Facial tracking

[cowpatz]

FaceTrackNoir

I am surprised that this has not surfaced here before. It looks great and amazingly it is free.

Similar to TrackIR but with just a webcam and no head gear.

Must give this a go when I can find the time!

[Adamski]

Can it do 6DOF (ie. forward and back as well as the usual pitch, roll, yaw)?

The website is confusing, as it says 6DOF in the features page, but then only refers to x,y,z. Furthermore, one of the setup images shows the pitch axis as "forward and back", when it's really "up and down" (sort of). Help!!!

Anyone tried it yet?

[happytraveller]

At the moment, I cannot get it to work on the laptop as it keeps coming up with a message that it has encountered an error and needs to close. Probably, it would be good IF I could get it to work!!

smooth landings.

[cowpatz]

Yes a bit hard to tell if it has the full 6DOF but if you look at the Rise of Flight example video it does show forward and back movement.
Whether or not this motion was thru the facial tracking feature or via mouse or hotkey I'm unable to determine.

[Charl]

It works OK, within limits.
On my setup I found I'd have to make quite exaggerated head movements, especially rotating L and R.
Might just be my little webcam.
The v4 beta does zoom (forward/back), yaw (rotate L/R), and pitch (rotate Up/down).
There's no lateral L/R movement to see past a taildragger's nose, nor vertical Up/Down to look over the nose.

Banking Camera is an interesting FSX alternative.

[mfraser]

There is also FreeTrack - its been around for years and is still slowly being improved. I've never actually bothered to set it up as I don't use my webcam, but it looks like it has quite a slick interface. It also does 6DoF.............. the point of difference with this is that they recommend using low level IR LED's as the tracking reference, although I've read that it works with the TrackIR caps. The website has some links to users that have integrated the LED setup with their headsets which is a cool idea..........

[Nosecone]

Just to add my 2 cents, try this free one just needs a web cam

Rhys

[cowpatz]

QUOTE (Charl @ Dec 13 2010, 06:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It works OK, within limits.
On my setup I found I'd have to make quite exaggerated head movements, especially rotating L and R.
Might just be my little webcam.
The v4 beta does zoom (forward/back), yaw (rotate L/R), and pitch (rotate Up/down).
There's no lateral L/R movement to see past a taildragger's nose, nor vertical Up/Down to look over the nose.

Banking Camera is an interesting FSX alternative.

Can you not adjust the sensitivity? Free track like TrackIR still uses a headset device and can be a pain to have to wear.
This looked so simple. Hopefully it will continue to be improved upon.

[Dion500]

Well i gave FaceTrackNoIR a go. And you do get 6DOF, i could move my point of view in all 3 axis, and rotate through all 3 axis.

But you do have to make quite large movements, so i turned the sensitivity up. But then that causes unwanted movements, when it thinks you moved, when you didnt.
Also at time, it miss took what movement i was doing. Like i turn my head to the left, but it pans and rotates it to the left. It is also a little slow to react sometimes, i havnt tried TrackIR, so i cant compare it to that, but i felt it was quite slow.
Also it was quite hard to look around 90 degrees, i did the NDB approach into Wanganui, circling for runway 29. And i found keeping an eye on the airport quite hard.

And at times it also couldnt find my face, so the view goes back to default, so its not that bad, but gets annoying at times.


But the biggest problem i found. And the reason i probably wont be using it for now, is the FPS hit.
I would normally get 25 to 30 fps flying with the weather i had, dropping to 20 every now and then. With this, it didnt get above 20, usually around 14 or 15, dropping down to 7 when it seemed to be having trouble following my face.

Its a good start i think, im sure with a bit more work and time, it could be made into a great product.

So give it a go if you want, it might be just my rig that has this fps drop, it is quite out of date.

[AndrewJamez]

I ran "free track" earlier on in the year quite a bit with some sucsess. It was a bit buggy, low FPS impact though but you needed to have good fps to start with. If you get down under 20 fps then it becomes unusable and I had to asign it to a single core through task manager or it came to a stuttering halt in game. I came to the conclusion that it wasnt worth the hassle and that if i ever had a spare 300 bucks I would buy a proper TrackIR. Using web cams suck because they are slow, are slow to respond to movement and are a pain to set up for use in daylight conditions with removal of the uv filter and use of infared led's. The whole saga did however tell me that a good TrackIR unit would be awsome and well worth the money.

[scrubcutter]

QUOTE (AndrewJamez @ Dec 9 2010, 02:47 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The whole saga did however tell me that a good TrackIR unit would be awsome and well worth the money.

I've been using my old TrackIR3 for 5 years now and it's still going strong. Couldn't imagine flying without it. It does have a few limitations, such as sensitive to external light sources (you have to work on your Playstation Tan to use it on them sunny days ) however it has been worth the initial outlay a thousand times over. With the 3D pits out now, you can't do them justice without one. Maybe it should be on the pressie list?

[Charl]

QUOTE (cowpatz @ Dec 9 2010, 10:00 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Can you not adjust the sensitivity? Free track like TrackIR still uses a headset device and can be a pain to have to wear.
This looked so simple. Hopefully it will continue to be improved upon.

Yes I have resisted the wearables up to now, think a pair of IR earstuds and a ruby on the forehead might not suit my image ultimately...

I have spent a little time pushing the response curves about, haven't found the sweet spot yet.
Either too choppy or too dead.

But this is clearly a starter.
It manages face recognition and basic movement capture thereafter.
Although I still haven't found x and y translation available.

I imagine a dedicated webcam would make the software easier to calibrate.

[Dion500]

QUOTE (Charl @ Dec 10 2010, 08:51 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Although I still haven't found x and y translation available.

Hmm, thats odd, because i can move my perspective in all three axis.
What version are you using? If you arent using the Beta version, use that one.
And are you loading the SimConnect setup?

That gives me 6DOF