I am working on a project to integrate a haptic device (Phantom OMNI: http://www.dentsable.com/haptic-phantom-omni.htm) as an input device for the Unreal Engine 4. I am using CHAI3D library(http://www.chai3d.org/) to receive the input signals from the device and interpreting them. This library is coded in C++.
I have read the documentation regarding adding new input devices, by building plugins in UE4. The documentation was unclear on various accounts. The basic procedure for making the plugin was simple enough, but as our haptic device deals in analog signals, rather than the booleans used by traditional devices (like mouse, keyboard), therefore I could not figure out how I would map the data I am getting from the device to the pawn movements in the game engine.
Exploring the source code of the game engine, I found that for all the preset devices, that the game engine works with; all the keys have been mapped to virtual keys declared in the code. I could not follow the data path further. Since there are no key press events while using the haptic device, so we cannot map our devices’ movements to the predeclared key type, which only responds to binary input.
It would be great if you could tell us, what datapath would a continuous input, such as from a haptic device, follow; all the way from the devices’ dll to the pawn’s movement. Any help regarding our project from your side would be great.