Hardware & Technical Head Tracker?

[eigenman]

I searched for this topic but didn't find it. If there was already a thread on this please direct me.

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Will ED support head tracking movement?

TrackIR can be configured to directly to the game and also take over the mouse, but the game has to support head movement.

I cannot stress how important it is to have smooth head movement when dog fighting and flying air sims.

Here's a link to TrackIR for those who haven't heard of such things.
http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

 

[Kerrash]

I have not seen anything specific for this tech, but Oculus Rift support might be considered which may be similar enough to make this possible.

 

[eigenman]

I have not seen anything specific for this tech, but Oculus Rift support might be considered which may be similar enough to make this possible.

As long as the head can be rotated up/down left/right in the game somehow then a host of products to track the user's head can be used. It's a bit more dev time but the benefit is well worth it imo.

 

[Kerrash]

I agree, I am a huge fan of the Oculus Rift; so I hope that makes it in.

 

[StarTux]

Its quite different from Occulus Rift and is a mature product. Basically you wear an IR reflector on your head, either attached to a baseball cap, or clipped on to a headset and this is picked up by little IR receiver on top of your monitor . TrackIR gives hands free full range of motion, move your head and the camera tracks it, very immersive too.

A couple of videos:

Track IR explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AO0F5sLdVM

And in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfprdLEet7s

From what I know of Occulus Rift I would consider it the next generation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCwczY1jTM

 

[Kerrash]

Its quite different from Occulus Rift and is a mature product. Basically you wear an IR reflector on your head, either attached to a baseball cap, or clipped on to a headset. TrackIR gives hands free full range of motion, move your head and the camera tracks it, very immersive too.

...

Thanks Polaris. Yeah I understand it is very different, but the concept is the same. Head tracking to modify the player view.

 

[StarTux]

Thanks Polaris. Yeah I understand it is very different, but the concept is the same. Head tracking to modify the player view.

Indeed, just wanted to re-enforce how much more immersion these devices bring into games, if head tracking is in the game as you describe .

 

[Memnoch]

I have a Track IR but don't use it very often. It would great to have another excuse to use it.

 

[eigenman]

I have a Track IR but don't use it very often. It would great to have another excuse to use it.

The only game I really use it for is World War II Online. WWIIOL is also possibly the best WWII dog fighter game on the market and you'll need it for good situation awareness. It provides a huge improvement to your view space. You have to know where your opponent is and always keep eyes on him. If you are restricted to front only views then you'll lose.

 

[whiterook]

FaceTrackNoIR is a much better solution

I love head tracking options in games but FaceTrackNoIR is the best solution hands down to this implementation. Track IR is very agressive in demanding no other similar devices can be used in software if their product is supported. FaceTrackNoIR is free for all and doesn't require anything more than a decent webcam. It would have the broadest usage as it doesn't require dedicated expensive hardware to use it.

facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/

 

[Memnoch]

I use it for Arma 2 and VBS 2. It's fantastic for helicopters.

 

[RobFisher]

I hope so. 3d virtual cockpits make for an extra level of immersion. Once you have that TrackIR support is kind of obvious.

 

[JKF]

I don't understand this :S

Could someone explain in a little more detail how it would work in a game.
At the moment I'm thinking moving your head changes your ship direction.

 

[RobFisher]

I don't understand this :S

Could someone explain in a little more detail how it would work in a game.
At the moment I'm thinking moving your head changes your ship direction.

The cockpit of the ship is rendered in 3d. The viewpoint is n the cockpit. A slight movement of your head to the left pans the view to the left.

It's non-linear, so you can look all around and still see your monitor

 

[JKF]

The cockpit of the ship is rendered in 3d. The viewpoint is n the cockpit. A slight movement of your head to the left pans the view to the left.

It's non-linear, so you can look all around and still see your monitor

This is very confusing

So the cockpit is essentially too large to fit on your monitor. Looking slightly up, down, left or right causes the cockpit view on your monitor to pan in the appropriate direction.

But if, for example, you look slightly to the left and the cockpit view changes, what happens when you look back at the monitor? :S

Sorry about this but I'm just not getting it. I would understand better if you were using video glasses.

 

[Bursar]

That TrackIR looks like a recipe for eye strain. You turn your head to look sideways, but then have to look back with your eyes in the opposite direction to actually see what's on your screen.

I'd rather stick with my multi-monitor setup to be honest.

 

[BacchusZA]

I love head tracking options in games but FaceTrackNoIR is the best solution hands down to this implementation. Track IR is very agressive in demanding no other similar devices can be used in software if their product is supported. FaceTrackNoIR is free for all and doesn't require anything more than a decent webcam. It would have the broadest usage as it doesn't require dedicated expensive hardware to use it.

facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/

I have to disagree with you about FaceTrackNoIR being the best solution, certainly from the technical side of things. For me, FaceTrackNoIR just didn't work well enough, and was far too inconsistent and unreliable. It is however, highly dependent on the quality of the webcam you use - as you said - so your mileage will vary greatly because of that. It's also very sensitive to ambient light and so on. It also helps to be handy with a soldering iron, as a lot of the webcams available have an IR filter that you'll need to disable before they'll work properly, and like the TrackIR, you'll get best results using LED's instead of passive tracking via the camera, and you'll need to put that together yourself. Conversely, TrackIR just works, straight out of the box, and works extremely well. You also often end up jumping through hoops to get the open source software to work well, and end up trawling the web looking for people who've written plugins for the various titles that actually work well, rather than the standard ones that I, and many others, couldn't get good results from.

I can't speak to them demanding exclusivity in terms of games that support head-tracking - the DCS titles certainly support TrackIR AND the open source solutions, and many of the titles I see on their site are titles I remember seeing TrackIR support for. I do however understand their fees are very high if you want to license their product, or part of it, and the device itself certainly isn't cheap at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to discourage people from looking at alternatives to TrackIR, and I can attest that FaceTrackNoIR is certainly a good one to look into. But to get it to work anywhere nearly as well as TrackIR does, you need to fiddle and fuss with it a lot, and you may not succeed at the end because of the webcam you're using, or because of bad software support. If you try FaceTrackNoIR, or something similar - and I encourage you to - and get good results, fantastic. Just be prepared to do a lot of it yourself, to have to tinker and fiddle, and to chase the kids out of the room from time to time so you can swear properly.

But a lot of people are going to end up doing what I did - try to do it themselves, see how brilliant the concept is, but get frustrated with how badly they get it to work, and end up splashing out the money for something that you just plug in, and play with.

 

[BacchusZA]

That TrackIR looks like a recipe for eye strain. You turn your head to look sideways, but then have to look back with your eyes in the opposite direction to actually see what's on your screen.

I'd rather stick with my multi-monitor setup to be honest.

It's actually very comfortable to use, as your view moves to an exaggerated degree compared to your head movement. The only time you find yourself having to do any noticeable amount of turning your head, but still having to keep your eyes on the screen, is when you're looking over your shoulder in game. In the one sim I use TrackIR with the most, I can perform a 360" look around by just turning my head in one direction, and can still comfortably keep my eyes on the screen in front of me, though that'll depend a lot on how sensitive you've set the headtracking. The defaults are generally quite comfortable though.

 

[RobFisher]

So the cockpit is essentially too large to fit on your monitor.

Yes. For one thing it has left, right, possibly rear and top windows.

Looking slightly up, down, left or right causes the cockpit view on your monitor to pan in the appropriate direction.

But if, for example, you look slightly to the left and the cockpit view changes, what happens when you look back at the monitor? :S

When you look straight ahead the view is straight ahead. You only make a very small head movement to the left to pan the view all the way to the left, so you can still see the monitor. I've never experienced the eye strain someone mentioned and can't imagine why that would be a problem. You can imagine all kinds of problems with it but in practice it works very well and feels natural. Humans are very good at remapping their body movements to arbitrary effects; it's why we can play ball games and operate machinery.

 

[BacchusZA]

Y You can imagine all kinds of problems with it but in practice it works very well and feels natural. Humans are very good at remapping their body movements to arbitrary effects; it's why we can play ball games and operate machinery.

I have to support what Rob says here. Even on a single monitor, head-tracking adds an incredible amount of atmosphere and immersion to gaming, and I imagine that on a triple monitor, or those fancy really wide, curved screens, the degree of immersion is even greater.

If you have a webcam I strongly urge you to try FaceTrackNoIR, or another open source solution. I know I wrote a fairly long post about why TrackIR is better - in my experience - but I really would suggest trying it one of the free ones, if only as a demonstration of the concept. Then if you can get it to work well, you're sorted, and if you have issues like I did you can look at getting the commercial product.

I would however suggest not leaping into spending large sums on TrackIRif you go that route though, not for a few months at least, as there'll be more information about the Occulus Rift by then. That looks to be a *very* sexy and exciting piece of equipment - it's a VR headset with built-in head-tracking, and it looks to be the first time that consumer level VR may actually be worth the time of day.