Re: [PATCH v4 01/24] input: Add ff-memless-next module

[Roland Bosa <rbosa@logitech.com>]

On 05/20/2014 02:27 AM, Michal Malý wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 of May 2014 11:05:58 Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
>> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 10:35:25AM +0200, Michal Malý wrote:
>>> Hi Dmitry,
>>>
>>> thank you for reviewing this.
>>>
>>> On Tuesday 13 of May 2014 23:38:06 Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 05:02:00PM +0200, Michal Malý wrote:
>>>>> +
>>>>> +/** DEFINITION OF TERMS
>>>>> + *
>>>>> + * Combined effect - An effect whose force is a superposition of
>>>>> forces
>>>>> + *                   generated by all effects that can be added
>>>>> together.
>>>>> + *                   Only one combined effect can be playing at a
>>>>> time.
>>>>> + *                   Effects that can be added together to create a
>>>>> combined + *                   effect are FF_CONSTANT, FF_PERIODIC and
>>>>> FF_RAMP. + * Uncombinable effect - An effect that cannot be combined
>>>>> with
>>>>> another effect. + *                       All conditional effects -
>>>>> FF_DAMPER, FF_FRICTION, + *                       FF_INERTIA and
>>>>> FF_SPRING are uncombinable. + *                       Number of
>>>>> uncombinable effects playing simultaneously + *
>>>>> depends on the capabilities of the hardware. + * Rumble effect - An
>>>>> effect generated by device's rumble motors instead of + *
>>>>> force feedback actuators.
>>>>> + *
>>>>> + *
>>>>> + * HANDLING OF UNCOMBINABLE EFFECTS
>>>>> + *
>>>>> + * Uncombinable effects cannot be combined together into just one
>>>>> effect,
>>>>> at + * least not in a clear and obvious manner. Therefore these
>>>>> effects
>>>>> have to + * be handled individually by ff-memless-next. Handling of
>>>>> these
>>>>> effects is + * left entirely to the hardware-specific driver,
>>>>> ff-memless-next merely + * passes these effects to the
>>>>> hardware-specific
>>>>> driver at appropriate time. + * ff-memless-next provides the UPLOAD
>>>>> command to notify the hardware-specific + * driver that the userspace
>>>>> is
>>>>> about to request playback of an uncombinable + * effect. The
>>>>> hardware-specific driver shall take all steps needed to make + * the
>>>>> device ready to play the effect when it receives the UPLOAD command. +
>>>>> *
>>>>> The actual playback shall commence when START_UNCOMB command is
>>>>> received.
>>>>> + * Opposite to the UPLOAD command is the ERASE command which tells +
>>>>> *
>>>>> the hardware-specific driver that the playback has finished and that +
>>>>> *
>>>>> the effect will not be restarted. STOP_UNCOMB command tells
>>>>> + * the hardware-specific driver that the playback shall stop but the
>>>>> device + * shall still be ready to resume the playback immediately.
>>>>> + *
>>>>> + * In case it is not possible to make the device ready to play an
>>>>> uncombinable + * effect (all hardware effect slots are occupied), the
>>>>> hardware-specific + * driver may return an error when it receives an
>>>>> UPLOAD command. If the
>>>>
>>>> This part concerns me. It seems to me that devices supporting
>>>> "uncombinable" effects are in fact not memoryless devices and we should
>>>> not be introducing this term here. If the goal is to work around limited
>>>> number of effect slots in the devices by combining certain effects then
>>>> it needs to be done at ff-core level as it will be potentially useful
>>>> for all devices.
>>>
>>> Force generated by a conditional effect (referred to as "uncombinable"
>>> within ff-memless-next to make the distinction clear) depends on a
>>> position of the device. For instance the more a device is deflected from
>>> a neutral position the greater force FF_SPRING generates. A truly
>>> memoryless device would have to report its position to the driver, have
>>> it calculate the appropriate force and send it back to the device. IMHO
>>> such a loop would require a very high USB polling rate to play
>>> conditional effects with acceptable quality.
>>>
>>> We know for a fact that at least many (all?) Logitech devices that support
>>> conditional effects use this "semi-memoryless" approach where FF_CONSTANT
>>> and FF_PERIODIC are handled in the memoryless fashion and conditional
>>> effects are uploaded to the device (in a somewhat simplified form). The
>>> amount of effects that can be uploaded to a device is limited which is
>>> why ff-memless-next uses two steps (UPLOAD/ERASE and START/STOP) to
>>> handle these effects.
>>>
>>> Conditional effects - even if they are of the same type - cannot be
>>> effectively combined into one because superposition doesn't seem to work
>>> here so they have to be processed one by one.
>>>
>>> If we ever come across a really memoryless device it should not be
>>> particularly difficult to add another callback to ff-memless-next which
>>> would emulate conditional effects with constant force.
>>
>> Thank you for the explanation. This further solidifies for me the idea
>> that handling of such effects that are in fact uploaded to and managed
>> by the device should not be handled by the memoryless core but rather by
>> the driver itself. I.e. such drivers should implement their own play(),
>> upload(), erase(), etc, and decide whether to use a hardware slot for
>> the effect or handle effect in memoryless fashion (if possible). We can
>> open ff-memless to allow such drivers to use parts of memoryless
>> handling.
>>
>> Thanks.
> 
> To bring this to a conclusion we could go from, would this be an acceptable 
> solution?
> 
> - Have the HW-specific driver talk directly to ff-core and reimplement upload(), 
> play(), etc.
> - Rewrite "ff-memless-next" so that it is not a self-contained module but a 
> library of functions.
> - Have the driver either:
>   - Upload an effect to a device directly if the device can fully manage the 
> effect by itself.
>   - Use provided timing functions to know when an effect should start, stop, 
> restart etc...
>   - Use provided timing AND processing functions to combine effects that can be 
> combined into one, calculate periodic waveforms etc?
> 
> I have no problem with throwing my current approach away but before I start 
> working on a new one I'd like to know which way to go...
> 
> Thanks,
> Michal

Hi everyone

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Roland Bosa and I work for Logitech,
more specifically the gaming group. I have been tasked to look into
gaming device support for Linux and I just started following this list
and studying the kernel code related to the Logitech Force Feedback
devices. The 'ff-memless-next' module sounds tailor-made for our
devices. Please let me know how I can help with its development.

Thanks
Roland