PC Game Head Tracking
PC Game Head Tracking
Hey all. Not sure how many play PC racing sims/games but if you do and the game supports head tracking you might be able to get going for the low low cost of free :) Here is a blurb I wrote concerning a flight sim game (Rise of Flight ..... hella good!) using the free software tool called Face Track No IR which tracks your head movment (without having to wear a goofy led hat ala FreeTrack or TrackIR). It works very well in this game (although I still have further tweaking to do).
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So I've been playing this awesome WW1 flight sim called Rise of Flight (free of course - but you can pay for extra planes and missions etc.....which I will be doing!).
Being a WW1 sim you don't have a "radar" lol or anything like that so you are constantly having to look around you while you are flying - to the sides / above / down at your controls and behind you. Typically people do this with the mouse for looking and then have the other hand on their flight stick. But a lot of people use TrackIR which is a program / camera setup that costs about 200.00 and tracks your head movement. However; there are a couple of "free" options out there and this is the first one I've tried. This one is a face tracking application (basically Kinect for your face lol).
It works really well - better than I thought it would. Some key things to getting it to work well including having a decent machine (it is processor intensive) and a good camera. I used my PS3 Eye which is a very good (high FPS) web camera (I tried it with my built in iSight camera on my mac but the performance was noticibaly worse). I still have some tweaking to do to get it working how I want it but I have it pretty close right now :) Here is a little video I made showing how it works etc.
I checked out their site and this mod is compatible with rFactor... interesting...very very interesting. I will have to try this out methinks and see how it works. Thanks for posting that up.
Cheers!
Please report back your findings!
I don't think my current PC can handle the additional processing load but would be nice for the future.
Good stuff if you have any questions or issues let me know as I've dealt with a few in setting this up. Not sure if you have a PS3 Eye camera or not but the drivers you get for that for Windows are capped at 30mhz (FPS) you can uncap this with a little config file which at least (if not more) doubles your FPS with that camera to make it work even better. I think I've read that people use this in iRacing which is something I've always wanted to sign up for and might now :) If I do I'll report my findings and let you know how it worked in that game.
If you are looking at iRacing might I suggest trying rFactor first. Great support in getting it up and running (if you have issues) through Gone Broke Racing and you'll be running with the crew from here and as a result the calibre of racing is very high. It will also be far cheaper than going the iRacing route.
I am into rFactor for around $80 Cdn for software and I have more tracks than I know what do do with, tons of cars to enjoy and a great league to run in.
If you can't tell by all my gushing, I really like the game. I need to get a webcam for the head tracking as I got the Kinect Developer Kit from MS but that is FAR more work involved in getting that to work.
Cheers!
ok great! Thanks I'll check it out (also in Canada - Ontario near Ottawa). Thanks again!
Www.gonebrokeracing.com is the place to start.