Offline Simulator Game
Kahlil Algya
There are some limitations to the simulator since no real robot arm is connected. Specially the force control will be limited in use. If Simulation Mode is selected in the bottom left corner, it is possible to simulate digital inputs on the I/O page.
Description: URsim is made for the Linux operating system. For running the simulator in another operating system, a virtual machine is needed. A virtual machine is basically just a program, where multiple operating systems can be installed, including Linux.
For easy convenience for non-Linux users, a virtual machine has been created for UR users. This contains a simulator for UR3e, UR5e and UR10e. It is not possible to run more than one simulator simultaneously.
6. If an error saying 'Hardware acceleration is not available' is shown then it may be required to reboot the Windows computer into BIOS setup and enable hardware access to Virtual Machines and then restart Windows, VirtualBox and the virtual machine.
And then I followed as instructed and run the install.sh. Then, the catastrophe started. The install shell started removing pretty much ALL of my packages and software in my PC! I immediately stop the shell and hope to save some but it was already way to late. For comparison, it removed all my ROS installations as well as a few more third party installations on my PC. I have the log file which I goes I cannot attach here but I am very much willing to share with any technical support.
This command would remove EVERYTHING without asking to the user, without giving any warning! It simply accepts everything with -y option if the installation requires sudo apt remove --purge application. I honestly believe that if ANYTHING which needs to be removed or version changed, it should be WARNED.
Workaround: Use my modified script
Script downloaded from link above already has the fix applied, otherwise you will need to modify it, see: Fix bug in ifconfig parsing ljden/URSim_Install_Guides@ae6c220 GitHub
NB: You will need to ensure the net-statistics script has the right network device (see repo for more details)
And then run the modified install.sh script. Looks okay for now but I got the warning The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libcurl4:i386 libnghttp2-14:i386 libpsl5:i386 librtmp1:i386 so I suppose a sudo apt autoremove at some point may cause problems with the ROS and other software again. I disregarded the no longer required warning for these specific packages just as a patch solution but probably not the best.
I also faced the same issue. Fortunately, I tried it on a disposable VM image hence the damage was not severe for me. However, what followed after that consumed my two months. Because of this issue, I was made to believe that there is no way to install URSim in Ubuntu 18 or 16. I am mainly working with the UR ROS drivers which are only supported for the higher Ubuntu versions. Hence to use UR ROS drivers with the URSim simulator, I had to use at least one VM, even if I am on a native Ubuntu 18.04.
The issue I faced was related to the latency of the communication between the URSim VM and the ROS drivers. I managed to make them talk with each other but soon after that the ROS driver started complaining about missing data packets. I tried many suggestions to resolve the error but none worked.
Finally, I started looking at the install script for the URSim and figured out that it removes all other installed packages. It is a sincere request to UR developers to give some attention to the simulator workflow too. With more and more third-party partners coming up with applications/products / Softwares, the URSim is the key functionality to make the development cycle efficient.
Not come across that one before. I would like to hear a little more about the rationale for this, where the mesh folders reside and what any disadvantages and consequences might be. I could certainly make use of an extra 60 GB of space on my m2 drive.
As a 'belt-and-braces' approach, I would not permanently delete these files from your recycle bin / elsewhere until you have tested various regions of the sim world. I have not noticed any problems from taking this delete action.
Those mesh files are there for a reason. Presumably they are there for when you are flying offline. But if you could delete them, why did MS not say that we could delete them and does deleting them cause any slowdown in loading? I still would like a bit more rationale, but may follow your advice to simply move the files to another location until I am satisfied that nothing adverse happens.
Every now and then I and other developers need to test reachability on our apps and with that we throw custom errors when a internet connection use case is met. I feel like we should be able to through the simulator turn off wifi virtually without having to turn it off on our work environment.
Just playing devils advocate here but, how would that be of benefit? It takes one click on the toolbar to turn wifi off/on it would require 2 or more minimum to do the same in the simulator if such an option were available.
Because my team and I do a lot of contact via chatroom and instant messages. So while I'm offline I can miss messages, also I know the internet here at work sometimes messes up going offline and online. Also if I'm connected to a docking station, I got to unplug and everything, when a simple way to do it in Sim would be better.
As for the second, statement, spot on. Please always file enhancement requests as radars rather than just forum comments. In this case, however, we already have a radar tracking this request. Unfortunately, it's not quite a simple change to make becasue the iOS Simulator processes are OS X processes. It's not that easy to stop just simulator apps from using the network.
This feature would be nice for testing error handling via reachability. As far as I can tell, the callback set via SCNetworkReachabilitySetCallback does not get called on an app running on the iOS Simulator if you turn on Wifi on your Mac (after it was previously off). This makes it harder to test error handling on the simulator.
It would be more desirable to test some of these things on the simulator. For things like Cloudkit, on a "real device" testing can be difficult (have to log in and log out constantly to test all sorts of different possibilities). Would be much easier to do on a simulator.
Yes please, this feature is still desired in 2024. The simulator has no wifi option in settings, there's no airplane mode. The developer section does not have a "Network" section. Using Network Link Conditioner to simulate 100% packet loss will not work for a remote mac I am VNC'ing into because then I loose access obviously to the simulator!
I support this request. It is 2024 and testing an app's behaviour while the network is unavailable is as important as ever. Having the Simulator "simulate" flight-mode should be possible, without disconnecting one's workstation, surely...?
In case it helps anyone, I was able to work around this by running Browsermob-proxy on our CI machine that hosts the simulator, and setting the OS-level proxy settings to go through that. Then, I use curl commands (and/or translated them into Swift code) to tell browsermob to blacklist/whitelist access to resources. Now, during our automated tests, we can effectively simulate an internet connection going up and down when trying certain actions.
OK, thanks, @plainsman. I will check again, but lately the status is shown as offline every time I look. It doesn't seem to change for a few seconds at a time. But actual flight seems ok - scenery is there during flight even in areas I haven't flown in before.
I haven't checked this by pausing in the air in the middle of a flight - only when on the ground setting up a new flight. Maybe online status happens only when in the air? Not sure - I just assumed that MSFS is supposed to be online whenever the sim is running. Is that incorrect?
Some more info - just took a flight and after landing and exiting the flight checked the username button. It said "offline" as the status. But the server line, while still greyed out, said "Automatic" and "25ms" and had a green wifi icon. (My computer is wired, not using wifi.)
When you click on the username button there is a dropdown for STATUS, it's not the online status. The options if you click on STATUS are Online, Offline, Busy, Away. That STATUS is to hide from your "Friends" by clicking AWAY.:)
In non-multiplayer mode (which I always use), that Status line is completely greyed out and not clickable, including the blue arrow pointing down at the end of the line, where I am assuming those other status choices are located.
I had recently download the offline simulator off of UR's website, and i got it all set up and running but when i go to initialize the robot, its saying that there is no controller connected. Am i missing something? Or is there something else i have to do to finish the set up to be able to use this simulator? Thanks in advance!
@Jstewart, when you downloaded the offline simulator, you selected a Polyscope version. All of them should be working, but I could have double checked on my side.
I'm using VMware Player and everything works well.
@Nicholas_Francoeur, I posted the screenshot of what is happening. So i have 3 icons on the desktop one for UR3, UR5, UR10. When i clicked on the UR5 one it opened up and went straight to the initialization screen. When i opened up the UR10 file, it took me to a screen where i chose a robot and then add its serial number. But after i did that, the same thing happened
@Jstewart, most of the limitations are listed on the download page of the offline simulator. It is possible to make parts of your programs with some limitations, but it is not possible to control a UR directly from this.
Recently I had a need to do some Arduino simulations. At first, my thoughts went to Wokwi.com after a realization that I forgot my password and have recently started to prefer to work with offline tools I went on a quick search for offline Arduino simulators.
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