Whats the best budget/free head tracking solution?

[The_Chugster]

Ive seen a few videos about cheap/free phone apps for head tracking and wanted some direct feedback from you guys and to which is the best?

[VpR81]

I'd recommend Delanclip with openTrack. Quality is great too. I remember opentrack to be a bit annoying to set up, but once it is set, it runs great. There are quite a few videos about that on YT.

https://delanengineering.com/

[The_Chugster]

To be fair, thats not much cheaper than track IR, im looking for free or very cheap, to see how i get on before i commit to a proper solution

[edmuss]

I made an active IR clip from some biro shells, three IR emitting diodes and a capacitor. I used an old mouse usb cable to supply power and held it to the side of my headset with a magnet pulled from a scrap hard disk; total cost of the clip was about £3.

Picked up a PS3 eye toy camera from eBay for a tenner, used a scrap of 3 1/2" floppy disk as a visible light filter and used both freetrack and opentrack with a lot of success in DCS, arma3 and elite dangerous.

If you're handy and have the time then it can be really cheap but it will take quite a lot of tweaking to get perfect.

Another option (which I currently have set up) is IR face tracking with an old Xbox 360 kinect driving opentrack. It works ok but not quite as well as the IR led setup did. My old headset fell apart and went to BT earbuds so no longer had anywhere to mount the clip.

[The_Chugster]

What about using an old phone/webcam?

[edmuss]

Not tried any of the phone solutions but a webcam would work fine, the reason I used the PS3 camera is because it runs at 120fps so you get super smooth tracking for not a lot of money.

Most difficult bit is making the clip, you can buy 3D printed frames that you can populate with IR emitters and then it's only a case of putting a power supply to them.

edit: can't really go wrong for 17 quid.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IR-Head-Tracker-Full-D-I-Y-Kit-for-IR-Head-Tracking-3ft-USB-lead-Very-Popular-/393905227567?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=710-127635-2958-0

Edited March 3, 2022 by edmuss

[No1sonuk]

On 3/3/2022 at 8:26 PM, The_Chugster said:

What about using an old phone/webcam?

I tried a normal webcam with filters changed.  It didn't work nearly as well as the Delanclip and PS3 Eye camera setup I have now.
If you go the webcam route, you have to open it up to remove the IR filter, then fit a visible light filter (e.g. a piece of floppy disk, as mentioned above).

[Dav_Daddy]

I've had good experiences with SmoothTrack on Android.  It's not free $10 but works well.  There are a few free options if you use Android as well, I've done writeups for SmoothTrack as well as a couple others over on my blog.  DIY Game Controllers.  They should all be under the "Flight Sim" category.

Here's a couple links.  A no cost option called GimbalTrack.  Haven't spent enough time with this one to have a strong opinion on it.  Here is SmoothTrack the only one I've spent any real time with.  It works well but is fairly fiddly to get working.  Both just use your smartphone camera so no headgear or anything to mess with.  If I recall SmoothTrack required the room to be pretty well lit to work right.

Hope this helps.

[Dragon1-1]

For a while, I used an old, cheap webcam with IR filter removed and a DIY clip made out of a battery pack and some sanded IR LEDs, plus a three resistors and some bits to hold it all together. Worked just fine. Flying in VR now, but tracking on the old kit (using OpenTrack) was just fine. Could never get face tracking to work reliably, maybe it's better now.

[1BRAVO9]

On 3/3/2022 at 10:58 AM, The_Chugster said:

To be fair, thats not much cheaper than track IR, im looking for free or very cheap, to see how i get on before i commit to a proper solution

 

Sorry for responding a little late but I just arrived here.

Do you have a webcam?

The phrase "free or very cheap" can be somewhat subjective as we can see.

If you have a decent webcam, Steam has a download called ViewTracker that utilizes your webcam and nothing more than head movement (no attachment like TrackIR).

Right now it is $14.99 but I see it on sale regularly.

I've used it off and on for a while and it was serviceable. Every once in a while it get's choppy and it picks up any type of movement like scratching an eyebrow or something.

The good thing about it is that it does have viewing depth or whatever you would want to call it. It can register movement closer and further from the monitor and zoom in and out.

If I was looking for a "cheap" way to go and did have a webcam, it would be my choice.

I did try open track once on a cell phone. It worked, but was a little less serviceable as the view tracker. Also I didn't like my iPhone being tied up with my game. I have a phone desk mount boom, I just put it in the boom and positioned the arm in the best possible angle and location and it worked, decent.

So if I had a webcam, ViewTracker from Steam. If not and I absolutely did not want to buy or could not afford a webcam I would go the cell phone route. But just until I could budget a webcam and Viewtracker goes on sale. I paid $7.99 for my copy.

Edited May 10, 2023 by 1BRAVO9

[No1sonuk]

I've tried "ED Tracker", which is a 3-axis gyro based setup, which while it doesn't have the 6-axis freedom, it's totally independent of web cams, etc.
The only problem is that it's not easy to track down the data, software, etc. to get it working as it hasn't been maintained for a while.

What I'm currently trying is this option which uses just a web cam and software - no IR.

 

[mihai04]

I have just uploaded this video, showing the performance of a simple webcam. I guess this could be considered a zero-cost setup.
As I indicate in the description, if you don't have a webcam, you can use an Android smartphone with DroidCam. 

 

I've only been in DCS for a few hours, so please don't be too harsh. 

Edited July 1, 2023 by mihai04

[72westy]

GRASSMONKEYSIMULATION – Wireless Infrared Head Tracking Game Controllers