Add Head Tracking Support

I know smaller indie devs who didn't have a problem with adding TrackIR support into their games. It's not like it would take tremendous effort to implement, I suppose the SDK is quite straightforward and can be added & tested at a relatively low cost, especially if the game already has free view cameras which SE does.

Nice try. So lets see... less than 1% players. So when a game has 1.000.000 players, that would be under 10.000 players. Try it again.

Btw. do you have a webcam? Then you can do headtracking.

@Hyperion: but not TrackIR, we need a more open interface than that.

https://github.com/opentrack/opentrack

This should be supported. Opentrack supports near all kind of headtracking devices

It's the conundrum of no one has the device because games don't include it and games don't include it because no one has the device. Can we just get head tracking already, i don't care what method, service or device, I'll get it either way. I've been waiting for se to get head tracking for almost a decade. It's obviously built for it.

10000 is a negligible amount to add a function interesting for two people

@Jolly Joel: yeah, as much as for HOTAS/Joystick support. We should have both.

@Колясик: 10.000 ARE the players who are interested in it. But anyway, you are not in the position here at all to decide that, that will do Keen themselves. And with your wrong arguments you will anyway not reach anything. You can not even give a source that proof your numbers.

Head Tracking is a very basic feature of a space game and is desperately needed in SE2. Tobi eye tracker!

Oh, yeah, I ended up making a plugin for SE2 that can be added in-game with Pulsar, if anyone's interested: https://github.com/kickformoney/HeadTrackingSE2

It works on foot, in the cockpit, and in third person. There's a demo here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ7HrQWaf20

Nice, official support would be better but that this is possible as mod is great.

Do you think it would be possible that it automatically can switch this script on/off? Off on food, On in cockpit? No clue how deep Polar sits in the game client, but normally you should be able to read if you sit in a cockpit or not. Or does the plugin already has such a feature?

It has separate checkboxes and keybind options for cockpit, on foot, and third person ship camera.

Isn't this like VR for Subnautica, it moves your whole body where you look instead of your character's head? Can't play like that, it needs to be full support.

I've never played Subnautica, but Space Engineers has never had a decoupled camera when on foot; the character turns with the direction of the camera when using a mouse, as well. In a cockpit, the camera is decoupled from the controls, so you can look independently of the direction you're flying.

Subnautica in VR is you're travelling Forward in the direction you are looking and if you want to interact with something you have to look directly at it, which is annoying. So, yeah the same thing as not "decoupled camera" on foot.

"In a cockpit, the camera is decoupled from the controls, so you can look independently of the direction you're flying."

Two Questions

1. We still talking about Headtracking or just when you're holding Alt plus looking around with mouse?

2. If you ARE talking about Headtracking and not just holding Alt, are you able to Headtrack in the cockpit and use the mouse for flying around?

I assume 1. Yes Headtracking 2. No, because the only thing the Head Tracking is doing is holding Alt for you and the mouse moves based on your head movement and that was my point about needing "full support."

Been my point for many years that SE was nearly there with Head Tracking and it seems they just gave up half way through. Keen's game Miner Wars 2081 has full support using TrackIR, WHY on God's green earth did they not include it in the base design of Space Engineers is beyond me and they damn well better include it in SE2.

1. You don't need to hold down the Alt key to look around, the camera will just follow where you're looking.

2. It's decoupled and directly controls the camera, not the cursor, when in a cockpit or in third-person external view in a cockpit. If you watch the demonstration I linked above, you'll see that you can fly and look in separate directions. When on foot, it does control the cursor, as that is the only camera control method I was able to find.

Keen has a lot on their plate, already, and at some point, they might introduce mechanics that will break this feature in its current implementation. It's also very early in SE2's lifecycle, so I'm just glad they gave us the ability to do this kind of stuff ourselves.

I'm sorry but you didn't answer my question, I must have worded it wrong.

I'm asking, can you "turn" your ship using the mouse?

I can't tell if you are using a Keyboard, Controller or Mouse to turn your ship in your video.

Yes, you can turn using the mouse while looking any direction you'd like. It won't affect the ship control in any way.

Gotcha... I saw someone using VR and a controller of something like this and I never got a straight answer when I asked this years ago, thank you for answering here. I'm glad to see this works properly. I thought it was cheaply made like Head Tracking just holds Alt.

Sorta like the other mod I saw of using a Throttle to go forward on your ship. You push your Throttle lever up to 100% and all that does is hold down W key, going below 10% releases the W key LOL... Wish they would have proper Throttle mods or native update as well with force Override of Thrusters in Control Panel that matches your throttles percentage.

Thx, im gonna have to try this out sometime. Just trying to match the fun I had with Elite Dangerous and Arma 3 to Space Engineers.

Sure, I hope you get a chance to try it out. It does make a big difference, in my opinion, and I think Pulsar and the plugin are in a good enough state to use without too much hassle.

Yeah, I was working on a separate plugin for my HOSAS, but I couldn't get the direct input to work consistently for attitude adjustments, and the control method I hooked into only works in first-person view in the cockpit. It would take more effort than I'm willing to put into it to get it fully working, so I just ended up using the plugin to have analog throttle control, and supplement it with Joystick Gremlin for rotation. I'm hoping Keen factors in setups like mine in the future when they implement joystick controls.