DIY Head Tracker For A Tenner
- Thread starter Dead Fred
- Start date
well for me I'd like to see what that extra degree of freedom will feel like .. we have pitch and yaw but i believe (i could be wrong) open track will enable roll too.
still trying to get it to work though so who knows
There are lots of advantages to opentrack/trackir still. Not just 3DOF.
You have spline curves to control deadzone and nonlinearity to control how your physical head movements are translated into virtual head movements in game with the ability to define end points in degrees.
You also can map a reset center button to keyboard or joystick and map a tracking on/off toggle if you don't want head tracking on all the time. Handy for sniping and more precision.
Thats aside from the additional head roll axis which is more natural for following a target. You lean into where you want to go and roll the plane which is more natural.
You also don't have to turn your head as far to see the screens just nod sideways (roll) down to the left or right to activate them, so you can still see more of what is in front of you and the scanner while activating systems.
I don't use 1,2,3 though, it's easier for me to just look at stuff if your using HOTAS.
Last edited:
Sorry, my understanding is you cannot look at the left/right system panels directly with TRACKIR (no matter if the mapping is 1 & 3 or your joystick buttons etc). Or is your HOTAS comment suggesting you simply head look at the panels?
Yeah I mean head look at the panels. It's a lot easier with head roll. You only have to move your head about 2/3 as far and roll nod down a little.
The finer control of the tracking through custom spline curves gives you a lot more fine adjustment through the rotations too.
But if you absolutely must have the keyboard shortcuts you might be disappointed so matter how much more fine control you have of the tracking itself.
The finer control of the tracking through custom spline curves gives you a lot more fine adjustment through the rotations too.
But if you absolutely must have the keyboard shortcuts you might be disappointed so matter how much more fine control you have of the tracking itself.
BTW the the opentrack functions center head tracking and head tracking on/off toggle shortcuts do work and can be bound to a joystick button.
My previous problems seem to stem from running ED and WT as admin, Setting Opentrack to run as admin via the shortcut re-enabled the shortcuts in game.
So Opentrack works 3DOF 100% with EDTracker now and therefore any compatible TrackIR game.
My previous problems seem to stem from running ED and WT as admin, Setting Opentrack to run as admin via the shortcut re-enabled the shortcuts in game.
So Opentrack works 3DOF 100% with EDTracker now and therefore any compatible TrackIR game.
Last edited:
After playing with opentrack I've noticed a few things that might pertain to that.
Previously I had my tracker on linear with 5x scale on yaw and pitch (currently roll doesn't exist).
With 5x I was noticing a little drift over time too. I know Brumster said something about him liking something closer to 10.
Well with opentrack and 5x it was way to sensitive. My pulse was actually jogging the tracker slightly and it was looking like a slight misfire of the ship engine every few moments.
I figured that the camera trackers record 1:1 movement and you use the mapping curves in opentrack to exagerate head movement. So I set that to 1:1 it is a lot smoother and my pulse isn't noticeable. BUT this small movement scale seems to be making the auto center very agressive.
Small 1 degree head movements before with 5x scaling was probably translating 1 degree of head movement into 5 degrees in game. So movement is more agressive and wouldn't be recognized as drift forcing a re center.
Now with scale at x1 large movements that are exaggerated in game via the spline curves are causing the auto centering to drift from as much as 30 degrees of head movement because your moving your head slowly enough at 1:1 rotation to get the auto centering to kick in.
TEMP SOLUTION
Would be to turn the scaling up as high as you can to trick the auto centering into not kicking in because it sees your exaggerated head movement of say exponential x10 as not being drift.
UPDATE.
Expo x8 is still causing a lot of drift. Especially with a hind of pitch combined with yaw. Right now having an option to turn off auto centering in the calibration tool might be nice. Even if it's just for testing purposes to make sure what I'm experiencing really is auto centering, or something else.
UPDATE2.
I commented out the auto center code in the edtrackerII sketch and no more weird drifting at low scale settings.
Opentracks center command centers the view regardless of whether you have drifted or not in game so if it drifts a little you just press your joystick button to center the view and opentrack at the same time. You can always use the reset tracker tool by LasseB if you want to be absolutely sure, give it the same key binding as opentrack reset center and both EDTracker and opentrack should be sync reset to 0,0,0
Really happy with it all now. No lag 3DOF with head tracking center and on/off bindings on my HOTAS. Works great in Elite Dangerous and War Thunder
Last edited:
Allright, that's what I suspected. Would you know of a nice and free piece of software that can do this with my TM Hotas X?
UPDATE2.
I commented out the auto center code in the edtrackerII sketch and no more weird drifting at low scale settings.
Opentracks center command centers the view regardless of whether you have drifted or not in game so if it drifts a little you just press your joystick button to center the view and opentrack at the same time. You can always use the reset tracker tool by LasseB if you want to be absolutely sure, give it the same key binding as opentrack reset center and both EDTracker and opentrack should be sync reset to 0,0,0
Really happy with it all now. No lag 3DOF with head tracking center and on/off bindings on my HOTAS. Works great in Elite Dangerous and War Thunder
So we're fairly sure the auto centering code is causing drift at times? ie: It's misinterpreting head movement and in effect ignoring some, thus head alignment goes off.
So is it possible this auto-centering code can be modified or optionally turned off via the calibration program pretty please?
Last edited:
I got my prebuilt edtracker yesterday. So I thought I'd pop in and say a huge thank you to the user (who is in this thread) and thee quick service / turnaround is much appreciated
You know of the problems win 8.1 users are having with the edtracker. It seems to be essentially a driver problem. How does the edtracker get recognised by windows 8.1? If the device gets recognised as an Arduino then all is fine. The driver gets attached and things work well. Is it possible to either adapt the signed Arduino driver to allow it to attack to edtracker or get the edtracker to present itself as an Arduino device?
The Arduino compatible Pro Micro is a Leonardo clone so just update the driver in Device Manager and select the Leonardo driver from disc.
After playing with opentrack I've noticed a few things that might pertain to that.
Previously I had my tracker on linear with 5x scale on yaw and pitch (currently roll doesn't exist).
With 5x I was noticing a little drift over time too. I know Brumster said something about him liking something closer to 10.
Well with opentrack and 5x it was way to sensitive. My pulse was actually jogging the tracker slightly and it was looking like a slight misfire of the ship engine every few moments.
I figured that the camera trackers record 1:1 movement and you use the mapping curves in opentrack to exagerate head movement. So I set that to 1:1 it is a lot smoother and my pulse isn't noticeable. BUT this small movement scale seems to be making the auto center very agressive.
Small 1 degree head movements before with 5x scaling was probably translating 1 degree of head movement into 5 degrees in game. So movement is more agressive and wouldn't be recognized as drift forcing a re center.
Now with scale at x1 large movements that are exaggerated in game via the spline curves are causing the auto centering to drift from as much as 30 degrees of head movement because your moving your head slowly enough at 1:1 rotation to get the auto centering to kick in.
TEMP SOLUTION
Would be to turn the scaling up as high as you can to trick the auto centering into not kicking in because it sees your exaggerated head movement of say exponential x10 as not being drift.
UPDATE.
Expo x8 is still causing a lot of drift. Especially with a hind of pitch combined with yaw. Right now having an option to turn off auto centering in the calibration tool might be nice. Even if it's just for testing purposes to make sure what I'm experiencing really is auto centering, or something else.
UPDATE2.
I commented out the auto center code in the edtrackerII sketch and no more weird drifting at low scale settings.
Opentracks center command centers the view regardless of whether you have drifted or not in game so if it drifts a little you just press your joystick button to center the view and opentrack at the same time. You can always use the reset tracker tool by LasseB if you want to be absolutely sure, give it the same key binding as opentrack reset center and both EDTracker and opentrack should be sync reset to 0,0,0
Really happy with it all now. No lag 3DOF with head tracking center and on/off bindings on my HOTAS. Works great in Elite Dangerous and War Thunder
Hi Antmax. Thanks for this info.
I do have a question which may be a little obvious. How do I make ED take note of the OpenTrack settings
As a test, I set the Yaw and Pitch scales to 1 in the EDTracker UI. In game, I can see this has an effect by the very slow movement.
In the OpenTrack UI, I've set up some custom curves to greatly exaggerate this movement as you suggest above. I can see this having an effect in OpenTrack as only small movements of my head create the desired movements on the little graphic in the top left.
So, my question is as above...how do I make ED take note of the OpenTrack settings rather than the ones set up in the EDTracker UI?
Thanks for any help and apologies if I've missed something really obvious.
Neill.
Complete package
Greetings
Can someone tell me if I buy the complete package from edtracker, do I get the USB cable with it?
And once I have it , can I just plug it in strap it on , set it up in ED and I'm good to go?
Or what is the procedure with the complete package?
Greetings
Can someone tell me if I buy the complete package from edtracker, do I get the USB cable with it?
And once I have it , can I just plug it in strap it on , set it up in ED and I'm good to go?
Or what is the procedure with the complete package?
You need your own USB cable. This makes sense as different people need different lengths etc. eg: if you'd pairing it to your headset you'll probably need 2.5/3 meters...