TrackIR and head tracking discussion

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I had the inverted pitch and yaw too,
it works correctly if you tick the Exclusive box in trackIr.

 

Yeah that would work if I was using Trackir but Facetracknoir only has a Global setting for inverting the yaw pitch roll ....I dont want to have to keep switching these from game to game

 

My Track Hat has arrived and I tested it yesterday. I also ordered the PS3 camera right from the Track Hat store. The 3D-printed monitor clip is a cheap piece of junk, the rest is good quality IMO.

I was surprised to make it work very quickly - it really isn't hard. After some fiddling, I could drive a couple of laps without counter-steering against my head movements
In general, it's really cool stuff and I want it! But I must get used to it. I'm running linear, 1:1 curves. If you think about it, it's still actually "accelerated head movement" - if 20° RL head rotation equate to 20° camera rotation, my entire view will have rotated by 40°. So I think I will tone that down, even more. What I want from this is mainly for the view to adjust only slightly to my head movement and to look at apexes or the dashboard. Checking cars to your sides when in close combat is kind of cool but IMO will make the vision too shaky in normal situations. Side mirrors would be great - that's all I need. Also, quick movements currently seem to cause the image to go unsmooth.

Another slightly irritating thing is fixed objects on the screen, like the gear/speed display or the tyres HUD. But since I can now look at the "real" dashboard, I can deactivate that.

Then there seems to be some sort of bug - the yaw and pitch axises sometimes need to be inverted, sometimes not. When they seem to get inverted so I go back to Opentrack and check invert...just to find them inverted, again in ACC. So I uncheck the box and it's back to normal.

Although this reads very critical, I can sense the awesomeness behind all this and I already enjoy the immersion...especially the look to the apex is something else and I was surprised how well it worked, already. It feels very natural. I know some people here recommended to deactivate some of the axises but for me they (most of the time) work as they should. And I think the whole thing really starts to work when they're all active. Deactivating some of them feels weird.

 

I am interested in this tech. What don't you like about it with the HUD?

 

Hi all,

I’d like to try tracking feature in ACC and AC also, because looking at videos posted here it seems to add something extra to gaming, even though I have triples at the moment.

Would like to hear few comments from you users that is there a huge difference if i just buy some webcam and use one of the software available or is TrackIR ”package” required to run it properly / smooth?

Thanks in advance,

 

It's irritating when there are objects on screen that don't "follow the rules" of head tracking. I must turn my head right and down a bit to look at the gear app. This will logically make the camera move. But as I focus on an object that doesn't move along, it's confusing. and immersion-breaking
The solution is to either have HUD elements move along (I think in VR it's done that way in many cases) and "follow the rules" of head tracking or to just deactivate them.

Does it make sense?

@KL79 many users have reported that even without IR, the tracking works well and smooth with FaceTrack NoIR. I would give it a try with just some webcam...invest is very low.

 

If you want to try it out for free then install opentrack on your pc and use the FreePIE IMU app on your phone. It gives a rudimentary solution that works in 3 axis of movent (hat track etc. support 6 axis).

 

Im still thinking if It suite me yes or no so far.
Using a PS3 eye camera and opentrack at the moment, FacetracknoIR before that.
For some reason, facial detection was a bit iffy, also I could not deal with the delay it brought ingame, perhaps I missed a setting or 2 but I could not get it to work.
So not willing to invest yet I checked the other easy to do alternative, Aruco Marker, which is dirt cheap to DIY. A piece of paper , cardboard and something to attach it too your headset or cap and your good to go.
Using it with opentrack, the difference in response time was night and day. The smoothing settings and deadzone worked as they should and with setting the curves I could get it too work nicely.
But... Setting the curvatures of your axis exactly in a smooth way will take some fiddling and trial.and error.
I also would double-check if u really need all the 6 dof . I went from all to disabling x y z, to roll as well. The extra motion did not feel useful enough and would hurt my laptimes because of too much head movement. one example of this , as im sitting in a bucket seat with my head against the headrest, looking down will trigger y axis and pitch. It would move my head too much forward while I only want to glance down real fast. Same with x and yaw.
But mileage will vary, I might redo the axis and tune the curves even more. I might shoot myself with a tranquilizer gun as well because maybe I'm too "shaky" of a guy.

 

Thanks for the comments!

I actually drove home from work via local consumer electronic store and took one Logitech webcam just to find out that home that it's shot right from the start. Well, try again tomorrow...

But actually could it be, that this webcam or freePIE IMU ( didn't try yet ) solution isn't working well when racing in the dark? For ex. my rig is in the small room, which has a window yes, but mostly im playing in the evening / night and room is dark ( except the lit from the monitors )

I mean, if facial detection softwares are not that good / precise in the low light situation? ( of course can be camera dependant too ) Could it be why you @GroteBakkes find it bit iffy?

 

Works perfectly with Opentrack and delanclip. It has made a huge difference to the usability of ACC for me. You need to invert all axes in Opentrack, but one done, it works very well. Also, Opentrack allows you to save individual profiles vs games, so you can have a dedicated ACC profile. Opentrack will support pretty much any any IR LED track headgear. This is with v7.03 btw. Hope this helps.

Big thanks to devs for implementing a track solution!

 

FreePIE IMU uses your phone's gyroscope, so doesn't need a camera. It's not so smooth, and requires fixing your phone to your head somehow, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a serious solution, just a freebie to see what head-tracking is like. I use track hat, and it uses IR lights so in theory should work in complete darkness. I've never actually tested this though.

 

Yes, i find in low light situations, Faceapi/FacetracknoIR does not work as well as Opentrack.
For that reason, i bought an extra lamp to light up the room from behind my monitor just to make sure.
In the end its user preference, ive seen some have Facetrack working fine, for me the response time, regardless of what smoothing /deadzone setting, is too slow for me to feel comfortable using it.
My PS3 eye camera is working better with Opentrack / Aruco combo regardless of lightning conditions.
My current settings are Opentrack with Aruco, sitting about 70 cm from a 34 inch Ultrawidescreen with on top of it a PS3eye camera running 60 HZ (does not go 75 for some reason.) 640 x 480 res. Smoothing and deadzone on default, could go lower if u need more responsiveness.

 

The Aruco tracker works surprisingly well with Opentrack. However, if you want the best, quickest tracking you need an LED source. You can buy one ready made (Trackhat, Delan) but it's easy to make yourself if you're reasonably handy and can solder. The default dimensions for the hat and clip are in the PointTracker section of Opentrack. The component and wiring information is at: http://forum.free-track.net/index.php?showtopic=1856 - it's on the Freetrack website but works equally well with Opentrack or FaceTrackNoIR. Don't use Freetrack as it's old software which hasn't been updated for many years. Plenty of 3D printed clips here: https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=trackir&dwh=325d59bfba7cf0e

 

Still trying to make Allies with the Axis . Perhaps this can help some of U trying to get a decent start with "Yaw" only.
Think i got this one dialed pretty well. Ill try to get more axis incorporated the coming days.
Opentrack / Aruco.
In game:
FOV:27 ( ideal FOV for my 34 inch UWD through "Project Immersion FOV website" )
Seat Distance -17

Axis Point Values:
1: 4.50x1.00,
2: 20.00x5.00 ,
3: 35.00x9.00 ,
4: 45.00x12.00.

 

@GroteBakkes this yaw curve looks alright. The screenshots show that you've picked a very reasonable rotation range. I got something quite similar.

A good approach seems to be to turn your head, with your eyes still straight, and still look at the edge of the monitor - the point where your focus will basically leave the monitor. This is the maximum RL head rotation that should cause the camera to move - after that, the camera rotation should remain at its max value. Then you should decide how far you would like to look around. So if your goal is to see the right A-pillar, then look all the way to the right at your screen and set the rotation so that you're looking straight at the A-pillar, without having to roll back your eyes. Having to roll back your eyes against the head rotation feels very unnatural. The same can be applied to the pitch axis. Roll can remain one-on-one linear IMO.

For good immersion, at least yaw, pitch and roll should be enabled, IMO. X,Y and Z are also super nice but unfortunately, they seem to cause hovering around so you have to recenter the view like twice a lap.

@Vortex you're perfectly right - it will be easy easy to make your own LED hat/headphones/clip. But also quite time consuming. If time is a bit more of an issue than money, I can really suggest the TrackHat. It's comfy and even looks alright.

 

Thanks for your informative reply. Reason i had points was to curve the response a bit, but this was more of a counterreaction on me getting nausea when i first started haha. I've deleted those points and are for most Axis back to linear.
I've set a point on the Pitch-Axis mainly because it was hovering a bit too much around 0 and with an Ultrawidescreen u already see every bit of vertical movement even more then a normal screen, so i had to limit that movement. Its more to glance down at the MFD at times anyway and tuned to slightly move down when im looking at the edges. Y & Z axis, ive tried them, but for me they are just not useful at all. Im sitting with my head against my Bucketseat headrest and i prefer to sit as still as possible at all times. Y and Pitch is basically the same for me and Z, well im not gonna microscope the MFD or leather stitching details of the Huracan every 5 seconds.
Roll is working now nicely as well, and even got X-axis in the party . Both really help on Apex focus and allow to look ahead more clearly. This not only helps track anticipation but also makes the effect of the moving cockpit vs fixed wheel position a lot less noticable.
I would advise not to tune for the sidemirrors in view unless u really need it, like. U can always set the seat distance further away but when i do that i feel like im driving a GT3 car like sum sort of backseat limo driver . In other words set correct FOV, dont sit too far back and what might also help is set the "movement" in view settings to 0.
Anyway here are my new settings:

Yaw: 45 x 14
Pitch: 5 x 1 & 20 x 8
Roll: 60 x 10
X axis: 20 x 25

 

Good stuff.

I agree on the side mirror comment - that's what I initially wanted but it's already too much, causing the image to be too shaky. Also agree on correct FOV settings. Without the Trackhat I always moved the camera way, way to the front so that the left a-pillar doesn't obstruct my view. Now woth tracking it's perfect to just leave the camera on default with correct FOV...apart from seat height and pitch, maybe.

It's truly epic. I absolutely love this feature. It was instant addiction.

 

I still haven't pulled the trigger on any sort of TrackIR solution, but I will, as I think it'll be a great addition to my ultrawide. I'm seeing a lot of different solutions being offered up though - is TrackIR the best / easiest? Or are one of the alternatives, like TrackHat, better now?

 

I used Freetrack ... in the past driving Race07 and now I'm on TrackIR for a 2 years period with AC and now ACC .... and I'm happier with TrackIR than the +- free system.
TrackIR with clip ( rather than the cap ) never made any problem with ambient lights .... while the free version might make some.

Cap with TrackIR .... is less precise and less comfortable .... ( ambient lights for the 1st ... and summer heat for the second ).... Clip is easier and more precise but fragile if you need to take it off your audio headset regularly.
The price is of course much higher than the free systems.

If you already have a good camera for your PC ... I'd say, try the free solution first in order to check if you're at ease with this system.
Afterwards, if it's ok and you're sure of it .... go for TrackIR with clip. Why pay for something you finally should not like ?