Tobii eye and face tracking native support - as support for Apache

[thbrix]

Now that the Apache is on the way, I would really wish for native support for the tobii eyetracker, I think it would be ideal for use with the Apache and also all other modules. 

Thanks

Regards

Thomas

[Hiob]

Hi,

I thought Tobii works with DCS? Or doesn't it?

What do you mean by native support? (How) is it supported now?

I'm curious because I just happen to have mine arrived today....

[Gary]

I can confirm Tobi does work with DCS although when I tried some time ago it was less than great. Your mileage may vary though of course.

Regards,

Gary

[Hiob]

It's just a test. I hope to get rid of the need to wear equipment on my head. If it doesn't work, I can still return to trackIR (which admittedly works great).

[MIghtymoo]

48 minutes ago, Hiob said:

It's just a test. I hope to get rid of the need to wear equipment on my head. If it doesn't work, I can still return to trackIR (which admittedly works great).

Can you report back after testing?

I have a package arriving on the 24th, but has heard less favorable reviews lately and consider just returning the unit.

Edited December 22, 2021 by MIghtymoo

[Eaglewings]

Few days ago I saw a video by our Glowing Sidewinder do video on the Tobi Eye Tracker.

Somethings to definitely take away from the video.
Might want to check it out here

Sent from my XQ-AT52 using Tapatalk

[Hiob]

4 hours ago, MIghtymoo said:

Can you report back after testing?

sure

[Tippis]

6 hours ago, Hiob said:

I thought Tobii works with DCS? Or doesn't it?

What do you mean by native support? (How) is it supported now?

It's not supported in the same way, say, TrackIR is, where you plug in the stuff run the software, and DCS just picks up that “oh, this is trackir — let's just move the camera depending on what the software is telling me”. Tobii requires you to go through the modern rigamarole of not having any clear manuals and instructions for anything, since it's supposed to be really easy to use (go look at their website and good luck finding any actual information without diving into the forums). But in this case actually requires extra software that you're not really told to install, much less given an explanation for how it's supposed to work. If you hope to just plug it in, install the software when it tells you, and get going, you're treated with a static in-game cockpit view that only responds to regular keyboard camera controls.

You can indeed make it work, but it's not nearly as neat or as easily controllable. It's pretty much inherent in how your eyes work — they move around, in part out of your control, and to make it anywhere near stable, you need to add a lot of filtering and smoothing that in other instances will make it feel sluggish. And even then, the built-in stuff is lacklustre so you end up wanting to use third-party solutions to get the kind of fine adjustments you want. Hell, even for the features that are supposed to tie into native Windows functionality, the reliability and functionality is flaky.

Tobii (at least the later ones) also suffers from trying to do two things at once, where it does simultaneous eye- and head tracking, but the latter only works at short range. If you have any kind of extensive table- or chair mounted setup rather than just plonking the controller down on the table in front of the monitor, chances are that your head ends up out of range so the head tracking becomes very unreliable, or just doesn't work at all. Meanwhile, the eye tracking works via IR illumination, and this interferes with other similar systems. If you have a TrackIR-style camera/diode/reflector setup, the camera will pick up reflections of the Tobii tracker illumination and cause all kinds of noise, which (if you have it running) means the TrackIR software flips out and makes your in-game head spin… literally. And there is no way to easily just turn off the Tobii short of unplugging it — even if disabled, it keeps illuminating, so you have to put it on a USB hub with a power switch if you want to be able to go between the two without having to yank on cables. It's… suboptimal, let's say.

A lot of this comes down to the software and driver end being just abysmally unready for prime-time, and the head-tracking part being more experimental at this point. When it works, for the games where it is natively picked up without any of the external software interfering, it's nice enough. But the set of circumstances for that “when” to be true are just too narrow and inflexible. I bought it on an (expensive) lark with the same hope of not needing to have anything on my head, but it is really just gathering dust now — the inability to just turn it off when not needed means I can't even leave it plugged in for creepy Windows Hello usage.

[thbrix]

Im on day 2 with tobii 5 in dcs, i have adjusted it to something that works well. 
 

i am under the impression that the product will perform better with native support. 
 

https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022539494-Native-support-vs-Tobii-Game-Hub

[Hiob]

5 hours ago, thbrix said:

Im on day 2 with tobii 5 in dcs, i have adjusted it to something that works well. 
 

i am under the impression that the product will perform better with native support. 
 

https://help.tobii.com/hc/en-us/articles/360022539494-Native-support-vs-Tobii-Game-Hub

Hey, can you share your settings?

My first impressions are the following. Installation and first setup/ making it work with dcs wasn’t that difficult at all. Just followed the instructions on screen et voila. I opted to deactivate the eye-tracking and just go with the head tracking (I just want to replace trackir). The tracking works good for me.

My problems with it (so far) is the motion. It has big latency compared to trackIR (probably due to the none native implementation?) and to get a somehow decent curve I needed to add curves inside dcs control settings in addition to the curves in the tobii software, but I‘m nowhere near the smooth trackir experience yet.

[Enabler]

I can't even get mine to work at all. Tobii Experience sees my eyes and tracks. But I can't get it to work in DCS. I run the Beta from a simpit. The sensor is about 5 feet from my head. 

[Hiob]

6 minutes ago, Enabler said:

I can't even get mine to work at all. Tobii Experience sees my eyes and tracks. But I can't get it to work in DCS. I run the Beta from a simpit. The sensor is about 5 feet from my head. 

Have you installed the game hub and selected dcs?

[Enabler]

Just now, Hiob said:

Have you installed the game hub and selected dcs?

Yes

I've also disabled TrackIR to make sure there is no conflict.

[Hiob]

1 hour ago, Enabler said:

Yes

I've also disabled TrackIR to make sure there is no conflict.

You need to adjust the curves in the game hub a lot. especially the sensitivity.

I can’t really help otherwise, because it worked for me out of the box without any trouble (works from a technical point of view, the usefulness is still tbd)

[Enabler]

Even though TrackIR software was closed, the problem persisted. But what made Tobii work was to physically unplug the TrackIR. Now to work on the settings. 

Regarding the OP, it would be great with the Apache, except for one issue I am experiencing with its functionality. The software works best with eye gaze off. With both head and eye tracking, I find the image to be unstable. Especially when looking close and into the cockpit. It's difficult to activate switches when the image dances a little. 

Also, the Viper HMCS is not tracking true. With eye track off, I turn my head to look behind but my HMCS lags behind, requiring me to turn my eye back toward it. This can make Apache use awkward. 

Another issue with the Viper HMCS is mark points. I place the reticle on the target, ground stabilize it (TMS fwd short) and the mark is about 120 degrees from where I set it. I need to manually slew it to the proper spot before I save it. 

Overall, I'm liking the hardware. The settings software is a little lacking though. It took me a while to get my TrackIR to function as I desired, I imagine in time this will work itself out too.

[Hiob]

I only use the head tracking. For me it is only supposed to replace the trackIR, to get rid of the stuff on my head. The eye tracking didn‘t do the trick for me. The head tracking alone works in principle but I haven’t found curves that fit my needs yet.

[Enabler]

Tobii software is lacking compared to TrackIR. It has only one curve for sensitivity and speed. It needs one for each axis. I need it to slow down in the vertical axis when looking into the cockpit and speed up when looking outside. 

[Tippis]

18 hours ago, Enabler said:

Tobii software is lacking compared to TrackIR. It has only one curve for sensitivity and speed. It needs one for each axis. I need it to slow down in the vertical axis when looking into the cockpit and speed up when looking outside. 

Pretty much, yeah.

The thing that makes TIR so neat is that you're not (necessarily) setting sensitivity or movement speed — you're creating position mapping; a very precise, customisable, and even entirely non-linear translation between sensor position/rotation and camera position/rotation. The way you can make it speed up and slow down (or just not move at all), or, hell, even go backwards if that's what you want along certain ranges of motion along any and all axis of motion means there's no end to the tweakability and fitting it to what feels natural to you. The Tobii software has almost none of that, and what it has is very limited in how you can differentiate between the movement and rotation axes.

With a bit if iteration (and a far longer detection range for the head tracking), the sensors can become a really interesting proposition, but without a significant software update, it will never be able to do what TIR can… and TIR truly desperately needs some strong competition.

[Hiob]

7 hours ago, Tippis said:

… and TIR truly desperately needs some strong competition.

100% agreed. But the competition needs a distinct feature over TrackIR, like working without any gadgets mounted to your head. Because other than that trackIR works almost flawlessly.

I hoped tobii could be it, but I doubt it by now.

[MIghtymoo]

I got Tobii headtracker for Christmas and I tried hard to set it up.
Worked pretty well with Farcry 6.

For DCS it was not a good experience. Very hard to get used to the jumpy eyetracking, especially on a large screen when scanning the cockpit / MFDs.

When disabling the eyetracker and only using headtracking, I found out that the Tobii reacted to when I blinked and moved the camera up slightly every time. This was especially bad if zoomed in on instruments/MFDs. 

I tried all kinds of guides and settings before giving up. Tobii was sent back for a refund.

Now I realize just how good combo with Smoothtrack (on the iPhone) and Opentrack (on the PC) really is.
If you have a phone with a decent front camera I would highly recommend this combo if you want to have mo gear on your head.

Old pic of setup with iPhone on top on monitor:

Edited January 4, 2022 by MIghtymoo

[Need4Speed]

I just got my ET5 setup after a little trial and error (moved from OpenTrack with an older RealSense camera). I found that if you uninstall OpenTrack this removes some conflict I was having as I had both a TrackIR device and a HeadTracker device being listed. Second thing I found was I had to run Tobii Game Hub as admin on initial install, so the HeadTracker.dll file would install in my DCS program directory. After that you don't need to elevate as admin.

Once I had the above two issues resolved it's been smooth sailing. I've very happy with the tracking required very little modification. I do recommend setting up the hotkeys in GameHub for both Enable/Disable toggle and head tracking reset.

Also to give you greater range of view, while still looking at the screen, I recommend setting your Head Rotation sensitivity for Yaw and Pitch to 2 on up so you can get full 180 degree to check your six.