trackIR and facetracknoIR

[fael097]

not sure if many of you ever heard of FaceTrackNoIR, but IMHO its an awesome program, don't take me wrong.
it works pretty much like trackIR, but you don't need a IR camera, nor lights, reflectors, nothing, you can use your webcam, and well, your face! the main idea is just awesome, and as far as i can see, it works, except for some flaws, that are rather annoying. i tested it for several hours, and heres what i think:

while facetracknoir works as its supposed to (i believe so), its a little bad to use along with your mouse, if you use it to turn switches, etc. on your VC. even the slightest movements that FTNoIR captures from a static head can be enough to move the camera, and take away the knob you're pointing with your mouse, making cold/dark startup procedures a pain. the smooth filter is bad aswell, because the more smooth i add, the less response time i get, it takes 10 times more for fsx to reproduce my head movement, and smooth movements isnt exactly what you want when you're turning switches, you want the camera to stand still, freeze. that doesnt happen since the only deadzone is located in the eyepoint's center.  i believe what we want is some sort of head movement treshold. if your head isnt moving more than X speed, camera should stand, otherwise it moves. i believe facetrack has no such feature.

so heres a question for TrackIR users: does TIR and maybe freetrack have such thing, or the camera keeps moving at the smallest head movement?

also, if you ever used facetracknoIR, please share your thoughts.
thanks in advance.

[fael097]

guys, im sure some of you must use trackIR or freetrack, so its just a simple question!

does TIR or FT have a head movement treshold or something like that?
some thing that makes the camera stop where you're looking at, instead of moving slightly, when your head is still (or almost since it wont be 100% stopped)

[virtuali]

You can customize the response curves with Track IR, for each axis independently, so you can create all sorts of dead zones, see the online manual:

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/support/TrackIR-manual-v5.0/tir5-Chapter_5.html

5.8.1.3 Motion Curves

Each axis can be adjusted to have a faster or slower response to your actual head movement. The TrackIR software uses motion curves to amplify your real head movement, allowing complete control of the in-game view with varying degrees of head movement. Changing the motion curve for an axis allows you to fine-tune the amount of head movement used to control your view. It can also be used to create a dead zone, which helps negate small, unintentional head movements when the view is centered.

[Afterburn93]

I just found this post, sorry for the late reply.

As Virtuali said, motion curves can be changed. You can also omit axis' that you don't want. For instance, when working with a uncollimated HUD, I shut off the X/Y/Z axis along with trueview so I don't move around in the cockpit on approach.

It is fairly easy to do cold/dark startups, but the problem is that it's sensitive as you say. However, there is the "F7" option to command "precision". With this, head movement outputs are much slower than head movement inputs and thus easier to work with. Although, there is always the "F9" option to temporarily freeze TrackIR completely if all else fails.

Hope this answers your question.

A/B

[fael097]

it sure does, thanks virtuali and afterburn.

i guess trackIR is expensive for a reason...
perhaps i should reconsider buying it

[virtuali]

i guess trackIR is expensive for a reason...

I think the biggest advantage of TrackIR against the webcam solutions, is that TrackIR does tracking in hardware at 120 fps at 640x480. A software based on a webcam wouldn't be able to acquire and process incoming video at that speed/resolution without taking the too much CPU time for itself. So, with Track IR you get both good tracking resolution and it doesn't impact on your CPU, which is quite important with FSX.