Update FaceTrackNoIR

[.kju 3244]

Cheers V4Friend!

The missing control assignments were the culprit.

You may want to consider to put the good summary of Tupolov on your site.

My impression after testing 1-2h is this:

1) It is easy to setup.

2) Tweaking seems rather simple to do too.

3) Putting the cam below the monitor worked better for me (instead of ontop).

4) The PS3eye cam seems to be a good choice (got it new for only 20€).

However in the end it seems nothing for me personally.

I am used to zero aiming safezone and smoothing set to zero => very precise, fluent and fast mouse movement.

The goal was to use it mainly as infantry to watch the surrounding while moving (rather inside vehicles / air units).

The reasons are basically:

1) Initial delay when moving the head away from the center (probably due to threshold/safezone).

2) There is slight, but noticeable lag/delay of the game following your head movement.

3) The looking at the top or bottom causes the view to jitter.

In the end I think it is not possible to achieve that level of precision, fluidity and reaction time

I am used to with mouse movement for aiming or the alt-combo for viewing.

Still great initiative and tool!

Gonna send the cam to a friend of mine who is very much into flight sims and flying.

He will be more happy with it I believe. :)

[v4friend 10]

Hello PvPscene,

Well, I'm glad you got it working and were able to test it in ArmA. I admit: it takes some 'getting used to' when playing. We are still trying to improve filtering etc., so it will be more playable in the future :cool:

Thanks for your feedback!

[Althalos 10]

Hi there.

I have MSI StarCam Clip II and I would like to know if there is anybody here who has experience with disabling it's AutoExposure. I spend a day setting it up properly to get the best FPS, but the results are not really what I would like to have. I have the latest drivers installed along with it's configuration GUI. It has an option to turn off autoexposure and set a custom value, but it seems like whenever the illumination of the room reaches a certain value, the cam starts to use the autoexposure again disregarding the custom value.

I did a temporary workaround like this:

- The camera is placed on top of my monitor.

- There is a lamp above/behind me out of the FOV of the cam, and another lamp behind the cam positioned to face a wall and use the reflected light to illuminate my face.

1. I turn of the lamp behind the cam.

2. Launch Freetrack and let it initialize (the cam initializes with autoexposure 5-10 FPS).

3. Set the custom value for the exposure.

4. Turn the lamp back on.

5. The cam stays at ~28 FPS without the autoexposure to kick in.

One of the problems is this does not work in daylight unless I make the room dark enough and use those lamps instead. I found a lot of solutions for linux users on google, but barely any word about windows.

EDIT:

Side question: FaceTrack constantly shows that it takes 0% CPU and 0 MB RAM, is this possible and/or normal?

Edited January 25, 2011 by Althalos

[.kju 3244]

Almost forgot - is it possible to temporarily activate head tracking?

Similar to the way you can only move your head if you hold ALT (default key) in arma. Ty.

[Rough Knight 9]

I thought in one of the updates there was an option to add a shortcut to enable\disable it ingame. Look in your preferences.

Get there by selecting "Options" -> "Keyboard Shortcuts" in FaceTrackNoIR

There was also a shortcut for centering your head.

Thanks

Frosty

[Burningpunk 10]

Hello guys, maybe someone can help me here.

I have a Logitec C120 camera and it worked beautifully with FacetracknoIR on W7 x64. For some reason (after some time not using the program) the camera stoped working with it. Everytime I try to connect It get an error message (on the headtracking demo) saying that "Failed to read friendly name: ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND" (I still have the same W7 x64 installation). The camera works very well, i've tested it.

I happen to have also a VMWare guest here on the same machine runnig XP x32 and strangely as it gets, the headtracking demo works on it.

Have any of you came across this problem? How did you manage to solve it?

Thx

[jsmuk 13]

I have been using this for a couple of days now (with an xbox live vision cam) and its mostly been great but I have had a few issues. (I don't think any of them are related to FaceTrack it self)

My first problem is that my web cam runs at a low FPS in FaceTrack, but in the FaceAPI demo (I had to install it to get the ippm stuff to work) I can get it up to an FPS that turns it green by changing settings (Disabling auto exposure, changing brightness). As far as I am aware changing those settings isn't possible in the free version of FaceAPI (so in turn isnt possible in FaceTrack) is it? So I am wondering is there any way to change these settings, by way of another bit of software maybe? I know that some cameras come with software that can change these settings globally, but mine doesn't so am I completely out of luck?

My second problem (it's actually two problems I guess) is that if I look left or right slightly my view pans all the way in that direction, is this meant to happen or is something set-up wrong? Ideally I would like to be able to look left/right slightly and have my view stay there at the moment it is impossible to do so. Also my view moves around in game with the slightest head movement making it almost impossible for me to keep my view straight and level in game, do I just need to tweak some settings to get it to stop doing that?

Apart from these minor issues I have been having, this is a great bit of software (and really easy to set up, compared to trying to get Freetrack to work with LEDs etc).

[v4friend 10]

I have been using this for a couple of days now (with an xbox live vision cam) and its mostly been great but I have had a few issues. (I don't think any of them are related to FaceTrack it self)

My first problem is that my web cam runs at a low FPS in FaceTrack, but in the FaceAPI demo (I had to install it to get the ippm stuff to work) I can get it up to an FPS that turns it green by changing settings (Disabling auto exposure, changing brightness). As far as I am aware changing those settings isn't possible in the free version of FaceAPI (so in turn isnt possible in FaceTrack) is it? So I am wondering is there any way to change these settings, by way of another bit of software maybe? I know that some cameras come with software that can change these settings globally, but mine doesn't so am I completely out of luck?

My second problem (it's actually two problems I guess) is that if I look left or right slightly my view pans all the way in that direction, is this meant to happen or is something set-up wrong? Ideally I would like to be able to look left/right slightly and have my view stay there at the moment it is impossible to do so. Also my view moves around in game with the slightest head movement making it almost impossible for me to keep my view straight and level in game, do I just need to tweak some settings to get it to stop doing that?

Apart from these minor issues I have been having, this is a great bit of software (and really easy to set up, compared to trying to get Freetrack to work with LEDs etc).

Hello Jsmuk,

Thanks for your feedback too :). Indeed, I think you have to tweak the settings (especially the curves) to make the movements to your liking. I would start with slower settings first and then gradually make things faster. You can also try to get one DOF right first (Yaw and Pitch are probably the most important) and then do the others 'one at a time'?

[Burningpunk 10]

Anyone?

Hello guys, maybe someone can help me here.

I have a Logitec C120 camera and it worked beautifully with FacetracknoIR on W7 x64. For some reason (after some time not using the program) the camera stoped working with it. Everytime I try to connect It get an error message (on the headtracking demo) saying that "Failed to read friendly name: ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND" (I still have the same W7 x64 installation). The camera works very well, i've tested it.

I happen to have also a VMWare guest here on the same machine runnig XP x32 and strangely as it gets, the headtracking demo works on it.

Have any of you came across this problem? How did you manage to solve it?

Thx

[v4friend 10]

Hi BurningPunk,

Sorry I didn't reply to your previous post. To be honest: I don't have a clue :(

It's obvious that something must have changed between the time it worked and 'now'. Perhaps you have updated DirectX or W7 and something went terribly wrong there?

I know that one user here and another on the sas1946 forum received the same error. Until now, neither of them has found a solution, I'm afraid.

I'll try the WWW again, to see if anything similar can be found...

[=242= CPT. Helios 18]

I was wondering if you guys could help me out.

I am running

Windows 7 Professional OEM edition (64bits)

Intel Gulftown i7 (6 CPUs) at 4.2 GHz

12GB of DDr3

Nvidia 480

Fareetrack API demo works perfectly but whenever I startup the NoIR program it always just crashes with the error "Failure to initialize APIScope" and then crashes to desktop. Please help me get the program working.

[v4friend 10]

I was wondering if you guys could help me out.

I am running

Windows 7 Professional OEM edition (64bits)

Intel Gulftown i7 (6 CPUs) at 4.2 GHz

12GB of DDr3

Nvidia 480

Fareetrack API demo works perfectly but whenever I startup the NoIR program it always just crashes with the error "Failure to initialize APIScope" and then crashes to desktop. Please help me get the program working.

Hello Helios,

That looks like a regular 'monster-machine' :eek:

It would indeed be nice to get FaceTrackNoIR working, I suppose...

It's very strange that the faceAPI demo works, but FaceTrackNoIR does not :(. Have you also un-installed the demo again?

It could be that the demo is using a newer version of faceAPI and that that would solve things. I have tried compiling the upcoming update with the latest version, but that doesn't work (yet). Unfortunately SeeingMachines won't help me, because I'm 'just' using the non-commercial version (and the program has 'only' been downloaded over 13.000 times...).

I will try compiling with the newest version again soon. If you send me a PM with a mail-address, I might send you an 'alpha' of that?

[kashwashwa 10]

Hello Helios,

That looks like a regular 'monster-machine' :eek:

It would indeed be nice to get FaceTrackNoIR working, I suppose...

It's very strange that the faceAPI demo works, but FaceTrackNoIR does not :(. Have you also un-installed the demo again?

It could be that the demo is using a newer version of faceAPI and that that would solve things. I have tried compiling the upcoming update with the latest version, but that doesn't work (yet). Unfortunately SeeingMachines won't help me, because I'm 'just' using the non-commercial version (and the program has 'only' been downloaded over 13.000 times...).

I will try compiling with the newest version again soon. If you send me a PM with a mail-address, I might send you an 'alpha' of that?

I've had the same problem - demo works, FaceTrackNoIR doesn't. (I get the same error he does)

I tried uninstalling the demo, uninstalling faceAPI non-commercial version, then reinstalling just faceAPI, and still get the same problem.

I tried running as admin, in compatibility mode, but nothing seems to work.

My system is a Gigabyte P67A-UD3, i5-2500k, 4GB ram, Win 7 64-bit.

[=242= CPT. Helios 18]

SAme thing here. Sending the PM.

[Mclan 10]

It will be better to track your face on jaw, cheeks and eyes to place PS3-Eye beneath LCD and with lamp above LCD or back. But I didn't use FaceTrackNoIR in Arma2, just for IL2. Now the problem is not very smooth as freetrack + WII mote, but quite convenience than it, higher CPU occupation. Look forward to further update.

For E6600, 30hz, 15-20% CPU, 140-150mb ram, 60hz, 35-40% CPU, 160-175mb ram.

Edited February 22, 2011 by Mclan

[recoilfx 10]

Just wanted to reiterate that I also get the "Failure to initialize APIScope" msg. Head tracking demo works fine.

My specs:

i5 2500k 8gb, radeon 6950. Asus p8p67m-pro

Windows 7 x64

[fael097 10]

guys,

I play fsx, and a head tracking software really improves flight experience.

in my case, I cant afford the expensive trackIR, and the first thing I tried was freetrack, I assembled a 3 led clip, but for some reason it didnt work really well, i even screwed my webcam when trying to remove the IR filter, so it was a no go.

then my hopes got big again when i heard of FacetrackNOIR and got it to testing

overall it works fine. In fsx, i often use my mouse to click panel buttons and switches, but with FTnoIR, when i look to a side panel, the camera keeps moving even at the slightest head movement. camera movement isnt really annoying for the eyes, but the smaller camera movement is enough to place the button out of the mouse pointer, and a cold/dark startup procedure becomes a difficult task when you have to chase the switches with your mouse.

so, isnt there some sort of movement treshold for the head movement, other than the center deadzone?

if not, that would be a good feature to add, lets say if your head is not moving more than X inches, the camera will stand still. its worth mentioning that the treshold should include speed aswell, because sometimes, your head does move more than X inches, but so slowly that you wont even notice (happens on the center deadzone)

so yeah, i dont know if we have this, but if we did, then i wouldnt ever need to get freetrack or trackIR.

and just another question, does freetrack or trackIR have such feature?

best regards,

Rafael

[v4friend 10]

Hello ArmA gamers and other interested people,

The fifth update of FaceTrackNoIR was released yesterday (http://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/information_links/download.htm). Again, we have spent quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears ( :p ) to improve the program.

Please try it and have even more fun flying... eh, I mean flying, driving and gaming!

Wim

P.S.: The website of FaceTrackNoIR was completely re-designed. Please take a look and tell us what you think of it?

[.kju 3244]

Congratz and testing in the coming days. :)

[Rough Knight 9]

Thanks V4friend, I will give it a go tonight.

[Jubu 10]

Hi everybody,

as i said i bought the PS3 Eyecam. Cam is working fine so far!CL-Eye Test works and device-manager shows drivers integrated correct!

My prob is the demo of face api isn't working at all! I start the prog and it stucks at -detecting WDM Cameras- Behind the loading logo is an error message that says "failed to read friendly name:ERROR_FILE_NOT_LOADED" Strange thing isn't it? In the installation folder is a "cam_whitelist.txt" file and inside is the PS3 eyecam! Take a look:

# Cameras listed here will avoid functionality testing on startup

# This is usually required if the camera driver is ok except for the condition where the

# camera is not connected.

# The camera name must match the name of the video Capture Source filter in Directshow.

PS3Eye Camera

I guess this is why i get an error in FTN also after pressing start:failed to register camera category:unspecified error!

May anybody have a clue who to fix this prob? I don't unfortunately!

Thx for your help and apologize for bad english ;)

Flashleitz

AaRgh !!

i have exactly the same problem in both programs.

any help ??

FaceTrackNoIR 1.3 is only version that even start. later updates give error on startup ( : failed to register camera category:unspecified error! )

there is nothing another software installed, what might use webcam.

camera is Logitech c120

and AMD phenom II x4 955 core

also Win 7 32bit

- Jubu -

Edited March 12, 2011 by Jubu

[kashwashwa 10]

Unfortunately I still have the same error as before :(...

[v4friend 10]

Hi Jubu and Kashwasha,

Sorry to hear that it's still not working. The latest update still includes the same faceAPI version, so I guess it was to be expected... :(

Last week I was fiddling with OpenCV (I'm working on using 'our own' facetracker in FaceTrackNoIR, besides the faceAPI) and found something strange: my PS3Eye did not work with OpenCV. After some debugging I found that a folder (DSFilter) installed by Nero (you know, the DVD-burning suite) blocked the camera somehow. After renaming the folder, my PS3Eye works fine with OpenCV.

Maybe something similar is happening to you?

Another thing you might try is using a 'virtual webcam'. I have once tried WebCamMax (unfortunately only the demo is free, but there might be other softwares like it...). It did find my camera and FaceTrackNoIR works with WebCamMax.

Good Luck!

[Jubu 10]

Hi Jubu and Kashwasha,

Sorry to hear that it's still not working. The latest update still includes the same faceAPI version, so I guess it was to be expected... :(

Last week I was fiddling with OpenCV (I'm working on using 'our own' facetracker in FaceTrackNoIR, besides the faceAPI) and found something strange: my PS3Eye did not work with OpenCV. After some debugging I found that a folder (DSFilter) installed by Nero (you know, the DVD-burning suite) blocked the camera somehow. After renaming the folder, my PS3Eye works fine with OpenCV.

Maybe something similar is happening to you?

Another thing you might try is using a 'virtual webcam'. I have once tried WebCamMax (unfortunately only the demo is free, but there might be other softwares like it...). It did find my camera and FaceTrackNoIR works with WebCamMax.

Good Luck!

Hi G u r u !!!

Thanks for help, but ...

i cant find that kind folder in my system, but nero is ( was ) installed. ( not any more ) that is not solution here.

now i have webcammax installed here, but i cant get FaceTrackNoIr to work.

1.3 version starts, but if later version is installed result is : failed to register camera category:unspecified error! and FacetrackNoIR program wont even start, BUT Webcammax stars automaticly... wierd or not !

if 1.3 is installed alone, my c120 cams name is in facetrack sofware's screen as it should be...

any guide how to setup with webcammax ?

tracking source ? what that should be ? webcammax ??

what about faceapi, installed or not ?

i'm confused ...

sorry my pooooor english !!

Edited March 16, 2011 by Jubu

[Rough Knight 9]

Last week I was fiddling with OpenCV (I'm working on using 'our own' facetracker in FaceTrackNoIR, besides the faceAPI)

G'Day V4Friend. That is great news!!

I was hoping this might happen at some stage. The only thing that stops me really using FaceTrackNoir is the fact it is CPU heavy with FaceAPI (uses up to 25% of my cpu power).

Do you think at this point you will see better CPU performance with OpenCV, or is it too early to tell?

Thanks

Frosty