How to receive keyboard events from Unreal viewport in Airsim

[karnikram]

Hi,

Is there a way to receive a key press event in the Unreal viewport, using the Python API? There is currently a wait_key function offered, but it only works for key presses made while inside the command console.

I need this because I've configured my Unreal environment to reset upon a key press, for which the focus has to be on the viewport. Upon this reset I want Airsim also to be reset.

[ahmed-elsaharti]

Hi @karnikram, have a look at the keyboard python library. It lets you capture any keypress regardless of window focus (and much more).

Here's a quick sample showing how you could go about doing that:

import keyboard

def key_press(key):
    if key.name == 'x':
        print("X was pressed")
    if key.name == 'c': 
        print("Reset key pressed")
        client.reset() # or maybe even keyboard.send('backspace')        

keyboard.on_release(key_press)

Note: in the code above, you just need to include keyboard.on_release(key_press) once in your code, ie: just add it to the beginning of your code, you don't need to loop over it or anything.

[karnikram]

Thanks for the suggestion, @ahmed-elsaharti. It seems like the library has issues with WSL. So I moved our setup to Windows completely and got it to work. Thanks again!