Update FaceTrackNoIR

[v4friend 10]

I can't say I have a lot of experience with OpenCv, but in my work we do use a good deal of computer-vision based technologies, like AR, fids, face and blob tracking, optical flow and whatnot... Most of those we can do through openCv.

I did implement a Haar-face tracker not too long ago.. it got cut short and is now parked aside as just one more prototype, but it does pick up your face relatively well, and keeps your face framed in a box (that was for something completely unrelated to head tracking)

It is a little bouncy right now too.... but I suspect that with some good axis independent smoothing and filtering, it could work quite well.

When I get to work today I'll try to dig it up again... openCv is really not that hard... (all the dificult bits are already done :) ) maybe we can add the Haar feature-tracking as a... erm.. feature :D

Cheers

Hey HarvesterR,

That would be really a nice... feature :) I'm anxious to hear from you :bounce3:

[shardana 10]

Yes ''ve been following this software around different game forums, and i guess that opencv could be the real breakthrough that would allow this software to be 100% perfect!!! let's see if its creator can make it work!! by the way I use it on Il-2 and it is almost perfect.... almost..... thanks to all involved and to arma fans! shardana

[armapaddy 10]

I tried this out way back when it was first posted and though I thought it was cool and had great potential it wasn't really feasible to use because of jitter etc. Just downloaded the updates and had another go today and it has improved so much.

Thanks V4Friend & ronski!

Look forward to the next update.

p.s. you can add the Philips SPC230NC to the list of compatable webcams. Works great.

Also worked with a Trust WB-1400T.

[v4friend 10]

Just downloaded the updates and had another go today and it has improved so much.

Thanks V4Friend & ronski!

Look forward to the next update.

p.s. you can add the Philips SPC230NC to the list of compatable webcams. Works great.

Also worked with a Trust WB-1400T.

Hello armapaddy,

Thanks! The next update will be released shortly: just need to finish some small items :cool:

I'll post here, when it's available.

[ben_s 11]

I've just had a go at testing this software in ArmA II.

Works very well, The only 2 problems I have is that it puts me into perminant lean left/right state, and if I look at the center of the screen, it defults to looking lower. At the gun. But, If I look up I can see, it just feels uncomfortable.

Great software. Looking forward to any future developments. :)

And the fact it works at all is surprising with a very old iCam 320 which I dug out from an old pile of boxes, and a Pentium4 proccessor. Anyway, is there a way to stop freetrack/facetracknoir from making the player lean? And changing where the "center" is or something. As that would be helpful.

Again, good work. ;)

[vohk 10]

Anyway, is there a way to stop freetrack/facetracknoir from making the player lean? And changing where the "center" is or something. As that would be helpful

'Roll' (rotation around the z-axis) is what makes you lean L/R. You can adjust the sensitivity all the way down to 0 to prevent any lean from the tracker.

As for centring, you can set a hotkey in the options drop down menu. There's a default I think, but I forget what it is. Press that while looking where you want the neutral position to be and presto.

[ben_s 11]

Ahh k, Thanks, Will try that now. :)

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Hi,

Just wanted to say sorry for the delay on my part... work is eating away my life right now, so I haven't had much time to focus on other things...

I'll try to get that Haar-tracking code as soon as I can :)

Cheers

[shardana 10]

Great! TheHarvester!!!! as you know I'm really looking forward to news on this!!! but of course real life comes first!!! ciao

[v4friend 10]

Hello ArmA-fans and (hopefully) FaceTrackNoIR-users,

After quite a bit of work, I have now released update 4 of FaceTrackNoIR .

The new version includes:

* configurable curves;

* support for Microsoft FS2002, 2004 and FSX;

* auto-start-tracking feature;

* improved stability;

* and some other tweaks;

As usual it can be downloaded here:

http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/information_links/download.htm

P.S.: For any of you who like FaceTrackNoIR: It is now also possible to show your appreciation and support development by donating :)

Edited November 3, 2010 by V4Friend

[armapaddy 10]

Just downloaded and the curves UI etc. look great. Can't wait to try it out, thanks a lot V4Friend.

[vohk 10]

Gave 1.4 a shot tonight, works like a charm. Haven't noticed any new bugs. The combination of the curves and independent neutral zones makes for a very smooth and responsive feel. Also, I no longer get any of that 'phantom' pitch input- even before adjusting the new settings.

Great work!

[NightWarp 10]

In Controls, options, i get trackIR and Freetrack for options.. first does nothing.. second makes some results, but I cant seem to get the program to "talk" to AO.. i just get put in a jittery loop and none of my movements translate into game.

What am I doing wrong?

Edited November 5, 2010 by NightWarp

[v4friend 10]

In Controls, options, i get trackIR and Freetrack for options.. first does nothing.. second makes some results, but I cant seem to get the program to "talk" to AO.. i just get put in a jittery loop and none of my movements translate into game.

What am I doing wrong?

Hello NightWarp,

For ArmA2, you should use the FreeTrack protocol (as you already discovered). In ArmA2 you must then enable FreeTrack in the controller section.

What 'loop' do you mean?

[gxxshock 10]

Hey,

I am unable to install v1.3 of TNoIR on Windows 7 64bit.

It gives me the following error message during install

An error occured during the installation of assembly "Microsoft.VC80.DebugCRT,publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="wind32",version="8.0.50727.762",processorArchitecture="x86". Please refer to Help and Support for more information.

Weirdly enough version 1.0 and the first update 20100716 worked just fine :confused:

[v4friend 10]

Hey,

I am unable to install v1.3 of TNoIR on Windows 7 64bit.

It gives me the following error message during install

An error occured during the installation of assembly "Microsoft.VC80.DebugCRT,publicKeyToken="1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b",type="wind32",version="8.0.50727.762",processorArchitecture="x86". Please refer to Help and Support for more information.

Weirdly enough version 1.0 and the first update 20100716 worked just fine :confused:

Hi gxxshock,

That's bad :mad:, but not completely unexplainable: version 1 used the C++ runtime libraries from Visual Studio 2008. However, to solve a couple of memory-problems (including the R6030-error), I have downgraded to Visual Studio 2005 (which faceAPI was built with!). So v130 uses an older version of C++ :o

You are the first to report this problem however. Have you searched the web for similar problems?

[gxxshock 10]

Yes I did search the interwebs, however the solutions provided there did not work out for me. It seems that since Windows 7 has VS2005 already included from the get-go any application that will just ignore that and install over it can cause corruption of these files. I think this happened at some point with my OS, but I will have to reformat and clean everything up in January anyways, so it's fine.

[shardana 10]

Hi all! just a question to theHarVesteR........ any news about facetracknoir and opencv??? no pushing, just curious..... :-)

[Muahaha 10]

Just revisited back this thread w the new 1.3 stable. Must say that it really work wonders now and the jittery is no more to be found.

Only issue I am facing, config to be exact is that when playing as infantry, the unit tends to slant to the side (right or left). I have played around with the roll (rotx) settings but to no avail.

Anyone can share their settings so that the player don't slant too easily w slight movement?

[contrails 10]

I just picked up arma 2 last week and am loving it :D

decided to try this out, but I'm getting sluggish tracking in game - a look at the task manager and it seems that facetracknoir 1.4 minimized is using 30-40% of my CPU (dual core, 2.13 GHz each) - is this normal? What can I do to reduce it? (already tried disabling the EWMA filtering to no avail)

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Hi all! just a question to theHarVesteR........ any news about facetracknoir and opencv??? no pushing, just curious..... :-)

Hi, no news yet I'm afraid... work is consuming my life right now, and it's really hard for me to have time to do anything else...

I realise that most of my posts here lately have been some form of apology for not having enough time :j: ...well, I hope that changes soon, because I'm quite burned out already

Once I get a chance to help out with this, this is the first place I'm going to talk about it ;)

Cheers

[shardana 10]

Hey theharvester don't worry, no need to apologize, real life must always come first! it will be ready when it is ready, we can wait! thanks for your answer anyway! ciao

[dethjeff 10]

Hi All,

Installed this last night (v4) using faketrack and it works fairly well running DCS A-10C (32bit) on a AMD Phenom II 720 / ATI 4890 running Win7-64.

The webcam being used is a Logitech Orbit (2 MPixel). the framerates are low (~15 - 20) even with all auto options set to off and at various resolutions (640 x 480 up to 2MPix). Im going to try to remove the logitech drivers and see if the MS drivers work any better.

I just wanted to mention this camera as it is pretty high end and expensive (~$100). I was hoping it would provide a very clear picture to FaceTrack to help stabilize the wobbles but it isnt really doing it yet (room is well lit BTW but Im going to try more light on my face). Will experiment more and report back.

thanks a lot for making this V4! The prospect of buying a Track IR and being a Borg isnt appealing.

Jeff

[HyperU2 11]

I have a webcam on the way, never felt the need to have one before. Looking forward to giving this a go.

[TheHarvesteR 11]

Lol! I got a TrackIR here, and I do feel like an idiot sometimes wearing it :D

What bothers me most is that it's somewhat cumbersome... unless you're really used to always playing with a headset on, which is not my case... I only use the headset to keep the mic close to my head, and for the head tracking too.

The main advantage with the trackIR is that the camera is a dedicated piece of hardware, so it's much lighter on your system than a software-based solution... But, there's an option that could work well as a middle-ground solution.

I'm going to suggest this as a feature for an upcoming version.

Add an option to send the tracker's output through OSC messages, and add a small client app to receive this input and transform it into the usual (I can't remember how you're getting the tracking into ArmA... was it through PPJoy?) output.

OSC is a UDP-based messaging protocol, which is VERY easy to implement (there are plenty of libraries around), and works really well.

The neat thing about it is that, being UDP, it can go through the network.

This means that one could use a laptop to run the camera-tracking, and have it send the already-processed output into your ArmA box. Effectively freeing it from that burden, and allowing you to run more tracking iterations, or have heavier smoothing without compromising performance.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but it could be a really cool feature, that not even TrackIR can match.

Just wanted to get it out there, since it sounded good in my head ;)

@dethjeff:

You might want to try heavier smoothing... as it's the only effective way to reduce the wobbles... it comes at the cost of higher response times though...

A higher camera resolution will only add to the processing time, since it's more pixels to go through... Try going for 320x240@60hz or 640x480@30hz

Cheers