and RIGHT yaw, PGUP and PGDOWN pitch. You can pan by holding down ALT and LEFT or RIGHT. Shift makes everything faster, but it's pretty fast already... touch the keys lightly. (Again, these are just the J3D defaults).
The image on the bottom is the robot camera. It is forward-mounted (it looks in the +y direction in robot coordinates). You move it by changing the throttles in the top right. The throttles are supposed to represent "full forward" and "full reverse," etc. Internally, the motion model just converts this to a number between -1m/s and 1m/s and makes that the speed along the appropriate axis (or -1rad/s and 1rad/s for yaw).
You can turn on fog to approximate poor visual conditions. I'm not sure how useful it will be, but it is kind of neat (and it comes for free with J3D).
