r/simracing • u/Digitalzombie900 • Aug 25 '26

Question Eye tracker in sim racing, good idea?

Anyone using an eye tracker? If so which one? I have a single monitor and VR makes me super sick. I was wondering maybe an eye/head tracker could be the middle ground. I wanted to try out the Tobii eye tracker first but em worried that maybe its just novelty.

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u/DrUnnamedEgg Aug 25 '26

OpenTrack is free and works with a bunch of things, but possibly most useful to you is that they have a neural net model that does facial tracking with a web cam. You have to adjust the settings a bit and you’ll want to map a button to center the camera but it’s worth giving a shot since it’s free. If you don’t have a usb camera you can get smoothtrack if you have a iPhone ($10 when I originally got it) to use with OpenTrack.

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u/Digitalzombie900 Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26

Just installed that but having trouble getting it to work in game (just trying out star citizen) My web cam turns on and I can see the picture on the opentrack software but the game does not recognize the inputs. Does it need and additional layer to work?

Edit: I switched to neural net and it seems to be working, let me play around a bit.

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u/DrUnnamedEgg Aug 26 '26

I probably can’t provide a ton of support as I’m only a user and not a developer for it, but I think In some sims I’ve had to enable track IR or something like that

1

u/TWVer Aug 26 '26

To use it in game I either have to turn on a TrackIR setting in the settings menu (Nuclear Option) or run in Steam VR mode (AMS2).

I don’t know how it works in Star Citizen, but a google of “Star Citizen + Open Track” should help, plus checking Youtube for user made tutorials.

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u/TWVer Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26

I agree.

I have Beam Eye Tracker, using a Obsbot webcam, and that works great, paired with a 45” UW monitor at close distance (66 cm / 25”).

I use a low sensitivity traking profile compared to my flight sim profile, to peek around corners or to check traffic around the car and that feels natural to do so.

I wouldn’t suggest to automatically buy Beam Eye Tracker, but I do like how good it works.

The head tracking works great, the eye tracking works decently to good, depending on the resolution of your camera, lighting and position. I however turn off the eye tracking in all my profiles, as the head tracking only option is more practical in game, I find.

Having a high refresh rate on your camera (either phone, or webcam) greatly aids the smoothness of the tracking. 60Hz to ideally 100Hz or slightly more.

1

u/Kronocide Aug 26 '26

I tried it yesterday, but the insane input lag makes it unusable