Face-tracking with your smartphone!

[V4Friend 4]

Hello to all AVSIM aviators,

As you will all probably know, headtracking makes flying much more immersive. For that reason we have created FaceTrackNoIR some 10 years ago and I can assure you: FaceTrackNoIR is still very much alive!

Technology evolves fast and this prompted us to start hobbying again and introduce another novelty: face-tracking with your smartphone. 
With this, you do not even need to buy a webcam and most of you already have a decent smartphone anyway

The App (available for both Android and iOS) is called FacePoseApp and all information can be found on www.faceposeapp.nl

You can try it for free and if you like it, upgrading the App to full functionality is very cheap (mind you: the license for the Visage tracker is rather costly).

[vesalius 153]

Hello,

So I took the bait. Purchased FacePoseApp (Android) - for 3,5EUR - as well as FaceTrackNoIR - for 2,85EUR.

OSC Communication is working. FaceTrackNoIR shows me th coordinates of my face movement.

Now come the questions 😉

Does this work with XPlane 11?

If so, how? (Apart from enabling TrackIR in XP)

 

All the best.
Vital

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

On 6/9/2020 at 12:52 PM, vesalius said:

Purchased FacePoseApp (Android) - for 3,5EUR - as well as FaceTrackNoIR - for 2,85EUR.

Same here. The iOS app tracks. But with OSC, FaceTrackNoIR shows no activity on any axis. The UDP port 5550 is open in the Win 10 firewall.

With USB, FaceTrackNoIR works fine with the FreeTrack 2.1 protocol, which is I think what's used for XP11.

Also with USB, the SimConnect SP2 protocol shows activity in FaceTrackNoIR and it works with P3d5, although at the default settings, the head tracking is too jittery. Adjusting the smoothing is tricky, but the jitters can be minimized. I didn't extensively test either the two filters or curve modification.

Periodically, FacePoseApp initializes and also FaceTrackNoIR CTDs, but the two events are unrelated. The error is:

Quote

FriendlyEventName=FaultTolerantHeap
ConsentKey=FaultTolerantHeap
AppName=FaceTrackNoIR
AppPath=G:\Program Files (x86)\Abbequerque Inc\FaceTrackNoIR_v200\FaceTrackNoIR.exe
ApplicationIdentity=00000000000000000000000000000000
MetadataHash=-968561562

I'd say the app has much potential as an alternative to TrackIR and webcams.

[V4Friend 4]

On 6/9/2020 at 6:52 PM, vesalius said:

Hello,

So I took the bait. Purchased FacePoseApp (Android) - for 3,5EUR - as well as FaceTrackNoIR - for 2,85EUR.

OSC Communication is working. FaceTrackNoIR shows me th coordinates of my face movement.

Now come the questions 😉

Does this work with XPlane 11?

If so, how? (Apart from enabling TrackIR in XP)

 

All the best.
Vital

Hello Vital,

Thanks for your feedback. Actually, your question is one that is actually not related to FacePoseApp 🙂

FaceTrackNoIR has worked with Xplane since the very early years. I could try to explain it, but if you type 'facetracknoir x plane 11 setup' in youtube, you will find a number of tutorials on the topic! Even in the language you prefer...

[V4Friend 4]

14 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Same here. The iOS app tracks. But with OSC, FaceTrackNoIR shows no activity on any axis. The UDP port 5550 is open in the Win 10 firewall.

With USB, FaceTrackNoIR works fine with the FreeTrack 2.1 protocol, which is I think what's used for XP11.

Also with USB, the SimConnect SP2 protocol shows activity in FaceTrackNoIR and it works with P3d5, although at the default settings, the head tracking is too jittery. Adjusting the smoothing is tricky, but the jitters can be minimized. I didn't extensively test either the two filters or curve modification.

Periodically, FacePoseApp initializes and also FaceTrackNoIR CTDs, but the two events are unrelated. The error is:

I'd say the app has much potential as an alternative to TrackIR and webcams.

Hello Jabloom,

Thanks for your feedback too.

Initially, FacePoseApp only supported OSC (on UDP), but some testers experienced the same difficulties. The problem may be, that your phone is not connected to the PC network? Does 'ping test' work? I'm glad that at least the USB communication works: it was a bit of a challenge to add it to the App 🙂, but I think it is 'a must-have' . As a bonus, your phone will stay charged 🌩️

Indeed, the tracking quality very much depends on optimal lighting conditions. I hope to get more feedback like yours, so I can convince Visage to improve it. Of course, this is only the very first release version and once you have upgraded, you can always receive updates for the App which are sure to come!

Did you install all of the tracker plugins? We have had some reports about NTDLL related crashes, which seem to be caused by one of the tracker plugins. If you remove the files with "FTNoIR_Tracker_???.dll" from the installation folder (except the iOSUSB one of course) then you should be OK.