The DA Assets plugin allows easy access to input devices used in the UTS Data Arena theatre. Currently classes include access to our 3DConnexion SpaceMouse, and up to 8 trackers in our Optitrack Motion Capture system. Include this plugin in your project to quickly utilise our immersive input interfaces and take your project to the next level.

👉 We have locked off support for Unreal Engine 4.25 projects (as of July 2021). We are currently working on more recent versions of the engine but for now require projects built in 4.25.4 or older.

Our six degree-of-freedom SpaceMouse is commonly used for wireless navigation of 3D scenes in the Data Arena. The SpaceMouse provides high precision translation and rotation movements in X, Y and Z dimensions, as well as two function buttons. Our main use for the SpaceMouse is virtual camera control. The included SpaceMouseCamera actor will add a standard Camera Actor to your project with pre-defined SpaceMouse axis bindings for steering and access to axis sensitivity and friction control in the details panel. Of course, you aren't limited to camera control and can make use of the SpaceMouse channels however you wish by simply adding the DA_SpaceMouse actor to your project.

The Data Arena has 12-camera Optitrack Motion Capture system installed that can capture infrared marker balls in the theatre. Our main use for this system is to utilise "Rigid Body" Trackers. A tracker is a small card of 3 markers points that we can access the position and rotation of in the Data Arena theatre down to a few millimetres. We can support up to 8 trackers that can enable multi-user participation where everyone can have a control device for any purpose. The included TrackerCursor class will let you add an on-screen cursor to your project for multi-user interaction with scene objects. A "flip" gesture will let users pickup and drop objects as seen in our Cozy Living Room project. As with the SpaceMouse, you can make use of Tracker data for any purpose by adding a DA_Tracker cursor to your project.

To see this plugin in action, download and run our DA_HelloWorld project in Unreal Engine (4.25). This simple project uses the SpaceMouseCamera actor to view and navigate the scene, and a TrackerCursor actor to pickup, move and drop dynamic objects in the level.

1. Download our plugin by either clicking Code → Download ZIP (above) or cloning this repository if you're familiar with Git.
2. Create a folder called Plugins in the base of your project folder and move the entire DA_Assets folder here.

👉 Github might label your downloaded folder DA_Assets-master. Rename it to DA_Assets if so.

3. Open your project and confirm the plugin is visible in the Plugins UI.
4. To access the assets, open the Content Browser and scroll down to DA Assets in the left sidebar. If you can't find it, make sure Show Plugin Content is enabled in the View Options bottom right.

You're now ready to start experimenting with our assets. The above mentioned SpaceMouseCamera and TrackerCursor actors can be found in their respective folders. If you wish to utilise the data from our SpaceMouse or Tracker devices in your own way, you can add and reference the DA_SpaceMouse and DA_Tracker actors in your project from the DeviceCommunication folder.

This plugin is designed to help you utilise our input devices from outside the Data Arena. The SpaceMouseCamera and TrackerCursor classes have a Use VRPN Input checkbox accessible in the details panel. Keep this unchecked (off) if you're developing outside the Data Arena. This will tell Unreal Engine to fallback to keyboard input to simulate device input. When you're ready to bring your project to us, we'll enable this setting before packaging to use our real hardware devices in the DA.

VRPN is an open-source, network-based interface we use to communicate to our input devices in the Data Arena.

As of July 2021 we currently support the 3DConnexion SpaceMouse and Optitrack Tracker input systems. Our future developments will include support for PlayStation and PSMove controllers that we already have in the DA, as well as including new actors based off existing integrations that we develop in other project use-cases. As our interfaces are based off VRPN, we can theoretically support any devices listed here, so feel free to get in touch if you have any hardware you'd like to try in the Data Arena.

For more information take a look at the UTS Data Arena website and get it touch with us about your first Data Arena project. We'd love to hear about what you've got planned with Unreal Engine and how we can help make it happen.