Hey,

I've been trying to get Novint Falcon to work with H3D. I downloaded the drivers from novint's official page and compiled H3DAPI from the latest sources. The compiling worked, but whenever I tried to use Falcon, H3DLoad/Viewer crashed. As a side note I had to specify where the falcon drivers are to cmake (and for the H3DAPI solution to build properly, I also had to exclude EntactDevice and EntactHapticDevice -classes because there were so many errors).

I noticed that the Falcon doesn't work independently via FalconTest either, when I tried to use it in Windows 7.*

I have a Windows XP also, with which I tried to run Falcon with FalconTest, and it worked beautifully. Then I installed the latest release of H3DAPI only to get a "Falcon/Any device could not init" -message.

I haven't been able to find any information anywhere on how to make this work, so I would appreciate any help. Thank you in advance.

*Edit: Somehow it works in Windows 7 in FalconTest now, I don't know what I did right. H3DAPI says it cant initialize the device still.

How old is your falcon?
When you say that compiled H3DAPI from the latest sources did you mean that you checked out trunk? (just want to know which version you are using).

Does H3DAPI still crash, or just say that it can not initialize the device? Is it the same on both XP and Windows 7?

I thought that the latest H3DAPI trunk (HAPI trunk) should have a "fix" that will automatically exclude EntactDevice for you since there are some updates to that code that will make it not work (The easies way to disable it is to empty the Entact-variables in the CMake GUI).

If I find time I will grab a falcon later this week, install drivers on my system and try it. I am using 64-bit windows 7.

I don't know how old the Falcon is, I have it on loan from school.

I checked the sources out from trunk, from these sources found in the forums:
https://www.h3d.org:8090/H3DAPI/trunk/H3DAPI
https://www.h3d.org:8090/HAPI/trunk
https://www.h3d.org:8090/H3DUtil/trunk/H3DUtil

H3DAPI doesn't crash anymore with Falcon enabled. It just says it cannot initialize the device. I noticed some logs appearing in H3D folder after using it. It said it can't find some text files.

EDIT:
I made the mistake of uninstalling H3DAPI after successfully compiling it from latest sources awhile ago to see if it works with the latest release for Windows (found in front page). Now when I've tried to compile/install from the latest sources again, I get a xerces-c_2_8.dll missing -error when I try to start H3DLoader from the command prompt. I noticed that in CMake the xerces include files point to the External-folder and xerces-c_3.

Since you use the latest sources you probably need to use the downloadable External (for 64 bit) from the downloads page.
http://www.h3dapi.org/modules/PDdownloads/viewcat.php?cid=14
That could perhaps also cause the issue with xerces.

I have downloaded the external libraries for 64bit build and replaced the old externals with it.

Did that solve the compile-issue?

No, I meant I used it originally (when I compiled it with the external library before and now).

I've been doing the installation/compiling this way:

- I installed H3D using the latest installer for Windows found on the first page.
- I deleted External, H3DAPI, HAPI and H3DUtil -folders (in H3D folder)
- I created the H3DAPI etc. folders and checked out the sources from the trunk into the suitable folders
- I downloaded External libraries for 64bit and unzipped it to H3D -folder
- I configured and generated the solution for H3DAPI with CMake. I had to specify where the Falcon include directory and library are (I'm not sure if this is correct, does it matter where the folder is? The path variable for Falcon support points to Falcon/HDAL which doesn't have the include /library stuff. I point to another HDAL -folder that has those.)
- I built the H3DAPI solution with Visual Studio 10 (configuration set to release), which succeeds after I exclude EntactDevice/EntactHapticDevice, move ftgl.h one folder up and fix some include statements in ftgl.h and fontstyle.cpp.
- Then the install project is built.
- I got back to the CMake, ticked the H3D_LOADER_PROJECTS (?) and configured and generated again.
- And built the solution again.
- Starting H3DViewer from the visual studio works, but I don't want to use it because it makes the program I'm working on slower (at least it runs better in H3DLoader).

There's no problem if I can run H3DLoader through Visual Studio somehow (and start my program), but when I try to run it, I can only shut it down and not run any programs. If I try to run it through command prompt, I get the xerces error.

I'm sorry if this is difficult to follow, I'm not very good at explaining things.


EDIT:
Okay, so interestingly, H3DLoad works when I open the .x3d file with the H3DLoad.exe generated by the build. Still need to solve the Falcon problem.

EDIT 2:
I found out what the problem was with xerces; H3D/bin had old versions of H3DLoad.exe and H3DViewer.exe. When I replaced the files with the new ones, they started working without issues.

Forgive me if these are dumb questions, but I need to double check.
1. When you ran the install project, did you do that on the Debug or Release configuration (there is a setting in visual studio, in the middle, up). If you use the Release configuration it should not be noticeable slower inside visual studio (debug will always be slower). If you use INSTALL for a release build then all the important files libraries in H3D/bin will be overwritten with the new ones.

2. Did you install the HDAL SDK or was it already on your system or did you find some Falcon/HDAL somewhere else without installing something? I think there is an environment variable which tells where the HDAL SDK is, something like NOVINT_DEVICE_SUPPORT or FALCON_DEVICE_SUPPORT or maybe they have changed it again so it can no longer be found automatically by our CMake files. That is probably the reason why you had to set the CMake variables manually.

[EDIT] I did some tests and I can not manage to get a Falcon running on my system (by installing drivers, I did not try NVent since I do not understand why it would be needed). I followed instructions on this homepage after failing the first time http://www.falconarmy.com/index.php/i ... nc=view&catid=21&id=19193
I even tried with a falcon that I found out of the box instead of our old one and there was no difference what so ever). In other words, I can not test Falcon on my system at the moment. I never even got past the part where FalconTest works properly. Buttons register ok, but the falcon never Homes.)

I used the release configuration when I built the project. I don't know why the H3DLoad/Viewer.exe didn't update automatically.

I downloaded/installed everything from the novint website, both developer and end-user stuff just to make sure.

NOVINT_DEVICE_SUPPORT variable points to Novint/Falcon/HDAL which includes bin/ and config/ folders. I set the variables for H3D in CMake to point to HDAL_SDK_2.1.3.

Thank you for helping! Hm, I don't know if this is far-fetched/impossible, but maybe Falcon worked for me because I homed it with the XP?