Free face tracking - No lamps, reflexes or anything - that WORKS!

Hmmm... seams I can have this running on my laptop as a server, offloading CPU usage, and just run the client on game PC. I'll have to give that a try :)

Interesting, how did it fare?

Very difficult to setup. It seems there's no way to tell which mapping inside the Black Shark control setup relates to which axis of the virtual joystick. For example inside the FaceTrackNoir program I can see z-rotation is clearly the roll of my head, as it should be. But when I go into Black Shark JOY_RZ doesn't relate, neither does JOY_ARZ, JOY_FRZ or any of the others it should be. As I said huge potantial but setup is a huge can of worms. I just spent a good hour trying to figure out 6-axis to no avail. Wish I'd saved my orginal 2-axis & 4-axis configuration within Black Shark now as that was working great and I don't seem to be able to repeat it. Need more time on this...

Hope others will realise the potantial here and jump on the band wagon. Kinda puzzled by the lack of interest so far.

I must be a complete tard with this. I downloaded the Face API (thanks ryan) and follwed instructions as follows:

1. Open PPJoy and set up joystick10

2. Set it as 4 axis

3. Open facetrack, virtual joystic setting pp joy 10

4. Start Tracker source, cue face and yellow lines.

Now what because I tried the following:

(in PP JOY) Configuration Mapping for axis, scan, ppjoy says "reading joystick input", i wobble my head and there is no response.

Try and assign axis in FC2 doesnt recognise my head movements.

Manually tell FC2 that PPJOY AXIS x and Y or for vertical and horizontal, play game no response.

I have a feeling it might be because I have a crap VGA webcam, gonna pick up a better one tomorrow and try it out but am I missing some step in setting up PPJoy, Facetracknoir and FC2?

Thanks for your help people!

Icould never get scan in PPJoy to work, neither can the setup in FC register the axis - only when you click the Axis Tune button and in-game

I must be a complete tard with this. I downloaded the Face API (thanks ryan) and follwed instructions as follows:

 

1. Open PPJoy and set up joystick10

2. Set it as 4 axis

3. Open facetrack, virtual joystic setting pp joy 10

4. Start Tracker source, cue face and yellow lines.

 

Now what because I tried the following:

 

(in PP JOY) Configuration Mapping for axis, scan, ppjoy says "reading joystick input", i wobble my head and there is no response.

Try and assign axis in FC2 doesnt recognise my head movements.

Manually tell FC2 that PPJOY AXIS x and Y or for vertical and horizontal, play game no response.

 

I have a feeling it might be because I have a crap VGA webcam, gonna pick up a better one tomorrow and try it out but am I missing some step in setting up PPJoy, Facetracknoir and FC2?

 

Thanks for your help people!

I'm not sure about FC2, but it's the same in Black Shark. Asign axis doesn't detect your head movement as an axis. You must click the empty slot you want to assign an input to (in PPJoy column), then press ADD and then select KEY / BUTTON and choose the correct joystick input. The problem is, there's no way of knowing which joystick input relates to which axis of head movement.

After choosing one, I went to AXIS TUNE and moved my head to see if it was the right one.

As a note, for me all the active inputs were the ones without an A, F or V prefix. ie. JOY_X, JOY_Y, SLIDER1 etc. all work and VJOY_X, FJOYX and VJOY_X were all inactive. Hope this makes sense.

By the way, I got 2 axis working again very well. Very responsive and smooth. The only problem is the centering is sometimes off, and the = centre button doesn't work for me within the game.

There's a nice post on this software over on The Way I Play (TWIP) forums. http://www.thewayiplay.com/mainforum/index.php?topic=1177.msg18477#msg18477

One suggestion of note was a recommendation of the Playstation Eye camera (60 FPS for cheap). [sorry if I missed that in here as well... I'm catching up after being out of town for a week].

CyBerkut, that's a really nice thread. Good find, thanks.

And they mention us too over there. *waves at thewayiplay* :bye_2:

Its a bit hit and miss isnt it!!

Well I got a new webcam and for a heads up if anyone is trying to use this with a VGA camera (or maybe Im just in the past) the head tracking software loses your track really easily on VGA compared to a 2m pixel one.

Like you guys said, i did all the same again and went into FC2 assigned X and Y and it worked!! (I then messed around with PPJoy and it stopped working so Im starting again).

Thanks for the advice!

Let us know how it goes :)

I have just tried this in Rise of Flight and it worked perfectly using the FakeTrackIR setting! Slight jidder but nothing like in FC2.

So something is lost in translation from PPJoy to FC2.

These are my settings for ROF:

Decent results with these settings and a good starting point for anyone wanting to give this a go. However the = key isn't resetting my view so I'm staring down into the cockpit. Also, notice the X and Y movement is less smooth when compared with X & Y rotation. Not sure why this is.

Just a hunch/suggestion to try re = not resetting your view. I have the same issue with track-ir in windows 7 if I don't run both the track-ir software and the sim in question, as administrator. Right click, run as admin.

This is always the case for me unless I turn off UAC. I have the same problem with voice comm applications, such as ventrilo or teamspeak. I can't key-up my mic unless I run them as admin on windows 7/vista.

-Mack

Just a hunch/suggestion to try re = not resetting your view. I have the same issue with track-ir in windows 7 if I don't run both the track-ir software and the sim in question, as administrator. Right click, run as admin.

 

This is always the case for me unless I turn off UAC. I have the same problem with voice comm applications, such as ventrilo or teamspeak. I can't key-up my mic unless I run them as admin on windows 7/vista.

 

-Mack

Interesting, this has to be tested as well :)

I'm trying to make it work in Win7 64 bit but I realize that until the moment one walks in the test mode:cry:

when i run in normal mode i tryit to lock virtual joystick and bringme a error to find virtual joistick

http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/5503/gafga.jpg

Can you Illustrate the tutorial;)

I run FC2

Hi, manfrez01. Did you install PPJoy?

http://sourceforge.net/projects/facetracknoir/forums/forum/1150909/topic/3807344

The developer says we could try a tool called TrackIRFixer.

Titles supported by TrackIRFixer v1.2.0.14:

DCS: Black Shark (bin\x86\stable\newinput.dll)

LOMAC: Flaming Cliffs 2 (bin\x86\stable\newinput.dll)

Real easy to use and I can confirm that it works. I still get some unwanted head movement but I get full tracking along all axes.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/facetracknoir/forums/forum/1150909/topic/3807344

 

The developer says we could try a tool called TrackIRFixer.

 

 

 

Real easy to use and I can confirm that it works. I still get some unwanted head movement but I get full tracking along all axes.

Confirmed. Works with BS. There's something funny going on with the axis though unless it's my configuration. Seems my pitch (or head tilt) translates to y-axis (higher/lower seat) in game. Again, needs tweaking, but I think maybe an improvement over PPJoy.

You will need to invert Pitch and X roll (top right in the FTNIR settings), hope it works.

Seems my pitch (or head tilt) translates to y-axis (higher/lower seat) in game.

If inverting doesn't work try disabling Roll (Z axis) - it seems a little hard to have natural movent on both.

I can't seem to get a rock solid view along two axes, ie. if I look down and to the side on the instrument panel I get some bopping even though I hold my head still :wassat:

Hi RK. I am about at the place where you are at.

Spent at many hours over the course of the last few weeks reading forums, adjusting settings, etc. trying to get this set up so that it is workable and stable.

I just cant get rid of the camera "wandering" when my head is still. The trouble is is that there are so many variables to try and adjust including the axis curves and dead zones in game... I sometimes end up with worse results than I had before I started! :)

I am thinking that what we are seeing, may be as good as this is going to get...?

It just may be.

Can you imagine if ED implemented FaceAPI natively in the coming DCS? That would be a first and a power feature for real.

Can anyone help me confirm if:

It works better with better frame-rate cams?

and

If the bopping is persistant in ArmA and other games?

EDIT: know it sounds silly asking for an implementation of something we cant get to work 100% - implicitly herein lies the hope that the good folks at ED are smart enough to develop something with FaceAPI that is rock solid.

Hi, manfrez01. Did you install PPJoy?

Yes, my frend i have instaled ppJoy but only works when i have this settings (safe mode) on windows 7 64 bit

I need to do this for work properly

First i need to do this

CMD

BCDEDIT -SET TESTSIGNING ON

and reebot sistem then-... windows allows me to use all on FC2 and it work but only in windows safe mode.

Thanks in advance ;)

hey manfrez :)

Try the new method I found with TrackIRFixer instead of ppjoy - then you can use faketrackir instead of virtual joystick - it works better. Good luck, buddy

I've written a little bit about my progress with this in the other thread a while back. Currently I feel that my slow CPU is totally hampering me from using this at all. The only way to get it smooth enough in Arma II is to increase the smoothing but that introduces massive "head-lag" ;) to the movements. Also, the games framerates are reduced to such a high degree that it just isn't fun playing. We'll see how it works out with a new processor in the future.

Edit:

Now I've done some thorough testing in Black Shark and come up with the following settings that worked best for me:

Using the 20100716-version I used "Fake TrackIR" as protocol with 2 samples smoothing (EWMA) and a neutral zone of 4.

[Direction] [sensitivity] [reduction factor] (inverted)

Yaw 300 65

Pitch 300 65 (Inverted)

Roll 200 80

X 21 92 (Inverted)

Y 21 70

Z 8 100

Still it is sluggish and induces motion sickness in me with the drowsy response, most probably because of my processor not keeping up (see signature, also my web camera is listed there). Hope this helps somebody looking for information.

damn, wanted to try it aswell, but the track ir fixer file is no longer available, as far as my google for it goes, all of them link to the respective site from naturalpointofview blog. is this a big file? any chance of making it available privately?

thx for help ryan. +rep