Free face tracking - No lamps, reflexes or anything - that WORKS!

[RipKirby]

Great news everyone!

 

FaceTrackNoIR is an application that uses a webcam to track face movements in real time.

 

 

NEW METHOD as of 20 aug 2010:

 

Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/facetracknoir/files/ get the program and the Update_FaceTrackNoIR_20100716 TrackIR.zip Second Update

 

Then go to naturalpointofview.blogspot.com/p/trackirfixer.html and follow instructions. Real simple.

 

 

 

OLD:

 

Go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/facetracknoir/files/ get the program and the Update_FaceTrackNoIR_20100716 TrackIR.zip Second Update

 

Then get ppjoy0846testrelease.exe from here: http://ppjoy.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-test-release.html

 

First, open the windows control panel and find your PPJoy controlpanel. Make a new joystick. I called mine Joystick 10 and set it like this:

 

 

We should get 6 DOF but, alas, poor Yorrick. Perhaps something we can work on. I cant get FaketrackIR working under Game Protocol. I tried running PPJoy -> TrackIR4Fun also to no avail. One of those would be killer so please post if you find a solution to this.

 

 

Then open the FaceTrackNoIR. Here's how I set it up:

 

The program tracks your face through webcam. This is my built-in laptop cam and I get 0% CPU but only 20fps - this must be a limitation in the cheapo webcam that Dell puts there.

 

If you disable EWMA filtering, you get a much sharper and faster reacting result. Ahhh, lots of tinkering to do. All of this is great for the more anal type that likes these kinds of things. :thumbup:

 

Set the Game Protocol to Virtual Joystick and select Joystick 10 under setting. See? Joystick 10, our friend from before :D Now, we are sending the values from the headtracking to Joystick 10, which is a virtual joystick, and NOW we can go to our simulator and set things up.

 

This is the good part:

 

 

Inverse the X and Y axis, set your deadzones as you like it and its up up up and AWAY! :pilotfly:

 

No Wii controllers, no soldering and setting the cat on fire, no old caps with a flashlight, no taping bicycle lamps to your face. Just you and the good old webcam :)

 

Let me know if it works out for ya.

 

PS: I am running this on Win7 x64

 

PPS: If the FaceTrackNoIR installer or program says it's missing dll or similar, try getting FaceAPI: http://www.seeingmachines.com/product/faceapi/downloads/ - request a non commercial license, its automated and takes 1 minute.

Edited August 20, 2010 by RipKirby
Better method

[636_Castle]

Looks awesome Rip. I hate all the wires and gadgets you have to wear with TrackIR. Is it any good? Anything not 100% about it?

[RipKirby]

So far so good. I had to delete and add a virtual joy but I think that was down to me tinkering too much.

[Boberro]

How much CPU does it eat?

[RipKirby]

It reports 0% but task manager says 1-3. I have seen a 15% spike.

[Boberro]

Hmm so i better hold on till I get new PC ;]

[metalnwood]

I have a tir 4 so I don't need to give it a go but I always thought the precision would not be as good. Actual usage beats my theory/guessing though so I am interested to see how it performs for people.

 

I know from other interests that finding the center of a blob like tir does can be done with sub pixel accuracy easily and quickly. Finding facial positions with the same accuracy may not be possible at all or would take up serious cpu.

 

So it would be good to see in real life what it behaves like, they probably have some serious smoothing built in to stop the jerkyness that I would expect.

[RipKirby]

I have a tir 4 so I don't need to give it a go but I always thought the precision would not be as good. Actual usage beats my theory/guessing though so I am interested to see how it performs for people.

 

I know from other interests that finding the center of a blob like tir does can be done with sub pixel accuracy easily and quickly. Finding facial positions with the same accuracy may not be possible at all or would take up serious cpu.

 

So it would be good to see in real life what it behaves like, they probably have some serious smoothing built in to stop the jerkyness that I would expect.

 

You are absolutely right. There is filtering built in - the mission is to find a balance between jitter/smoothness and update speed. Now, my webcam is shitpoor so I get very low fps which makes everything a lot harder.

 

You can see the same setup in IL-2 here:

[metalnwood]

That didn't look too bad at all. Of course it's hard to judge how it feels to the user as far as lag etc.

 

I hope it does well, when I feel the need to upgrade I will certainly give it a go before spending a lot of $$$.

 

It would be a nice feeling to play something with speakers on, loking around with nothing on your head :)

[RipKirby]

I'm too tired to muck with it right now but I'd love to hear what everyone is doing with it, what is your settings and how does it behave. What are your FPS and how does the filter behave on your rigs. See yall tomorrow.

Edited August 12, 2010 by RipKirby

[RipKirby]

Hmm so i better hold on till I get new PC ;]

 

You could give it a fling, mostly it sits at 3% :joystick:

[Boberro]

I have only 1800 Mhz... when I turned it on it freezed my PC and I needed to do hard restart lol.

[martinistripes]

Nice find RipKirby. I had a quick play with this just now, got it working in Black Shark, although I need more time tinkering with settings yet before I can say if it's any good at this stage.

[Hartmann]

RipKirby so all that is needed to have a ''trackIR'' is a webcamera?:joystick:

if yes - that awesome:smilewink:

[RipKirby]

Nice find RipKirby. I had a quick play with this just now, got it working in Black Shark, although I need more time tinkering with settings yet before I can say if it's any good at this stage.

 

When you get a good result, please let us know what your settings are.

[RipKirby]

RipKirby so all that is needed to have a ''trackIR'' is a webcamera?:joystick:

if yes - that awesome:smilewink:

 

That would be a yes - still some experimenting to do to get a really smooth result, at least with my built-in laptop webcam.

[RipKirby]

Afaik TrackIR is 100 fps and my cam is only 20

[Hartmann]

That would be a yes - still some experimenting to do to get a really smooth result, at least with my built-in laptop webcam.

 

the result is in the quality of the camera:)

[martinistripes]

When you get a good result, please let us know what your settings are.

 

Well, I tried to simplify things by starting with just 2 axis; the two most useful in game, x-rotation and y-rotation. I tried your smoothing and filtering settings to begin with. The motion was very stuttery and my first thoughts were this is the limitation of the webcam (also inbuilt laptop). I adjusted and turned off filtering and set smoothing to 0. This gave a huge improvement, and was quite useable (with the 2-axis). I've gone upto four axis now and it's become more tricky to get stable results. Centering is off and the axis tend to be more sensitve in one direction than the other. I need to play some more, but there's huge potential with this software, particularly if the team keep developing it and don't jump like Cachya did.

[RipKirby]

Remember that pressing = key resets the view

[martinistripes]

 

Decent results with these settings and a good starting point for anyone wanting to give this a go. However the = key isn't resetting my view so I'm staring down into the cockpit. Also, notice the X and Y movement is less smooth when compared with X & Y rotation. Not sure why this is.

[RipKirby]

Great stuff, I'll try that later on. Do you get any difference tinkering with Red. factor?

[Mr_Burns]

Im getting errors, ippcore-5.3...

 

Is this because I dont have trackir? I followed OP instructions, downloaded facetracknoir, update, installed update, ran it, ippcore error.

 

Any ideas?

[martinistripes]

Im getting errors, ippcore-5.3...

 

Is this because I dont have trackir? I followed OP instructions, downloaded facetracknoir, update, installed update, ran it, ippcore error.

 

Any ideas?

 

You don't need trackir, only a webcam. Did you download & install Face API? If not request a non-commercial license from here:-

http://www.seeingmachines.com/product/faceapi/downloads/

Edited August 14, 2010 by martinistripes

[nscode]

Hmmm... seams I can have this running on my laptop as a server, offloading CPU usage, and just run the client on game PC. I'll have to give that a try :)