FacetrackNOIR?

[BaronVonVaderham]

Hey guys,

I ran into facetracknoir tonight. That is to say, I saw someone use it on YouTube, and it was so much smoother than my opentrack setup.

had anyone used facetracknoir before?

the clip that made me aware is this one: 

 

 

FaceTrackNoIr can be found here: https://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm

[MAXsenna]

First time I've heard that. Maybe you should tune your OpenTrack curves?

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[BaronVonVaderham]

Yeah I think I need to learn how to tune my profile properly. 
interestingly, surgery on discord I read someone saying that with Opentrack you don’t need aitrack. I haven’t managed to get Opentrack to work without it though. 

[Rudel_chw]

On 9/24/2023 at 5:56 PM, BaronVonVaderham said:

had anyone used facetracknoir before?

 

I use FT with DCS, but keep in mind that FT can be used in two ways: tracking your face; or tracking an IR clip attached to your head (actually, a hat or headphones). Tracking your face is very imprecise and uses quite a bit of cpu, tracking an IR clip is much much better, on this video you can see how well it tracks:

 

 

I tried Opentrack once, but didn't like it because it was not able to bind the re-center function to the mouse scroll button, and could not be paused with a keybind (which I use in conjunction with snapviews).

[Hiob]

I tried FTNoIR once, but found it inferior to TrackIR regarding smoothness and user-experience. But it certainly can be tuned to a usable option if a headpiece is unwanted.

[Rudel_chw]

50 minutes ago, Hiob said:

I tried FTNoIR once, but found it inferior to TrackIR regarding smoothness and user-experience.

 

Well, of course a product that costs more than three times as much, should be better   ... but FT is perfectly adequate for simming on a budget.

[Hiob]

7 minutes ago, Rudel_chw said:

 

Well, of course a product that costs more than three times as much, should be better   ... but FT is perfectly adequate for simming on a budget.

Absolutely. That wasn't meant to hate on FTNoIR. Quite the opposite. The possibility to have no stuff attached to your head and have reasonable head tracking has its merrits. But as you said yourself - proper IR tracking is working smoother. (Doesn't neccessarily need to be TrackIR)

[Slippa]

I use trackir but would drop it if someone came up with an equally good alternative.

During the heatwave last year, I was flying in the thinnest pair of shorts, surrounded by fans with a baseball cap on my head soaked in cold water. Obviously, wearing that hat wasn’t great in the heat.

For the past couple of months I’ve worn the trackIR pro-clip… On my glasses . I’m over 50 and my eye sight isn’t what it was since a heart attack. I need glasses to read with and I also have a pair to wear for screen-time. I’ve clipped the thing to one of the arms, bit of a bodge job but it stays in place and does the same job without the need of a cap. Depending on how hectic your flight is, they stay on ok. If and when I want to use headphones I’ll clip it to those.

Something that worked as well but was wireless, or better yet didn’t need anything attached to me would be ideal.

[rob10]

4 hours ago, Slippa said:

I use trackir but would drop it if someone came up with an equally good alternative.

......

Something that worked as well but was wireless, or better yet didn’t need anything attached to me would be ideal.

Delan Engineering does a wireless version of the TIR pro-clip.  I have their wired version of this, rather than wireless version, but it works extremely well with my TIR receiver. 

https://delanengineering.com/products/

[MAXsenna]

Delan Engineering does a wireless version of the TIR pro-clip.  I have their wired version of this, rather than wireless version, but it works extremely well with my TIR receiver. 
https://delanengineering.com/products/

Don't you have an old power bank somewhere?



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[Hiob]

14 hours ago, Slippa said:

Something that worked as well but was wireless, or better yet didn’t need anything attached to me would be ideal.

Have you tried the basic reflector that comes with TIR? It is very light weight and probably better suited for your glasses. I've never used anything powered and it works perfect. (you can't have bright sun spots behind you though).

[Slippa]

On 10/5/2023 at 10:08 PM, rob10 said:

Delan Engineering does a wireless version of the TIR pro-clip.  I have their wired version of this, rather than wireless version, but it works extremely well with my TIR receiver. 

https://delanengineering.com/products/

I’ll take a look, cheers for the pointer.

On 10/6/2023 at 8:42 AM, Hiob said:

Have you tried the basic reflector that comes with TIR? It is very light weight and probably better suited for your glasses. I've never used anything powered and it works perfect. (you can't have bright sun spots behind you though).

i don’t remember there being anything but I’ll have a root around for the box, cheers.

[Hiob]

53 minutes ago, Slippa said:

I’ll take a look, cheers for the pointer.

i don’t remember there being anything but I’ll have a root around for the box, cheers.

This thing:

[Slippa]

Oh o course, that. 

I did use it on the hat. Haven’t tried using it since clipping on the pro thing to me glasses. Cheers though, wondered if I’d missed something else.

[Nightdare]

On 10/5/2023 at 3:06 PM, Rudel_chw said:

 

Well, of course a product that costs more than three times as much, should be better   ... but FT is perfectly adequate for simming on a budget.

 

I remember jury-rigging my own with a piece of plastic, 3 IR leds, an old powersupply and a PS Eyecam cam where I ripped out the IR filter

Was done under $40

 

Regardless the cost, it was a huge improvement over FTNOIR

[Bozon]

I now run OpenTrack with AITrack (separate software) as the tracker. It works way better than the Dalen clip I used before.

AITrack is a face tracker, so I can use my regular webcam. Far better than anything I tried before. Works while wearing glasses and headphones. So much more convenient than a clip.

The only caveats are:

1. You can’t have other people’s faces in the frame.

2. It seems to have difficulties with beards, so when I did not shave for a week it was unstable. Looks like it had problems deciding where my face ended (the chin) .

Edited December 25, 2023 by Bozon

[BaronVonVaderham]

Have you tried trackAI with opentrack? TrackAI is not the same as AItrack, and I’m curious how they compare. I’m aware opentrack can work standalone. Allegedly better than with trackAI, but I’ve not been able to get that working well for me. Too nervous and twitchy.

[Bozon]

42 minutes ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

Have you tried trackAI with opentrack? TrackAI is not the same as AItrack, and I’m curious how they compare. I’m aware opentrack can work standalone. Allegedly better than with trackAI, but I’ve not been able to get that working well for me. Too nervous and twitchy.

I don’t know what you mean by trackAI.

AITrack can be found here:

https://github.com/AIRLegend/aitrack
It is a face tracker that broadcasts the solution on the local network so various software can use it. You can even use your phone camera if your phone’s wifi is connected to the same local net as the computer.

The current iteration of it works very well, except I find that beards give it trouble. It handles glasses perfectly. I read mixed reviews of it, but they were based on older versions.

Opentrack also has a built in NeuralNet face tracker. It works, but true to December 2023 the AITrack is superior on a shaved face. I only ran a quick comparison so this is not the final word and may change with future updates to both - so try both!

[spikenet]

so the verdict is FTNoIR is just not worth it?

I set it up recently mainly to use the occasional time I dont want to fly in VR and found it painful with sluggish tracking and frustrating as hell in the apache with the gun!

Would be awesome to find something that can face track reliably, or track points on a hat using a standard webcam etc. any thoughts?

[julian265]

On 1/8/2024 at 3:18 PM, spikenet said:

so the verdict is FTNoIR is just not worth it?

I set it up recently mainly to use the occasional time I dont want to fly in VR and found it painful with sluggish tracking and frustrating as hell in the apache with the gun!

Would be awesome to find something that can face track reliably, or track points on a hat using a standard webcam etc. any thoughts?

You can try opentrack's aruco code tracker if you really want to avoid LEDs (but you'd need to slap a flat code on your face or hat!).

I have IR LEDs with a battery clipped to my headset, which works great, but I wanted to see if there were alternatives.

No amount of tuning allowed face tracking to work for me. The aruco tracker worked better, but nowhere near as well as tracking three LEDs. You might have better luck though. Bear in mind that the size of the code will effect accuracy and hence the amount of smoothing required.

[Hiob]

On 10/10/2023 at 6:22 PM, Slippa said:

Oh o course, that. 

I did use it on the hat. Haven’t tried using it since clipping on the pro thing to me glasses. Cheers though, wondered if I’d missed something else.

What was the outcome by the way?

[Slippa]

Ha, I’d forgotten this.

I’ve been flying with my cap on with the basic reflector thing on it through the Winter.  Come the warmer weather no doubt I’ll be back to clipping the ‘pro’ thing on the side of my glasses again .

The Pro clip pretty much lives on a set of headphones. When we get the loach I’m likely to bury my head in those for some chop-chop audio for a while. Until it’s too hot I’m alright with me cap on and no cans mostly.