Update FaceTrackNoIR

[MavericK96 0]

FaceAPI is not currently a practical alternative to putting something on your head, if you don't want to build it you can buy TrackClip Pro.

How well does the TrackClip Pro + Freetrack on a webcam work?

[alan.rio 18]

Guys, I'm sure you have taken this into consideration already. But....

I haven't tried it yet, but I have been watching the thread and i've seen some posts mentioning it works better with natural light or infrared lights. It occured to me that for most people using artificial light, artificial light would be in the form of light from light bulbs or florescent tubes etc. These will be emitting light with fluctuations of 50 hertz (in europe), and this may interfere. It may be that the reason people think the natural light and infrared(=LED's) work better is because there is no high frequency fluctuations of the light.

[Richey79 10]

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The Trackclip Pro will work exactly as well as these: which is to say almost precisely as well as TrackIR5 (I made myself a FreeTrack gizmo, but got fed up with its ergonomic shortcomings and spent some dough).

Make sure you do your research over on the FreeTrack forums to choose a webcam which has an easily removable IR filter. Some don't need it removing: the PS Eyetoy is supposed to be good, or you could use a Wii controller if you have a spare one lying around.

If you don't buy a Trackclip Pro (it's easily possible to make better yourself), get proper IR LEDs and power it using batteries rather than USB cable unless you have a decent amount of experience/confidence with electronics.

Head-tracking adds so much to Arma 2. Situational awareness becomes second-nature and the whole experience is far more relaxing.

[kremator 1065]

This is absolutely superb. Yes there is jittering but WOW it's very impressive. With a bit mroe work this will be a gaming standard !

BRAVO !

[Richey79 10]

When you look at the face recognition technology that's already out there in relatively cheap compact cameras, this is obviously at the stage where it's soon going to be available to everyone at a low price.

Natal was looking quite promising. A standardised set of cameras and MS's budget and experience brought to bear to create the software. Throughout development they said they wanted to keep it good and cheap, and figures of $50 and $70 were suggested.

Now, it seems it's going to cost around $150, and people have commented that it didn't look very responsive in preview videos. At that price, it's going to end up little cheaper (if any) than TrackIR in the UK. I'm guessing it's going to be of most interest to people who can't stand wearing any tracking clip at all and aren't worried about a totally smooth experience.

Sensorless movement-tracking needs its 'killer app' that makes it popular amongst the general population, to encourage R&D companies it's worth the investment. PC gamers who are keen on sims aren't usually bothered by having to wear another piece of kit - they've got so many peripherals already.

[Z.agge 10]

Well... I got this working. In sort of. My problem is that when I use it with ArmA 2 it is very unstable. It zooms and unzooms and rotates my view very randomly. I think I should do something to my settings in the FaceTrackNoIR, but I don't know what. Anyone got good ideas, examples or something else useful? This software seems great and I'd like to get it working 8)

[Pyronick 21]

When you look at the face recognition technology that's already out there in relatively cheap compact cameras, this is obviously at the stage where it's soon going to be available to everyone at a low price.

Natal was looking quite promising. A standardised set of cameras and MS's budget and experience brought to bear to create the software. Throughout development they said they wanted to keep it good and cheap, and figures of $50 and $70 were suggested.

Now, it seems it's going to cost around $150, and people have commented that it didn't look very responsive in preview videos. At that price, it's going to end up little cheaper (if any) than TrackIR in the UK. I'm guessing it's going to be of most interest to people who can't stand wearing any tracking clip at all and aren't worried about a totally smooth experience.

Sensorless movement-tracking needs its 'killer app' that makes it popular amongst the general population, to encourage R&D companies it's worth the investment. PC gamers who are keen on sims aren't usually bothered by having to wear another piece of kit - they've got so many peripherals already.

Natal has a lot of potential.

It just needs to be adopted in a broad scale of games. I hope it will catch on, TrackIR needs competition IMO.

[v4friend 10]

Hello Z.agge,

There are some things you can try. At first, I advise you (and everyone else for that matter), to start with some 'slow' settings. That means you should enter values smaller that 100 for the sensitivity-sliders, a smoothing-value of 10-20 and a Neutral-zone of about 5-10.

Doing that will probably make head-tracking less responsive, but also less 'shaky'.

Then you can try tweaking the settings, to improve responsiveness again...

B.T.W. I'm working on a few improvements, to decrease jitter, make 'zero-ing' possible and to be able to start/stop headtracking while playing...

@Kremator: Thanks! Positive feedback is really inspiring!

Edited May 31, 2010 by V4Friend

[Z.agge 10]

Thanks V4Friend! Your help was really appreciated and the program works now almost well. It's still very inaccurate, but maybe some tweaking will fix that 8) By the way, this program is awesome 8D

[MavericK96 0]

B.T.W. I'm working on a few improvements, to decrease jitter, make 'zero-ing' possible and to be able to start/stop headtracking while playing...

Sounds great, thanks for the continued support! I have no doubt that with some further development and tweaking this could be a great low-cost alternative to TrackIR.

[Pyronick 21]

Someone ought to make an OpenCV based face tracking API and release it under BSD licence.

TrackIR seriously needs some competition, but I fear that Natal would only split the face tracking game world in two.

[m1n1d0u 29]

i have a problem when i launch FreeTrackNoIR and start recognisation , the statut stay in INITIALIZATION

[v4friend 10]

@M1n1d0u (hard name to type...),

I thought you had it working before:confused:

Have you tried the faceAPI demo, to check if that gives the same result?

FaceTrackNoIR should show you (above the settings) which web-cam faceAPI will use (always the first WDM-input-device it finds). If that is correct, it should work...

B.T.W.: I named my program FaceTrackNoIR because: it tracks your face instead of some LED's. The NoIR actually means two things: No-IR (obvious?) and 'noir' (well, I guess you all know it means 'black', Free-track is made by French guys, so I liked to put in something French as a tribute).

[m1n1d0u 29]

type Cpt.Minidou or Minidou =) oki it's works before but now it doesn't work i have face API demo and same thing stay in initialisation and i'm a french guy =)

[v4friend 10]

Hello Cpt.Minidou,

That's why I made my remark about the noir-thing :-)

Well, if the demo does the same, something must be wrong with your web-cam or the faceAPI installation. All I can advise you is to reinstall the software for both...

[m1n1d0u 29]

i do this and same thing sorry ... =)

[v4friend 10]

Well, that's a strange problem. Software doesn't usually change itself, so if it works and nothing changes, it keeps working...

Usually in such a case, I ask my client: what has changed, after it worked?

[S-M 10]

Just testing this at the moment, seam to have managed to get it working reasonably well with an x360 camera as long as i don't look to the extremes of up or down (then it jitters)

Finding it disorienting at the moment though, and getting killed all the time lmao, might try and record a little video.

---------- Post added at 10:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:11 PM ----------

Ok, had a little play, initially i found i had a problem with leaning, for some reason they are reversed, and clicking the option to reverse them, has no effect, i am sure i could config ARMA differently to fix this.

I cant seam to fly choppers like this as i keep crashing into the ground :D

To be honest i never use "freelook" anyway in this game, i suspect the people who do use it, would not need so much time to adjust to the different play styles.

If i watch the No-Ir screen it tracks my face really well, but the translation into the game is not so smooth.

Never recorded my gameplay footage before, so was unsure how to do it (i believe Xfire has the option but i need to fiddle with a config file to allow it in ARMA)

So i installed FRAPS, but it will not let me record for longer than 30 secs.

Here you go :)

[rezalt 0]

Hey S-M,

thanks for the vid. :)

Could you please tell me the settings you use in the program? because it runs quite abit better for you, then it does for me.

[S-M 10]

I'm chilling in bed at the moment with my overclocked HTC Hero (690mhz ftw) :D

But i will get the settings tomorrow before work.

[S-M 10]

Here is the contents of my config file.

[Tracking]

Smooth=7

NeutralZone=6

sensYaw=90

sensPitch=90

sensRoll=90

sensX=70

sensY=70

sensZ=70

invertYaw=false

invertPitch=false

invertRoll=false

invertX=false

invertY=false

invertZ=false

[GameProtocol]

Selection=0

Cheers.

[MavericK96 0]

There's really not a lot of free looking in that video. Could you just post one of you standing still and looking around perhaps?

[S-M 10]

Will do tonight after work, although like i said, i only have about 30 secs worth of recording with this version of fraps.

Like i said previous, left and right works fine

Lean is reversed

Forwards and backwards into the screen works ok ish

Up and Down works until a set point, and then it does the crazy parkinsons jitter that somebody posted about.

One thing i did do is adjust the timeout from 2 secs to 1 sec in the software.

When i first tried it out it was crazy unplayable, so maybe further tweaks will help matters, it does seam a little laggy though?

The software says that it is taking around 3-5% of my cpu, so maybe the people with lower cpu power are having troubles because they don't have any to spare?

[Herbal Influence 10]

Sounds great, thanks for the continued support! I have no doubt that with some further development and tweaking this could be a great low-cost alternative to TrackIR.

I think this is much more that "a great low-cost alternative to TrackIR".

I think it's revolutionary because it is (like BIS Games) extremely "open":

It is open to recognizing not only head movements but also movements of the

- lips/mouth (shouting, silenced, feeling sad, grinning, receiving pain, speech adaption/simulation; for british: even a 'stiff upper lip' could be simulated :p)

- eyes (even more visual options: one eye closed, both closed (two times = reload weapon), both formed to slits = could mean zooming in and standing still, etc. etc.)

- eyebrows (to simulate "frowing", "pain", "astonishment", etc. etc.)

- hands (on keyboard? raised? - to hiss the "white flag" = don't shoot = surrender :p) etc. etc.

- shoulders (shrugging, hanging, raised, uneven (for leaning), turned (for turning the whole avatar corpse around) ....

There's a lot to imagine ....

And the new six core Cpu from AMD (socket: AM3, price: about a 200 Euros) will make it all run smoothlessly. :D

Great idea, guys !

Edited June 4, 2010 by Herbal Influence

[maddogx 13]

...smoothlessly

"Smoothless". That's a new one. :D

Anyway, this software sounds like some pretty cool stuff, but has anyone actually managed to make it work without jitter?