What I tried is that, instead of receiving the inputs from keyboard or mouse, I took a test to receive external data from another application that has a different process from Blender, and I tried to display the motion produced by the received data in real time on BGE.
It was done with Bullet in Blender 2.47 and it would only work on Windows. Also you need .NET Framework 2.0 or later to run the external application that sends the data to Blender.
Amazing!
Funny how “simple” it was to use external data, using a program to write a txt and then making blender read it!
The only question I got is if the txt file is being edited, how does blender read the edition? since it should only be able to read a saved file. Or the program is all the time both reading and saving the file?
Yeah, all the time, the external software saves the file 15 times a second, and Blender reads it about 15 times a second, which depends on your pc. Both software access the file over and over with setting access flag to lock the file. It prevents the software from reading the file that is being saved.
I see, the theory is nice and easy to understand, I guess that even with limited knowledge on C anyone could do a simple command line based aplication working together with blender.
The flag to lock the file is the only “advanced” thing that I’m missing though. It is coded on the program that writes the txt right?
The only suggestion that I have is if you want faster file access, you should set the txt file to have “temporary” attributes. That way, the computer doesn’t need to reload the file into memory every single time you load/save it. Just remember to return the attributes to “normal” after the program is done.
