Lets share our Experiences with Aerodrums 2

[TD-Drummer]

Hello everyone, my package arrived today! (Seriously, I stalked the window for 2 hours so as not to miss the parcel carrier).

I couldn't wait and set everything up.

Briefly about me in general, I'll soon be 40, have been playing for 2 years and would consider myself somewhere between a beginner and an advanced player. I still have a lot of problem areas, such as triplets, but I can already play more than the money groove. I'm learning at Drumeo and play in the local brass band, where we have a gig in a month.

My main problem so far has not been motivation but time. I have a wife and two small children. That means working for 8 hours, then playing with the kids, then eating, watching TV with the wife... and it's already 10 pm. So where do you find the time to play the drums? Especially since I switched from an electric set to an acoustic set a year ago. Luckily I live in my own house, but even there you shouldn't sit down at the drums at 10 pm.

Anyway, I've now unpacked the package and set it up. It actually went very quickly and easily. It took me most of the time to find the goddamn headphones. Then I plugged them in, played a bit and then installed the app to see where everything was.

After I had familiarized myself a bit, I quickly made a little video. (As I said, beginner/advanced, so don't expect anything breathtaking.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w74e39UqqHc

And now it's almost midnight, I had my usual daily routine and then... yeah... then I played through the whole concerto. Twice. It ended up being everything I hoped it would be!

A few points I noticed in particular.

Positive:
1. The laser pointers on the floor are a godsend. I had Aerdrums 1 there briefly (for an evening). It was pretty cool too, but I never found the position for reference that I had before. Which meant that I had to set up the drumset again every time. The whole process was a pain in the ass. It's so much better in Aerodrums 2. Turn it on, place the chair so that the laser pointer is between my feet and everything is where I expected it to be.

2 I didn't notice any latency. The dynamics are also nice. You can also place a stick on your legs in some passages without accidentally hitting anything.

Negative:
1. I can understand that everything has its fixed position with the prefabricated drum sets. I think that's good too. But at least I don't have the option of saying exactly what I want. For example, I miss the middle tom in the small sets. There's only the high and floor tom. There's a second crash for that, which I don't necessarily need. But if I want to have 3 toms, I have to take such a huge set that it overwhelms me. It would be great if we had a preset and could then activate or deactivate individual options.

2. the hihat is not so easy to control when opening and closing. I work rather minimalistically and only use light pressure from the pedal. This can probably be mapped with the small knobs. However, it would be great to be able to calibrate from which position it should be open and from which position it should be closed.

3. for some songs I have to play triplets on the FloorTom. Here I think I have difficulties with the tracking, because both sticks overlap for the camera and then at higher speed beats are no longer registered cleanly. Maybe you could move the floor tom a bit forward so that it is more to the side of the snare and not to the side of the drummer.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[Wolfgang]

Hallo und willkommen im Aerodrums Forum.

1. In der Liste der vorhandenen Drum Kits findest du weiter unten Kits mit 2 und sogar 3 Hängetoms und 2 Standtoms.

2. Ich habe in deinem Video gesehen, dass du deine Beine ziemlich weit gespreizt hast. Ist nur 'ne Idee, aber versuche mal deine Füße näher an die Laserpunkte zu bringen, vielleicht hilft’s was. Aber ich rate dir auch die anderen Hihats zu probieren, die reagieren nicht unbedingt alle gleich.

3. Das war schon ein „Problem“ mit Aerodrums 1 und ist auch irgendwie ganz normal. Und du hast es auch richtig erkannt, je weiter du dich nach rechts (oder links) drehst, je eher kann der innere Schlagstock die Sicht der Kamera auf den Äußeren verdecken. Und da ist technisch gesehen nichts änderbar (mit nur einer Kamera). Was ich mache (schon seit Jahren) ist, dass ich den jeweils äußeren Stock ein bisschen vorschiebe.

SticksShifted.png (15.51 KiB) Viewed 23738 times

Viel Spaß mit Aerodrums.

[Richard]

Hi, thanks for the feedback and for sharing your video. I'm not sure what Wolfgang said but here are my comments on your negatives:

1. We are in the middle of adding support for drum set customisation which includes not only modifying sounds but also the pieces in a kit and their positioning. This will be coming soon.

2. To control the openness of the hi-hat, the reflective ball needs to move vertically. If it's the case that you're raising/tapping your heel while keeping the ball of your foot on the ground then the reflective ball won't move up and down much. If that's what you're doing then I suggest trying to play with heel-down technique on the hi-hat for much better results. If you are already using heel-down and want the hi-hat to be more sensitive then yes, we will consider adding a setting for this.

3. This used to work much better but we made some changes elsewhere that affected this. We are working on fixing it so you can expect those issues with sticks overlapping to be fixed in a future update.

[TD-Drummer]

Yeah thanks for the answers!

How does updates will work? Cause the device itself is not connectet to the internet. Via App?

I also do sime practise tests withy my band. First the laughed a lot ablut it and
make fun ablut the invisible drumset. But after doing some jamming, they was highly impressed, good sounds, low latency and also i was not that bad. The most impressive part was how fast it is to assemble or put it back into the box. No more waiting for the drummer.

Now i also bought a Quest 3S to put Aerodrums on the next level. Bit iam confused. How does it work? The position of the drumset need to be calibrated. But... does i need the bring the vr drumsite at the same space where the invisilbe one is?

Do vr take over the tracking or is it still the aerodrumset and i need to find the right calibrating spot? Simetimes it seems to work, an other times hits on the floor tom doesnt get recognised or the ride play the bell instead the ride sound.

In my opinion the vr app should automated regocnise the red dods and build the vr set at the exact same position, so iam be able to play, deactivate the vr set and have the set agsin at the correct place.

Additional, i love how iam being able to switch from hihat to double bass. But the hihat go into closed state. Can i change that? I want the hihat open when play double bass.

[Wolfgang]

1. Yes, via App.

2. I’ve made the same experience a couple of years ago. Today every rehearsal and all gigs I’m doing with Aerodrums.

3. For me, it’s a dream which becomes true since Microsoft has shown their HoloLens. Yes, the position of the drumset need to be calibrated. Like you said, you need to bring the VR drums at the same space where the invisible one is. I’m myself very new with all this VR stuff, so I post here what I’ve found on the Kickstarter site.

• Make sure your Quest headset is connected to the same WiFi connection as your Aerodrums 2 device.
• Once connected, you can toggle visibility of the app's UI panel by moving both drumstick tips towards the ground.
• By default, the cursor used to interact with the UI panel is controlled by your head direction (gaze). In this mode, hitting any drum will trigger a button press. You can change this to instead use hands to point / pinch to press from the Configuration panel.
• To get a good experience, it is important that the headset knows where the Aerodrums 2 device is with respect to itself. Some setup steps are required for this:
• You should start by sitting down as you normally would to play Aerodrums 2, facing the device straight,  and then recentering your view.  This is done in the usual way by placing your hand in front of your face and pinching your index finger and thumb together. 
• The app has a Calibration panel that you can reach by activating its tab at the top of the UI panel. When the Calibration panel is active, you will see a yellow arrow on the floor. If you were facing the device straight when you recentered, the arrow will point towards the center of the Aerodrums 2 device. If it doesn't, adjust your position and recenter again.
• The Calibration panel has a 'Snare Height' slider that adjusts how high up the drums are off the floor. If the snare does not appear at the height you are striking it then you should adjust it using this slider. (Note: triggering a hit with the cursor positioned over a slider will move the slider value to where the cursor is.)
• When the Calibration panel is active, the distance (as the Aerodrums 2 device sees it) between your drumstick tips and the center of the snare drum will be displayed above the rendered snare drum. This is the same distance that is displayed for the snare drum when 'Show Hotspots' is enabled in the non-VR app. For best results, this distance should be close to zero when your drumstick tip is placed at the center of the snare drum. In order to achieve this you should adjust the 'Sitting Distance' slider to bring the distance closer to zero.
• The built-in help screens have more information about how the various features work.

Keep in mind, certain features including the WiFi configuration panel and the ability to update the firmware are only available from the non-VR version of the app. And actually, you cannot connect two clients to the camera in the same time.

Additional, i love how iam being able to switch from hihat to double bass. But the hihat go into closed state. Can i change that? I want the hihat open when play double bass.

I’m not sure, but I think you can do that in the App.

[Richard]

In my opinion the vr app should automated regocnise the red dods and build the vr set at the exact same position, so iam be able to play, deactivate the vr set and have the set agsin at the correct place.

Up until a few weeks ago this would have been impossible but Meta just released their "Passthrough Camera API" which lets developers access the Quest's camera feed. This is still an experimental feature so developers aren't yet allowed to publish apps that incorporate the feature. But in theory, it should be possible to recognise the red laser dots using this. It's something we might look at later.

Additional, i love how iam being able to switch from hihat to double bass. But the hihat go into closed state. Can i change that? I want the hihat open when play double bass.

You can do this by going to the Settings panel, the Feet tab and looking for the "Drop Clutch Openness" slider. This value sets the hihat openness used when you're playing double bass.

[TD-Drummer]

Up until a few weeks ago this would have been impossible but Meta just released their "Passthrough Camera API" which lets developers access the Quest's camera feed. This is still an experimental feature so developers aren't yet allowed to publish apps that incorporate the feature. But in theory, it should be possible to recognise the red laser dots using this. It's something we might look at later.

That sound very promising.

But current VR-calibrating is not in a good spot. At least for me. And i understand you cant see trough the MR View. But what about that:

But for MR you need at least the 3D Scan of the room and the position of the headset inside the room. Correct? So how about that: When clicking calibrate, the drumset get invisible. Instead you have a visible line on the ground, from your center position to the point where the drum module should be in the best way. There also could be red markers, where the laser dots should be.

So the drumer activate the modul, activate the MR Headset and need to position himself, so the markers for the module and dots align with the real positions visible in MR. Then he press a button and the position will be safed for allignment and the drumset get visible again.

A little bit like this:
https://youtube.com/shorts/Ng9PK7eW-NI? ... RNy4SYm4gL

Additional, i love how iam being able to switch from hihat to double bass. But the hihat go into closed state. Can i change that? I want the hihat open when play double bass.

You can do this by going to the Settings panel, the Feet tab and looking for the "Drop Clutch Openness" slider. This value sets the hihat openness used when you're playing double bass.
[/quote]

Thanks i will check that.

More on my wishlist for the VR app:
It would be awesome to load up JPGs or PDfs and show them as a set in the MR. Cause the resolution of the Quest 3 is not good enough to see note pages while playing. So i need to decide to use aerodrums2 without VR, i see the notes but not the drumset, or with vr, then i see the drumset but not the notes.

In my opinion the best way would be to be able load up a pdf with for example 4 pages inside the VR app. Then i start the app, select the PDF from a menu and can see all Pages hovering behind the headset, big enough to read everything.

And in additional to that, i am a drumeo user. Having a webbrowser integrated into the MR enviroment would be AWESOME!

[Wolfgang]

But current VR-calibrating is not in a good spot. At least for me. And i understand you cant see trough the MR View.

Why do you say that ?

Instead you have a visible line on the ground, from your center position to the point where the drum module should be in the best way.

Actually, you have a big yellow arrow pointing from your center position to the point where the drum module should be (in the best way). Just align the arrow to the camera.

How to recenter an Oculus Quest app with hand tracking enabled

There also could be red markers, where the laser dots should be.

When you read the posts at Facebook you will find out, that the laser dots aren’t aligned the same from one Aerodrums to another, so I don’t believe that this will be realized.

It would be awesome to load up JPGs or PDfs and show them as a set in the MR. Cause the resolution of the Quest 3 is not good enough to see note pages while playing. So i need to decide to use aerodrums2 without VR, i see the notes but not the drumset, or with vr, then i see the drumset but not the notes.

You are right, it is not possible to read music sheets with the pass-through camera, but despite that, this doesn’t need to be integrated in Aerodrums, your Quest is able to do multitasking. You can run more than one application in your AR environment. Here you can see my Windows 11 desktop with Reaper opened inside the remote desktop App window besides Aerodrums.

Quest3S multitasking.jpg (177.72 KiB) Viewed 19062 times

You can do the same with a browser or any other App. I haven’t tested, but a browser might be able to open local jpg or pdf files. If it were possible to side load MobileSheets for Android it would be perfect.

And in additional to that, i am a drumeo user. Having a webbrowser integrated into the MR enviroment would be AWESOME!

Like I’ve said, you can already open a browser besides Aerodrums, but you will have a problem with the browser audio coming out from your Quest and the Aerodrums audio coming out from the output jack. It might be possible to do Bluetooth streaming from the Quest to Aerodrums like you would do with your smartphone.

[Wolfgang]

And in additional to that, i am a drumeo user. Having a webbrowser integrated into the MR enviroment would be AWESOME!

Like I’ve said, you can already open a browser besides Aerodrums, but you will have a problem with the browser audio coming out from your Quest and the Aerodrums audio coming out from the output jack. It might be possible to do Bluetooth streaming from the Quest to Aerodrums like you would do with your smartphone.

So I have just tested the last and it works surprisingly well. You just need to pair the Quest to Aerodrums. For this use the NON vr App, go to configuration, Bluetooth and “Start Pairing”.
In your Quest go to Parameters, Bluetooth and select the Aerodrums device. I had to do this several times before I could see the Aerodrums device in the Quest. Also the pairing process times out after a wile, so I had to restart it in the Aerodrums App. After I started the Meta Browser, went to Drumeo, opened a page and started a video.

Quest3S multitasking 2.jpg (83.06 KiB) Viewed 19009 times

[TD-Drummer]

Ok, sorry, i really did not know that that the Quest 3 is capable of that. Im more new to the MR thing and the old quest 2 i had before cant do that.

I will give it a try. Thanks!!

But another stupid question, which facebook? When i learned about aerdrums, i searched around to find more insights , community or status social media of aerodrums2, but..

the last post on facebook look like its from 2023 about the new logo https://www.facebook.com/aerodrums/, and also on the linked twitter there are no actual posts