'TrackIR' Substitute for under $15!

[sf4JC 1]

You can check it out here http://freetrack.online.fr/english/ . It can be used for multiple flight & racing sims (FS2004, FSX, NR2003 to name a few that I have as well as combat type programs), and I believe I saw a thread that said it worked in CONDOR too, if you are into that sim also.

The web site claims a person can spend less than $15 for electronic parts that are somewhat readily available and a person needs to be able to assemble the parts together. The software is freeware, and I think is always under developement. I didn't get to go through the forums totally, but from what I've read, it may not drop FPS too terribly much as would TrackIR too. One person was running FSX on a AMD 3000+ w/1GB RAM and claimes it works good for him.

How many of you use TrackIR or similar in your flight sim? What kind of drop in FPS did you get?

sf4JC

[sf4JC 1]

Welp, my wife has given me the "OK" to start assembling this in the next 2-3 weeks. I will try to keep you all up to date on how it's working if I get it to work properly. It will surely be a welcomed and truely awsome addition to FSX or FS2004 if I get it to work.

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

That sounds awful! I'm almost sure to give it a try, too.

regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

There's a thread on the message board with a person offering the 3-point and 4-point hardware in kit and assembled form. I've e-mailed him for pricing.

sf4JC

[sf4JC 1]

There's a thread on the message board with a person offering the 3-point and 4-point hardware in kit and assembled form. I've e-mailed him for pricing.

sf4JC

The pricing that I got at this time for the 3-point hardware is about $26 assembled and $20 for the kit. This includes shipping and handling from Finland (I think) to USA. Otherwise, it would be cheaper to get the parts yourself and assemble, but I think I'm going to pay the price for assembly so I don't have to mess with that.

Keep in mind, you need a webcam, or digital video device (I'm going to use my DV Camcorder if it works, I have used it as a webcam before).

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

Assume this will kill your framerate. DVCs have a high bandwidth and data rate.

regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

Assume this will kill your framerate. DVCs have a high bandwidth and data rate.

regards,

Peter

Not sure exactly what that means, but I know it's bad. Though the English Manual makes this statement about controling the digital video device settings...

"You find yourselves in capture properties

window, where you can select, based on your

webcam quality, the images frequency (the

more images you can capture , the smoothen

your movements will be), compression, output

size which corresponds to the size of the

image in the Cam tab of the capture window.

Adjust your parameters to get the best

Quality/Output size/Image frequency

compromise ."

I'm kinda assuming that will help me out, but I'm not sure.

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

Gave it already a first try this evening, though not too successful yet. I ran into two problems. I have a Conexant TV card on my rig, but apparently, its driver does not work well with the software. The picture is divided into vertical stripes which makes Freetrack to detect many more LED spots rather than the three I mounted on my headset. In phases where this didn't happen because of very low exposure, it seemed to work.

I used an overexposed negative as IR filter which worked pretty decent, as I checked before with some viewing software.

The other problem, which can be solved easily, I suppose, are the LEDs having a beam too narrow.

regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

Cool! There may be a fix for the vertical line thing, I'll have to check the site once more. You got it together pretty quickly. What kind of webcam do you use?

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

Got it running today.

The stripes problem was caused by some flaw in a direct show filter, an alternative is available from the FSX website. I soldered three SFH415's in series with an additional resistor of 150Ohms. Then I connected it to a wallplug power supply with adjustable voltage and I set this to 9V. The current in the LED-string is then ~30 mA (of a max. of 100mA). With a scissor I cut C-shaped carrier from an old maragarine cup and glued the LED arrangement on it with hot-melt adhesive. The actual dimensions I measured afterwards. The whole arrangement was glued to the left earpiece of the headset. This is quick and dirty, but good enought for testing. If I like to make it really neat later on, I can still disassemble everything and remove the glue residue and make a nice design of it. I fixed the too sharp LED directivity by sanding the convex part of the lenses with a piece of sandpaper.

There is another problem when setting the camera to RGB-video format, which results into some erroneous interpretation of the head orientation by the program. Interestingly, this does not happen when using the I420-format (no idea of the meaning of this format). It can be selected in the camera configuration of Freetrack, however it is not offered by my composite capture input.

For FSX you have to install the "virtual joystick" (PPJoy) first and assign the joystick axes to the view directions in FSX' options dialogue. I don't know yet, how to activate translational movements in FSX, but the virtual joystick offers an axis for each of the 6 DOF's. It cost me quite some effort to tune the sensitivities all over the different places. Freetrack offers for each DOF a non-linear curve, a general sensitivity, a sensitiy associated with a gameprofile and various deadzones. Then there is the joystick calibration, necessary, though not offering customizable adjustments, and eventually FSX, which offers sensitivities and deadzones again. There is an averaging or filter parameter in Freetrack which results in a trade-off between delay and instability of the view.

You have to pay quite some attention to get the view you want. It will cost you some training until you can control the views truly intuitively. A the end I set the filter slider to maximum to achieve a stable view. In particular when the framerate is not that high (say 15 fps) the visuals get rather jumpy during panning, and the thing is panning all the time somehow.

CPU loading is different for the webcam (Microsoft VX3000) and the composite cam (digitized with a Pinnacle PCTC Rave + WDM drivers). The webcam consumes ~ 15% CPU resources, mostly not in freetrack itself (5%), rather than in DPCs (10%) which probably realise the videostream. The Pinnacle uses only 5% altogether, however due to a lack of the I420 format, this is currently unusable (update on the RGB code is announced). The framerate drop is apparently proportional to the corresponingly lower CPU utilisation of FSX (98% > 83%/92%), not too much, but relevant, in particular if FPS is not that high initially. The figures are based on an Athlon XP 2400+, Windows XP SP2.

regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

I found that vertical problem fixer if you still need it, not sure if it is the same as FSX's fix. It's on FreeTracks Downloads page near the bottom called 'FreeTrackFilter'.

Anyway, it sounds like it's kindof a pain to get set up, but I think it will be worth it in the long run. Some time ago I was given a force-feedback steering wheel for my NR2003 sim and spent what seemed like weeks trying to get the thing set up just right for my computer. I 'triple' saved the setup file just in case the computer crashed or malfunctioned and would lose it. I'll do the same for FreeTrack I believe.

Well, it's great to hear you got it working! I should be receiving mine sometime later in the week of Sept. 23-29 if all goes well.

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

Ready for departure.

Regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

That's Great! I cannot wait! :-}

... framerate drop is apparently proportional to the corresponingly lower CPU utilisation of FSX (98% > 83%/92%), not too much, but relevant, in particular if FPS is not that high initially. The figures are based on an Athlon XP 2400+, Windows XP SP2.

regards,

Peter

Is your computer a single core or dual core? Where do you run your slider settings?

My computer is a Athlon 3500+ (single core), 2GB RAM, 512MB ATI Radeon X1300 graphics card, on a WindowsXP SP2 system. I've been experimenting with "video screen capturing" inside FSX and was surprised at the quality of graphics that were still available after turning the graphics sliders down. I have always had smaller computers in the past for the sims that I would get, so my sliders have always been set at minimal quality. I still enjoyed the sims but never experienced them as I do now. When I bought the graphics card, and later on I was given 1GB more RAM, I was really experiencing sims like never before.

Anyway, so I was wondering, are you able to get good framerates with your setup now? How hard is it when you produce your software, to find people to test your results on low and high end computers? I would be willing in the future to be a somewhat "beta" tester for you. Just thought I would throw that out at you, it's really not the thread for it though.

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (single core), Graphics is GF 7600GT/128M, Main memory 2Gig.

FSX Display options are:

General Texture size: Very high

Lens flare: on

Bloom: off

Extended animiation: on

Framerate: off or 17

Full screen resolution 1280x1024x32

Aircraft: Medium high

Detail radius: low

Mesh Complexity 85%

Mesh resolution 10m

Texture resolution 1 m

Water effects 2.0 low

Scenery complexity high

Autogen normal

Ground shadows on

Weather: all max, no change

Traffic: various, mostly medium high

FPS are tpyically in the range of 12-20, which is good enough for usual operation, but apparently too low for making a good appearance in Freetrack. At minimum settings I go up to 50-70 fps. Still the Freetrack experience is not optimal because of the blurring of my TFT screen, which is too slow to keep up with faster panning. Because even slight head movements generally result in relevant panning all the time, there is a high requirement on the dynamics of the computer screen.

I did not spend much time in framerate comparisons. My former (two) programs were all meant for off-line use, during preparing scenery files or analysing slope-lift date files.

regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

Peter, did you do any changes to your 'fsx.cfg' file? I tried your settings and I was getting about the same FPS, and I have not changed my 'fsx.cfg'. In fact, I think the only change I made was with the trees image resolution. I don't understand exactly why you may be getting the same FPS as I am. So the only thing I could come up with is that you may have changed the CFG file and maybe the resolution of some of the textures used inside the sim.

Anyway, can you tell me your "secret"? I haven't tried any of the proposed modifications that others have made yet, cause I was afraid of getting to far from quality of graphics, but if I can get more FPS I may go that route.

sf4JC

[Peter Lürkens 30]

Secret? I don't know. Do you have SP1? That makes a big difference. Actually, everything is out of the box, right now. I have quite some freeware scenery installed, and there is some reduction at biiiig airports, but that's all.

With the initial RTM version I did all the tricks you can read about in the various forums, but was never happy with it. I put it all back when SP1 came.

regards,

Peter

[sf4JC 1]

Okay, I was just thinking, it's been a while since defraging the hard drive, so maybe that's my problem. I've got SP1 so I know that's not my problem, I guess it could also be the difference in computers. There again, I do have a lot of programs running in the background it seems, so that too could be the problem.

Anyway, thanks!

sf4JC