Alternate 6dof Head Tracking with FaceTrackNoIR

Big thanks for all the help guys, got it working fine and the recentering hotkey makes a huge difference! Have tinkered a bit with the curves, EWMA etc. and have something thats useable. Just need to get a few hours in to get used to it and set it up a wee bit better.

Thanks again all!

@Fishbot: In the menu, you can set several hotkeys (tracker toggle, view center, reset, axes inhibitor) - You need to enable them first (and set a hotkey).

I have set mine to ctrl+alt+a for view reset, shift+alt+a for tracker toggle.

 

@Username455: I really only followed the readme:

1) extracted the contents to bin/ of DCS folder

2) fired up FTNOIR, loaded DCS.ini profile from the bin folder

3) confirmed that tracking works, the dropdown menu on the right should read FreeTrack

4) Started DCS -> quick mission

 

Once the mission had loaded, the head tracker was on and running smoothly. I quit and reloaded the mission, then played through it and landed after success - with no crashes at all.

Thanks Caldwell, I guess I can try reinstalling dcs. Slightly off topic, can I uninstall/reinstall without losing my control settings? Do I just make a backup of my .lua? will tracks still work?

Fishbot, I have smoothing on at 10, min at 70, max at 70, and curve at 10. You can use that as a starting point. For curve I like to give lots of movement in pitch, yaw, and zoom and just a little movement in roll, x, and y. Deadzone around 5 or so.

@ironstrike: I have started a thread, which can be used to request improvements to the headtracker API. I would appreciate it, if you would also post your ideas there (the thread is still a bit short...).

@Santini35: Have you loaded the fix for FaceTrackNoIR 1.5? It fixes a bug in the EWMA-filter: this bug can cause the view to freeze in any direction. Unchecking the EWMA-checkbox will give you a very unstable view!

@jmod: unfortunately, I don't have W7 64-bit. So I had others do the testing for me. I don't know the specific quirks of W7 . I'm kind of depending on you to test it for me... Remember: It's still an alpha-release :music_whistling:.

I just tried the new version with Win7 64bit and it works very well, no freeze ups but I do get some graphics tearing during movement, dont know if its related to using ftnoir

I just tried the new version with Win7 64bit and it works very well, no freeze ups but I do get some graphics tearing during movement, dont know if its related to using ftnoir

That tearing is Vsync being off.

Nate

I use Win7 x64 and can confirm that it is working though I haven't spent much time using it.

What I would really like to control is the tracking not reacting to small head movements better. I am assuming that the NeutralZone and tracking curves are the key here but I am also a little confused as to the effects of the EWMA filter/settings.

I think its good in that you have a wide variety of options, to the newbie its almost like there are too many.

If I get into it more I may have a go at writing a guide to help others which you can use and change (no strings attached) as you see fit.

I thought I would post a little update here on V4Friend's awesome FaceTrack program. I got it working for a day or so and loved it, the FaceTracking is truly incredible. Thanks so much for the headtrack API, by the way, Eagle Dynamics.

My Computer:

27-inch iMac with 8-core i7 (4 virtual, hyperthreaded) 12GB RAM running Boot Camp with default Boot Camp drivers

Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit

The first thing I noticed was that during the install of FaceTrack I needed to install the FaceAPI from a different site because I was missing some .dll's. After that, the program launched and worked correctly. I was unable to install v150 though, it was missing at least 10 DLL files. I didn't fool around with it too much, but even with installing it over the v130 program files it still had issues. I augmented a few of the DLL files, but I figured that v130 worked fine and v150 wasn't worth the effort of finding the DLLs online. V130 worked great, besides the occasional crash caused by stopping the FTNoIR server or FaceAPI from the program. I would have to close the program directly to avoid the crash.

After updating some drivers from my Mac OSX install CD to get my keyboard to work correctly, it seems that I broke the v130 tracker engine. I can start the program fine, and it even detects my camera and works fine up until it finds my face. Once it recognizes my face it crashes. I have tried fresh installs of pretty much every program that works with FaceTrack and I cannot get around it. It seems I won't be able to use the FaceTracking or the program anymore... :(

Another thing to note, and this seems to be an issue for other users as well, is that the Options menu on DCS A-10C is inaccessible once the headtracker files are put in the bin folder. I can remove them and access the Options, so it seems to be isolated to the HeadTracker.dll file. Running the DCS A-10C program as administrator works to a point, it stops the crash on loading a mission, but you still cannot access the Options without the application hanging.

Please help me out here, I just bought a new joystick for DCS, and I don't want to shell out a couple hundred dollars for TrackIR.

Edit: Looks like all the issues (minus the Options menu not working) were pretty much a result of my driver incompatibilities, and the missing DLLs were because of a bad installation. Also, I made this comment just to help the developer, not as a negative review. This is a really great program, and works very well once you get it configured. Still can't get v150 to work. I'm going to re-install with the newest version and see if it works.

Another thing to note, and this seems to be an issue for other users as well, is that the Options menu on DCS A-10C is inaccessible once the headtracker files are put in the bin folder.

I had the same issue, found that if you put the .dll file in the headtracking directory that the zip file creates if you extract it into the bin directory, you can get into options and facetracking works in the game.

I randomly google'd facetracknoir and found out 1.6 is released! downloading now! Hopefully stability is increased.

also, it adds compatibility to sandy bridge processors.

Definitely more stable now, especially when turning to look behind you. I havent had it lose my face yet which is awesome! Still some small jitters when trying to focus on one point, but definitely improved.

If anyone was fed up with previous versions, they should give this one a try.

been using 30 smoothing, 80min, 80max, 40 curve fyi.