Aerodrums and Aered forums

(Using Aerodrums 2) I’ve noticed a small issue recently and I’m not sure if there is an adjustment I can make. I have a kit with a china cymbal on my right side by the floor tom. It will trigger just fine for many songs, but then suddenly in the middle of a song…it’s gone. In other words, when I hit the space where I’ve placed the china cymbal, I get no sound. If I edit the kit, and move the cymbal a bit, and save the kit, it comes back. But then it happens again a few songs later. Looking at the kit from the top view, the cymbal is far on the right side, is it missing hits because it’s so close to the cutoff area? Is there a setting I can tweak to fix this?

It is unlikely that the china cymbal can be hit one minute and the next it can't be. If you are confident about that let us know because it would suggest a bug we haven't seen before. I think you will find that once you locate a position to hit the air that triggers the china cymbal then that same position will consistently and reliably trigger it.

The way we determine which piece was hit is by looking at which piece is closest to the drumstick tip when the hit was detected. The closest piece is the one whose "hotspot" is closest to the drumstick tip. Every drum has a hotspot which is a 3D point that indicates where it is normally struck. For drums, this is always in the centre of the drum. For cymbals, it is usually offset and will be somewhere between the centre and the edge of the cymbal. In the Settings panel there is a Hotspot Cutoff value that defaults to 0.35m. This value determines how close your hits need to be to the hotspot to trigger the piece. I would suggest increasing this value to see if that helps with the missed hits. There is also a Show Hotspots checkbox that will show you how close the drumstick tips are to the closest hotspot. You can use this to locate the optimal position where the china needs to be hit to trigger it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe you have been using the VR version of the Aerodrums 2 app a lot. In that case, we still use the hotspots to determine which piece was hit and then means that the size of cymbals is not taken into account. For this reason, it can sometimes look like you're hitting one piece but a different piece is being triggered. In addition, if the VR headset's understanding of the 3D space is not perfectly aligned with Aerodrums 2's understanding of the 3D space then you can also have a situation where it looks like you're hitting one piece but it's either missed or a different piece is being triggered.

We have implemented some improvements into the VR app recently that fix this. We now send data over WiFi from the VR headset to the Aerodrums 2 device so that the piece you expect to trigger based on what you see in VR is always the piece that will trigger. This isn't released yet but it will very likely be released in the next VR app update.

One last thing - if you have cymbal choking enabled from the Configuration panel and you reach too far when hitting a cymbal then it can activate the choke which will make the cymbal sound fade quickly. It's probably not related to your problem but in case you notice this then you can try to disable cymbal choking and see if it helps. If it does help then the solution is to move the china cymbal further away to prevent choking when you didn't intend it.

Richard,

Thanks for the quick reply. I have the choke cymbals turned off, but I will look at the hotspot cutoff setting and see if that makes a difference. I don't use the VR app all that much, but I'm glad you are still updating the app. I am using the Meta Quest in this video, I really wanted people to see how cool it is to see the drums in VR while air drumming. Also, here's a link to the video, I hope you can add it to your user videos section. Take care, and I'm really having a blast with Aerodrums 2.
https://youtu.be/cGvgR0yPOjs

Richard,

I upped the Hot Spot settings, and that does help the whole kit a bit, but the cymbal still seems to disappear sometimes. What's interesting is when I look at the app, the hot spot line doesn't draw on the cymbal when it doesn't trigger. I'm going to completely move my setup and see if that makes a difference.
I sometimes use sticks that have a resin coating on them that's a bit shiny. Would this in any way cause it not to trigger? Because they seem to trigger just fine for a few songs, and then suddenly they don't.