Since it's fairly new and I haven't seen it around in this section, I decided to do a little promotion as I feel a lot can benefit from it.

As we all know, Track IR is a nice piece of technology aiding in virtual flying. The only drawback is the fact that it's going to cost you 170 bucks for the whole fun package. Then there is FreeTrack; a more or less imitation of Track IR but based upon home made constructions and modification of a webcam. Regardless of it being free, the effort of successfully putting the setup together withholds a lot from using FreeTrack. Since the summer of 2010 also this latter problem is being worked around by the team of Face Track NoIR.

As the name of the program suggests, its technology does not require any IR material. The only thing -and I really mean the only thing- required is a supported webcam. Due to the usage of SeekingMachine's faceAPI the software is able to detect a face and its movement purely from a plain greyscale webcam feed. Subsequently the software uses the feed to render data streams according to one of the following protocols:

• FreeTrack
• Track IR 4/5 (Referred to by the software itself as Fake Track IR)
• FlightGear
• FS2k2/FS2k4
• FSX (SimConnect)

And yes, your understanding is correct, this means that you can use Face Track NoIR with simulations that only support Track IR.

As I stated, the only thing you need is a supported webcam. Unfortunately the website and support is very limited right now but this is suppose to change in due time as the two developers initiated the project a little over half a year ago. However, they do offer a user contributed list of currently 'claimed to work properly webcams'. Here's a small sample of the most used webcams, the full list can be found at the Face Track NoIR website:

Creative
LiveCam VF0540

Logitech
C120
C300
C500
C600
Quickcam
Quickcam Pro
S5500 (I'm using this one)

Gates & Co.
VX-3000
VX-5000
VX-6000

The software uses per-game-profiles in the form of INI files. For some simulations there's already a pre-set INI file. Unfortunately, for EECH you'll have to modify the default.INI profile and save it as EECH.INI for example as our beloved helo sim is not yet included. Don't worry though, fine tuning of the curves will only take you between 15 and 20 minutes with a little alt-tabbing. The current stable version is 1.3 though I strongly recommend using the 1.4 beta as I haven't noticed any bugs yet but more important, the 1.4 beta version offers editable curves for all 6 DOF.

The current website offers further documentation and explanation. Just don't expect too much from the site right now, as I said, it has yet to be improved.

Right now I have it running more or less flawless for FreeFalcon 5.5.3 using the pre-set INI and I'm tweaking my own EECH profile for optimum performance.

Should you feel like trying it out, have fun! And please don't forget to post your findings!

Hmmm. This looks interesting. I might give it a go.

I tried this quickly last night but didn't have time to try it fully. However after installing, it worked with my webcam. I'm using an integrated Dell webcam on my laptop lid.

However, in the game I don't get the full movement I was expecting. I can't look left or right or up/down. But moving closer/further and up/down works. Left to right was working slightly.

Do I now need to start working on curves (whatever that is) to get the full movement?

A very important note: it's FREE! If I knew that I'd have tried it earlier...

(although my desktop doesn't have a webcam, only my laptop, but I'll buy one if I have to)

I'll do a quick explanation of the curves. It's really simple. The Y-axis represents the degrees of input. In other words, the amount of degrees you move your head. The X-axis represents the degrees of out output. This is nothing more than the amount of degrees the virtual pilot's head will move.

What I'm generally using for EECH is as follows:

My head's yaw: -20 deg. < centered < +20 deg.
Pilot's head's yaw: -110 deg. < centered < +110 deg.

This means you can look from stubwing to stubwing by turning your head 20 degrees left of center to 20 degrees right of center.

My head's pitch: -10 deg. < centered < +10 deg.
Pilot's pitch: -80 deg. < centered < +80 deg.

Roll is not implemented in EECH and X, Y, Z translation set to defaults.

So how do you put this in to the interface? Is it the sliders along the bottom? Or does it go in the ini file?

Per curve you have two gray lines. These lines are vectors, meaning that the angle of the line represent the angle in which you put the graph's line and the length of the lines represent what force you apply to push the graph's line in that direction. You can steer and alter the length of the gray lines by dragging the round dots around. Try playing around a bit. You'll get the hang of it. It's like every other graph editor in a mathematical program.

Ohh, right. Cos I use them allll the time

Sorry, I'll have a play with it and see how it goes.

Do you notice any lag between you moving your head, and it moving in game?

If you experience lag, that means the software has to put a lot of effort in trying to track your head. Make sure your webcam settings are set to cope with your current environmental lightning. If you experience lag it's either because the cam's framerate is bad (e.g. lower than 25 FPS) or the software is using a lot of CPUsage because it has trouble detecting your head in the current environment with the current settings...

EDIT: Unfortunately, those settings differ per cam and situation. Therefore that is not something which I can screenshot for you and upload. Sorry.

Hej JayPee can you non the less post your ini file for EECH? I can't get those curves to behave.