Opentrack tweaking/settings question

[stupor-mundi]

I use the combo: clip (Delanclip), Ps-eye camera, Opentrack.

With the ps-eye on top of my (single,27inch) monitor, I've set up yaw at max input of 30 deg. I also have a small max input for x,y,z.  On the one hand, I'm not keen on having to move my head a lot, on the other hand the tight angle and position of the camera would make that impossible anyways. Even if the input system allowed for more head movement, with a single monitor that wouldn't work out very well.

 

I'm trying to achieve a mapping where I can check 6, with the pilot head moved forwards, and ideally upwards, and sidewards, without actually performing those motions. The base Z position is of course fixed so that I can aim through the sight. So essentially I want to achieve a kind of corkscrew motion with the pilot head, when IRL I just turn my head sidewards a little.

Sure, this may not be very immersive, but I care more about being able to check 6. At the moment, this only works for me in AC like the Yak, having only glass behind the pilot. In AC with an armor headrest I have to fall back to using the joystick hat with snap views.

I get the impression, from watching the various IL-2 videos on youtube, that those people have successfully set up their headtracking in such a way. i.e. they smoothly look back, in one motion, around the headrest, with a high head position. But I don't know if they use Opentrack ...

 

So I wonder if anyone using opentrack has achieved such a setting?

 

I'm aware Opentrack has a "relative translation" ability, which initially I thought might do the job, but I've been playing around with those settings, with no good outcome.

 

Edited December 3, 2018 by stupor-mundi

[JonRedcorn]

You need to make sure you put the exact dimensions into opentrack. The dimensions of the clip need to be entered precisely. I had this issue and it was due to incorrect dimensions and poor calibration.

[stupor-mundi]

19 hours ago, 392FS_Jred said:

You need to make sure you put the exact dimensions into opentrack. The dimensions of the clip need to be entered precisely. I had this issue and it was due to incorrect dimensions and poor calibration.

The Delanclip has the default clip dimensions.

Maybe I haven't been clear. My combo is working fine, it does everything it says on the tin, as far as I can tell from the docs.

It's just I want it to do something, which on the one hand seems to go beyond the standard Opentrack functionality, OTOH I get the impression from watching various videos that others *may* have that functionality.

I just don't know if that is within the bounds of what Opentrack can do, or if it's necessary to switch to different software to achieve that.

 

[No_85_Gramps]

20 hours ago, stupor-mundi said:

So essentially I want to achieve a kind of corkscrew motion with the pilot head, when IRL I just turn my head sidewards a little.

 

I get the impression, from watching the various IL-2 videos on youtube, that those people have successfully set up their headtracking in such a way. i.e. they smoothly look back, in one motion, around the headrest, with a high head position. But I don't know if they use Opentrack ...

 

 

If you have your x,y, and z axis set you should be able to move forward, yaw, and increase the vertical view by moving your head in a corkscrew manner. I know that is not what you are trying to achieve, I just don't think what you are looking for is possible. I hope someone proves me wrong so you can get what you are looking for, but don't hold your breath. 

[Ala13_pienoir]

I've been using opentrack a long time

I think it means that when you look at six o'clock, a movement is not enough

It also has to move the head laterally towards that side

If you think about it, it does not differ much from reality

When you turn your head at six o'clock, it is normal for the headrest to impede your vision and you also have to move laterally

As you are told, try to calibrate the system well with the corresponding measures

I know people that in addition to all the above, it helps with a button configuring the rear view

[stupor-mundi]

My desire for such features is not just lazyness. Maybe I sit closer to the screen than most people, in order to fill as wide an angle of view as possible with the monitor.

Consequently, wide X head movement quickly becomes untrackable. Even more so when moving Y, towards the screen and the camera.

Thus, with my setup, PS eye and delanclip, perfoming the corkscrew head movement and having it tracked, just doesn't work.

Except maybe if I were to set up opentrack extra sensitive in the X direction, which I don't want because then you struggle to find the head position where you're aiming properly through the sight.

Seems, if there were different software available that could do what opentrack can't, I could either switch to that, or I could stick with opentrack but ditch the camera/clip tracking method, and get something that allows for freeer head movement.

 

 

 

 

 

[sniperton]

@stupor-mundi:

Possibly this is the function you look for (as in openTrack 2.3.10).

When you turn your head backwards, your head also moves towards the canopy, as if you were peeping from the side of the headrest.

Best to test it with an open canopy. Turning backwards results in leaning out and looking back.

 

[stupor-mundi]

Oooh yes, @sniperton it does!

I hadn't experimented with that setting enough, because I wanted it purely for its intended purpose (as I understood it, the distance between the neck pivot and where the eyes are on the head, i.e. I had it set to 4 or 5 cm).

When I have 'relative translation' disabled, large *negative* values for this setting, such as -20cm , achieve what I wanted.

This comes at the price of counter-intuitivity, when, looking forward, you slightly move the head to aquire center in the sight, and so on.

Maybe this negative effect is unavoidable, maybe not. I'll experiment a bit.

Thanks for the tip!

Edited December 31, 2018 by stupor-mundi

[stupor-mundi]

I belatedly realized something quite simple, embarassing really.

When setting up a plane, with headtracking not running, it makes sense to move the pilot head position forward quite a bit, and then 'center head position for snap view' , i.e. establish the base position for head tracking as a leaning-forward position.

Then, when head tracking is on, center the tracking when leaning, and slumping, forward/downward quite a bit.

This makes looking back from a forward position much easier, and produces a very high head position (in the cockpit), when leaning back IRL.

 

[stupor-mundi]

I'm quite happy with the opentrack behaviour resulting from the settings detailed above.

There's one more, non-naturalistic, thing I'd like to achieve I think:

 

The 'pitch' tab of the 'mapping properties' window has a 'max output' select which can be either 90 or 190 degrees.

I.e. when you look up as far as possible, you hit a hard limit, in many planes before an obstacle such as a headrest would obstruct the view.

I thought I was hitting an input limit to do with the geometry of my camera setup, but it was actually this output limit.

 

I tried playing around with that in the config file, where under '[opentrack-mappings]' there is the 'pitch-max-output-value'.

When the Select in the GUI is set to 180, this is, in the file, -180. I tried editing this, set it to -210.

Once edited like this, and opentrack is restarted, it's not possible to edit the curves anymore. Putting it back to -180 restores that functionality.

 

Somehow though I don't seem to see much effect from this, so maybe

* there might be an internal limit at 180

* some interaction, maybe with the spline, prevents it from kicking in

Or maybe I'm wrong and it really does work?

 

Has anyone else tried playing around with this in the config file?

 

[sniperton]

I'm not on my gaming PC to check it, but I think it's quite simple:

The 90 degrees limit means that you're allowed to look both upwards (up to 90 degrees) and downwards (down to -90 degrees), but you can't look backwards without rotating your head.

The 180 degrees limit means that you can also look backwards without rotating your head, that is, you can look forward, upward, backward (0 => 90 => 180), and forward, downward, backward (0 => -90 => -180). All the possible vectors are covered that way, so it doesn't make sense to have a limit larger than 180 degrees, since the excess degrees would overlap.

So I guess it's indeed hardcoded, and not without good reason. ☺️

[stupor-mundi]

Hi @sniperton , that would indeed make sense, after all, if my interpretation had been right, and yours wrong, the 90 degree setting in the GUI would amount to only 45 deg. up and 45 deg. down, which is just crazy, right?

I just re-checked it.

The 90 deg. setting gives me that, 45 deg up and down, and the 180 setting gives me 90 up and down.

 

I'm running a version from last March, 2.3.49-plus-48-g....

Also just DL'd the latest beta, no change.
If your Opentrack behaves differently, pls let me know. It would mean there is some wrong with my setup.

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by stupor-mundi

[No_85_Gramps]

4 hours ago, stupor-mundi said:

 

The 90 deg. setting gives me that, 45 deg up and down, and the 180 setting gives me 90 up and down.

 

I'm running a version from last March, 2.3.49-plus-48-g....

Also just DL'd the latest beta, no change.
If your Opentrack behaves differently, pls let me know. It would mean there is some wrong with my setup.

 

That is the way opentrack works with regard to the up/down motion.  -90 to +90 is 180 degrees. I had a chat with the developer a long time ago about this, don't quite remember the conversation, but that's how it works.

[sniperton]

22 hours ago, stupor-mundi said:

If your Opentrack behaves differently, pls let me know. It would mean there is some wrong with my setup.

I don't think so, but I can't check it right now (I'm away for several days). Nonetheless, @No_85_Gramps's info sounds reasonable: the yaw axis gives you a freedom of +/- 180 (=360) degrees, while the pitch axis is limited to +/- 90 (=180) degrees. These two combined together cover all possible 3D vectors you may want to watch to.

[stupor-mundi]

I'm afraid I find the way Gramps writes it to be ambiguous. Before I go crazy looking for a mysterious factor of 0.5 in my local setup, I'll wait for someone to try it out and confirm they can actually look back all the way, by looking up.

 

Other than that, I just discovered that Y and Z (in Opentrack) are reversed from what I had thought. So, whereever I had mentioned Z in my posts above, in Opentrack terms, I meant Y. Maximum confusion now

 

[No_85_Gramps]

35 minutes ago, stupor-mundi said:

I'll wait for someone to try it out and confirm they can actually look back all the way, by looking up.

 

 

So, correct me if I am wrong, but it appears you are trying to look backwards just using pitch movement? 

[stupor-mundi]

3 minutes ago, No_85_Gramps said:

So, correct me if I am wrong, but it appears you are trying to look backwards just using pitch movement? 

 

Yes, that's correct.

 

However, it doesn't matter as much now as I thought it did just yesterday.

Since I discovered I had had the wrong idea about what Y and Z were (in opentrack), I've improved my mapping quite a lot, so, looking back works fairly alright now, even though purely by pitch I can only look up 90 deg., if I then twist my head a bit I can see back quite ok.

 

[No_85_Gramps]

Good to hear.

[56RAF_Roblex]

Not sure if this will help but I used to use TrackIr then switched to using Opentrack with EDTracker and get the following effects

 

Tilting my head to one side *moves* my head sideways instead of tilting it which was no loss because I always disabled head tilt on TrackIr anyway. 

Looking down past a certain angle lowers my heads vertical position as well as moving it forward which works really well as the only reason to look down like that is to see your instruments so lowering and moving forward is just what you need. 

Tilting my head up raises my head slightly to look over the aircrafts nose and the effect is too small to be noticeable when you are actually looking up at an enemy overhead as they are further away so moving 4 inches closer is nothing.
If I turn my head all the way to the Right (well about 45 degrees) and tilt my head Left, as you naturally would when looking over your shoulder, Opentrack knows to move my head further Right instead of left so I can look back at my 6.