OMSI 2. Real dashboard, Arduino and writting plugins

kru96 · 1. November 2020

Hello everybody,

I have been playing OMSI 2 intermittently for several years. Recently, I got myself a Logitech G25 steering wheel in order to build a real dashboard to play the game. My idea is to hack the steering wheel to a full-sized bus one with turning indicators switch and to design and 3D-print a dashboard with all the indicators and switches and connect it to the game.

So, this post will have 2 main parts.

First one: OMSI 2 community status.
I have seen that the official Marcel's OMSI forum does no longer admit new registrations since a new game, LOTUS-Simulator, is being developed. However, I have seen that the activity on that forum as well as on this forum and on the FellowsFilm forum (the ones I have found to be the most important and active ones besides from Marcel's) is still going on... So my main question is: Do you think it is worth spending time and effort in developing such thing in a game not officially supported? I mean, I don't mind that the game is not supported as long as the community is still active so that I can get help and new addons will still be released... Also, am I missing any other OMSI 2 active forum?
Actually I am going to post this on the FellowsFilm forum as well.

Second one: Technical details and help regarding my idea.
I have done some research on how to interface a real-life dashboard with the game.
From one side, inputting actions to the game is pretty straight-forward. I can hack a USB keyboard (or use an arcade USB interface or a U-HID) to connect my own switches to the game and assign each switch to the corresponding key in the keyboard, so that it will be basically as if I was playing with a keyboard.
On the other side, pulling data out of the game to activate gauges, lights and even displays, is a little bit trickier...

Gazz did a great step on the development of such systems back in 2012 by using an Arduino and a custom-made OMSI plugin as it can be seen on his Youtube channel (Gazz292 - YouTube). Although his website is not working (http://www.kampenwagen.co.uk/), I have been able to read about it and download the Arduino sketch and the OMSI plugin through the Internet Archive (Gazz's Omsi Dash). I have not tried Gazz's plugin yet since I think it is for OMSI (1) only... Might give it a try on OMSI 2 anyway, we'll see...

Later, in 2014, a german guy named Lars Jobst developed KOMSI, an OMSI plugin designed to specifically do this. Plus, it is very costumizable (you can choose which variables you want to get from the game to the Arduino and it comes with some helpful tool to test your setup). KOMSI can be download from pulle76.de. Actually, Gazz has a video showing KOMSI working (Komsi, the new way to get data out of Omsi - YouTube). I have tried it and I can not get it to work. At first, the plugin itself (KOMSI client) was not communicating with KOMSI Server. After reinstalling the game and the plugin I got them both to communicate. However, the KOMSI Server freezes as soon as I connect to the Arduino board. It happens that the official channel to get support for KOMSI (Gazz's Omsi Dash) is also down... Anyone here has experience with KOMSI and can help with this?

Another option I have found, but not tried yet, is SimHub (Gazz's Omsi Dash) Anyone here has experience with SimHub? I will try it soon and report.

Is there any other way of getting data out of OMSI easily?

Finally, my last option is to write my own plugin.
I have not been able to find much documentation on that (even in German)... From what I've read so far, it looks that plugins can be written in Delphi (the language the game is written in) and in C++. For C++, Holmexx developed a framework to develop OMSI plugins (Gazz's Omsi Dash). There is more explanations and tutorials on this framework on this website: Gazz's Omsi Dash. The tutorial is incomplete and the link to download the framework (https://omsi.sovoma.de/downloads/opf.zip)... you guessed it right: it's down! Does anyone here has the ZIP for the framework or a link to download it?
Do you know where I can find more information on how to develop a plugin or any example?

Well... this has been a long post, sorry for that. I just wanted to put you in situation of the research I have done so far.
To wrap up:
I want to build a custom dashboard. I am looking for a way to drive the lights and indicators of the dashboard. I have tried KOMSI so far without success. Anyone knows of an alternative way to get variables out of OMSI? My last hope is to write my own plugin... Any tutorial or example on this?

Thank you very much.

// Please do not use black / red font colour.The black font colour cannot be seen in the dark theme of the OMSI webdisk. Please use "Remove font colour" to write black in bright theme. -NiLe

gazz292 · 17. November 2020

Hey there,

i'm the 'Gazz' mentioned who started the omsi dashboard thing back in 2012, the work on that stopped as the bloke writing the .dll for me finished uni and had to move back to his home country, (im a hardware guy, software just dosen't seem to click in my head, so it's hard for me writing programs from scratch... give me a soldering iron, welder, saw and big hammer, and i can make most things)

By the time the 'gazz'dll' was possibly going to get worked on again, i'd discovered Lars, aka 'Pulle76' was working on what was to become Komsi,
so i helped went on to help him a little, as it was obvious that komsi was much better developed, again it is Lars who did all the programming.

Things were going great with komsi, and i was enjoying slowly working on my bus cab, as well as collecting parts for the train sim and all my other hobbies, this was spring 2014,

however a relationship that went very wrong resulted in me having to put all my stuff into storage and move back to my parents, where i still am today,

They let me build a big shed in the garden, and i am still finishing that off, it's mostly for metal working (welder, lathe etc) but i have a section for electronics through a sliding door (to keep the grinding dust out) and i've just set up my electronics workbench, and behind that is my bus sim slowly being assembled,

Hence 5 years later i am finally getting back into omsi,

it was upsetting to try logging back onto the komsi forum to find it closed (spammers and script kiddies destroyed it) same with aussieX, which was where i spent a lot of time talking technical stuff, and people on there helping me with things like making a single tile empty map that loaded fast when i was playing with sctipts for the buses, and opening the ng272 in i presume blender, to measure the positions of the drivers seat to steering wheel, cab floor, dashboard height etc, as it's very hard to guess scale from within the game.

I have chatted with the komsi programmer, he's moved on to lotus, and has written a similar bit of software for that, but i'm not really ready to move to lotus... it still seems very expensive and still in development to me.

But with my sim, I've got to basically rebuild the structure of it first (as i had absolutely no spare money in the last relationship, so had to use salvaged bits of wood for the main base, which are rotting away now!!),
then i'll work on the electronics.. insluding re-doing the breakout board i use to switch the 24 volt lights on the dashboard via transistors from the arduino (i'll use mosfets and surface mount stuff this time)
The computer i have for omsi is my old one from 2012, so still runs windows 7, i havent even powered that up yet, but i expect komsi to still work with my already programmed arduino's and minimus boards,

Today i did do a little work on the coin change (mechanics were sticking, and 2 microswitches were staying open)
To get the coin lever presses to register as the ones in omsi, i use a minimus avr board, programed with KADE to give numberpad keypresses when the coin levers are depressed,
and it looks like KADE's gone too, damn, that was a handy little bit of software (which thankfully i still have, glad i copied all that kind of stuff off my last computer before it was destroyed by a certain person)
Kade used cheap minimus boards, and would plug straight into a usb port, and give you 20 inputs that could be keyboard keys, or joystick buttons, even emulate xbox n ps3 controllers etc,
the bloke who wrote the kade software it even wrote me a custom matrix code for it, to give upto 64 button inputs using the 20 real inputs it has,

unfortunately it was a bit slow, the video of me showing my ticket printer working... i'm sure i mentioned that it was just showing it off, it wasnt communicating with omsi at that point, but you'll notice i have to hold the ticket printer buttons for a good second and a half to get them to register,

Anyway, enough waffeling.

Komsi should work... it used to work and worked very well, are you using windows 10 by any chance? as i havent tested it out on that yet, and i know a lot of hardware type things i have that worked on windows 7 / 8.1 get screwed up by windows 10 being so damn restrictive,

Does komsi comunicate with the arduino when you use the test tool? 'komsi \ tools \ KTT'

if it works in the test mode, then it might be something in omsi not playing well, i had an issue once where omsi had been updated, and it caused komsi to hang for a second every couple of minutes, this was corrected with the next omsi update, but i imagine there will be no more omsi updates...ever.

When i get some time, i'll grab an arduino and a breadboard, plus some led's and maybe a lcd, and load the komsi script onto it, then connect with my windows 10 laptop which i have just put omsi2 on, and have a play and report back if it works for me or not,

as with most things, the info's in my head somewhere, i just need to refresh my self with it,

.

When you get further into building a bus sim, if you do buy/build a dashboard and a steering wheel etc, for the force feedback steering.. have a look at 'EMC FFB'
EMC Development - Home | Facebook

This is what i will be using to run my bus steering wheel, it should be able to give the full 6 and a half turns (~2300 degrees) lock to lock a bus has (miles better than the 3 turns (~900 degrees) or so you get out of commercially available force feedback wheels)

This does of course mean you have to build the entire steering system, so the emc software (a tenner i think.. lifetime licence with all updates) an stm board (a version will run on an arduino) a high resolution rotary encoder (£15 or so), a decent sized motor, motor driver (i'm using £7 H bridges that are good for about 25 amps (some sellers claim 43 amps, but i'd derate them to half.. and am using 2 in parallel) power supply, then the drive system from the motor to the wheel (couple of timing belt pulleys and a short timing belt)
and it'll be a ffb system that could break your thumbs if you dial the feedback up too high.

Aparantly a few people have problems with omsi and komsi, something in one of the omsi updates messed it up so it wont work together,

some people are saying that the latest and last version of komsi works, i've downloaded this, but i have not connected my dashboard to it yet, but below is komsi version 2.4, it seems only the server has been updated to version 2.4, everything else is 2.3.

hopefully this will work for you?

Komsi v2.4:

KOMSI2 V2.4.zip

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