OpenFOV – Webcam head tracking for iRacing | Hacker News Reader

OpenFOV – Webcam head tracking for iRacing

openfov.com

142 pointsmwit202365 comments

Cool to see this, it's a cool in-between step for not having additional wraparound screens or a VR headset.

I used to run a similar software[1] for when I was really into playing F1 racing games. However one of the problems I found was the initial disconnect in your head and eye movement that took some getting used to.

For example, if you want to look left to see an upcoming turn, naturally your eyes move before your head, and your head follows after. With this software enabled, you have to consciously inverse the process where your head moves a direction, but your eyes still remain looking forward at the screen.

It took a some getting used to and resulting in some dizziness afterwards, but was fun.

[1]: https://facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm

opentrack would be the one to beat these days: https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack

It's completely replaced my TrackIR 5, since it averts the need to wear headphones and dig out the tracking bracket every time I want to use it, and the accuracy feels about the same.

I found head tracking pretty much becomes second-nature after a while - to the point at which it feels weird to play first-person sims without it. Not quite as fancy as VR, but much more comfortable and much more practical.

Head tracking's great, the reasons it became a niche thing are easy to overcome in 2026. I've been churning out loads of decoupled look+aim head tracking mods for non-sims with this in mind (all OpenTrack compatible) - https://github.com/itsloopyo#the-mods

Ooh, awesome. I was literally just thinking the other day that it was a shame on-foot head tracking games pretty much started and ended with ArmA 3, because it's great both for situational awareness, and for just plain gawping at stuff.

Will definitely be trying out some of those :)

I second how awesome head tracking is for simming. Feels somewhat natural after a short adjustment period.

Last time I tried it there were still some problems (combinations of face pitch adjustment and z-axis translation resulted in weird camera movements in-sim IIRC) that makes me hesitate to call it fully natural, but some of it could probably be a filtering/configuration issue.

It's also fully possible TrackIR suffers from the same issue!

Do you really prefer webcam + opentrack over the trackir? Asking because I literally have a trackir on the way to me in the mail, and most discussions I could find were at least 2-3 years old.

I have had a TrackIR 5 since pretty much release which I used religiously for flight siming. I also have a tobii eye tracker. I have pretty much stopped using the trackir entirely now in favour of the eye tracker + opentrack. It is incredible, works flawlessly. You have a very small amount less horizontal turn tracking, but honestly your head has to be comically side on for you to notice the difference. Perfectly smooth and predictable. Lately been using it in Nuclear Option and it’s changed the game. TrackIR also works great, and is also flawless, but the key difference is the eye tracker requires zero hardware on your head to work. Even works through glasses.

How does the Tobii + OpenTrack combination work? And why does it not count as zero hardware?

Edit: Oh, zero hardware on the head. Makes sense.

I guess so, given I have my TrackIR in a box!

That said, I have had issues with opentrack that involved some mildly irritating troubleshooting. Namely X4: Foundations didn't work properly with the standard freetrack output regardless of how I configured it, and I ended up needing to use "UDP over network".

I've never had a comparable problem with TrackIR, in spite of using it with a wider variety of titles over a longer period. I do kinda like having it as a backup in case more intractable problems crop up.

I set up a basic nose tracker to do the same thing in beamNG just for left/right motion a long while ago, just to see if it was usable. The neat thing there was that you could also just translate your head to get the same effect and didn't need to move your eyes at all. Feels even weirder though lol.

just wondering, did this difference in looking around mess you up at all when driving in real life

Not the person you're asking, but I can answer from my own experience: No. There's a big difference between looking at a monitor and looking out a real car window. Your brain can tell.

Wouldn't it be better to use head tracking to get the position of the head relative to the monitor, so the monitor behaves like a window? Like in Johnny Lee's classic Wii demo [1].

The way it currently works (rotating the view upon head rotation) doesn't really make sense because a monitor is not a head mounted display.

1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

If it behaved like a window you wouldn't be able to look beside or behind yourself in game, this type of setup is used a lot for sim games.

But if you look behind yourself your head is pointing away from the screen.

Typically people don’t use 1:1 movement when using something like this. It’s a much higher ratio so you only have to slightly move your head to look around. It allows you to do it quicker but also avoids exactly what you’re describing.

It's not a 1:1 link with these, turning your head only slightly is enough to look behind in game.

Not necessarily if you've got a curved ultra-wide display. Combine this with some rotation factor and you can look around while still looking at the screen.

My kid is using a webcam based head tracker with a combat flight sim of some sort. You don't want to move your head too far since you are looking at the monitor right? It works kind of like mouse acceleration where if you move your head quickly, it changes perspective further.

Yes, this tech has long been used to great effect for flight sims. It might seem odd if you've never used it, but it turns out it's very intuitive.

I loved that demo, but the problem with "monitor as a window into the world" is that monitors are relatively small and people don't sit very close to them. The FOV you obtain with most setups is disappointingly small. You need to be relatively close to a large display for it to work well. It's one of the reasons why the idea never took off in the first place, I think.

> The way it currently works doesn't really make sense

And yet, sim players are using it. Players want to use small headmovements to simulate large head movements ingame. It seems to work.

Wouldn't it be much more convenient then to buy a VR headset which actually follows your head movements because it's physically head mounted? Not to mention that it provides a stereoscopic view of the scenery. I guess the price is a hurdle.

I tried to play Elite Dangerous in VR. It is a very nice game to do that with but personally I found the heavy HMD got uncomfortable inside of a half hour, and I had difficulty reading text. It's fine for combat missions but if I want to design a trade route I'd rather just use my normal monitor.

The other problem is that I have a fancy throttle and stick with lots of extra buttons and switches. I know common functions by touch but if I wanna toggle exterior lights or something I have to look down and find a label.

For me choosing a screen + head tracking vs VR is like choosing to use speakers instead of headphones. The headphones sound way nicer and give much more immersive soundscapes but sometimes you want to have some tunes going and not have your ears get sweaty.

VR headsets that are any good are quite expensive so price is definitely a factor I think. Plus they introduce a lot of eye fatigue and you have to wear something on your head which gets tiring.

I have a VR headset and still prefer head tracking. It's more comfortable, and becomes second nature after an hour or two of use.

Also check out the SmoothTrack mobile app. Same use case but the compute is done on a phone instead of the gaming machine. Head position data can be sent over local network or USB.

Hey! Thanks for recommending this!! That’s my app. :) pushing the tracking work off to the phone is helpful for freeing up resources on the computer.

Just wanted to say thanks! The first time played Flight Simulator 2020 with SmoothTrack I was blown away. I still am blown away each time too. Great experience that’s been nearly flawless for me and really turned up the realism. I can move my head closer to gauges and see what they’re saying, look around stuff, get a better view out the window. Wonderful.

Is there specialized face/head tracking hardware on phones like there is on DSLR cameras?

Yes indeed - ARCore on Android, ARKit on iPhone - AR optimizations are crazy good.

Thanks for making a fantastic tool!

Thanks for recommending. I can only place my real camera in somewhat awkward spots, so this would give me freedom to adjust its position more freely.

I gave OpenPOV a try with FS 2024, and found it really disorienting. It was not useful at all. I went to a Meta Quest 3 and that actually made me feel like I was inside an aircraft. At on point I tried to lean on a bulkhead. Oops.

They're called airplanes because they're made out of air in VR!

What are the differences between OpenTrack and this ?

It was discovered and completely reimplemented independently without knowledge that Opentrack exists? That's the only thing I can figure. Except they actually mention TrackIR as that's the input method they are using.

one is generated slop and the other is a mature community project

when your head move, and with it your eyes, you move what's in front of them to your perspective inside the simulation, just as VR works

but in this case it is detrimental because the screen is fixed, the natural behavior would be not to move it

or at least do very little with it like a parallax

the current demo would cause nausea after a moment

This is a good example of having sound logic but not understanding the actual use case. It's simply a way to add functionality in a way to attempt to mimic what humans are capable of in a game. Not everyone wants to or is capable of using VR for various reasons. This allows you to use a slight physical movement of your head to replace using a mouse to move the camera, primarily in flight and racing simulators. That means you don't have to take your hand off of the racing wheel to move a mouse around, or even need to have a mouse available to you.

Is there a reason eye tracking can't work or doesn't work?

If you use eye tracking to control head movement then the head will move past where the eyes were looking.

People playing simulators such as DCS are used to have head tracking with OpenTrack. It's very helpful

Have you tried it or is that your theory?

Don't all headtrackers work like this? Also the infrared ones.

When I used a head tracker (homemade infrared one), I just got used to shifting my head but keeping my eyes on the screen. Having a wider screen helps.

I learned how to shift my head only a little bit to move the FOV a lot when using one of those infrared trackers. Still kinda hurt my neck.

Tons of people use head tracking like this via TrackIR and similar setups, it's quite common for space or air sim games.

And even with milsim FPS, as those blog posts from more than 10 years ago shows: https://dslyecxi.com/category/trackir/

You can do some related tricks to this in browsers too: https://github.com/atomirex/fishtank-js (example https://atomirex.github.io/fishtank-js/dist/index.html )

There is a greatly cleaner version of the same idea in the React Fiber libraries these days as well.

While we're on the subject, there's also TrackyMouse: https://trackymouse.js.org/

It looks like this is just for Microsoft's Windows. I used to use TrackIR when I gamed on that. I missed that functionality when I moved to game on Linux. That is, until LookPilot (https://lookpilot.app/, it's on Steam, too) arrived. Webcam tracking is good because you don't need to wear a headset, but not so good in a dark room.

But doesn't it make you look away from the monitor? Unless you have this 45 inch curved monitor really close to your face?

It makes you turn your head away from the monitor – your eyes are still pointed at it. You generally configure it to apply some gain on your head rotation as well, so a 15 degree head swivel turns into a 60 degree camera movement or whatever.

Maybe think of it less like a pretend-VR solution and more like a camera controller wired to your neck muscles.

It sounds weird, it feels weird at first, but it gets quite natural after a brief adjustment period. It's also very cheap to try if you're curious.

It requires robotics monitor arm

Are you serious? That's not the cheapest setup then. Would be better to buy a VR goggles in such case

They are not serious

It would be cool to use something like this or openfov to control OBS to automatically switch between different cameras/scenes when you turn your head. Either multiple cameras, or switching between screenshare/camera if you look directly into the camera.

Hmm, from the title i expected a tool to calibrate FOV angle to monitor size/distance

It would be nice to know the limits of this tech, like how does it tolerate head gears and garments like headphones or hoodies, beanies and glasses, long hard, different skin colour and facial features or even background contrast.

Wonder if I could use that to swipe through virtual desktops?

Would be cool to see this become a fully viable TrackIR alternative.

...why would webcam head tracking need a new standalone vibecoded project? I thought there are plenty of those already.

Why not? Such as?

Sometimes it's just fun to make something, avoiding it just because said thing already exists in some form is silly.

I mean, completely ignoring prior researches can be a bit disingenuous.

Why? I'm supposed to avoid projects just because someone else did a similar thing unless I want to delve into their research or something?

I can do whatever you want with my own projects, if I want to make an app to do X thing I can.

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