Head Tracking - OSC Server

Cubase
1

Hi everyone,

I currently work a lot with immersive mixes and I’d love to improve my workflow by checking my mixes direcly with my headphones + head tracking. Without needing to setup my HMD (Quest 2 + Link) and start all the Oculus ecosystem. I guess it is possible because Immerse’s documentation states that you can “connect motion tracking headphones and VR/AR headset.”

An easy way to do it would be to combine my headphones with a generic head tracker that sends the Yaw/Pitch/Roll data via OSC (Open Sound Control) to the Head Tracking window of Cubase.

In the Head Tracking window, I select VR Controller → OSC Server + I hit the “Tracking” button. It turns blue so it’s tracking something but I dont know what.

Usually, It seems to me that an application that uses OSC would give us a port and an OSC Adress for the data (such as port 7755 with the OSC adress /yaw), but I couldn’t find any informations about what OSC port and adresses the Head Tracking window is listening to.

Still, Cubase gives us some hints if we hover the mouse on the reload button of the Head Tracking window, this text pops up : “Reload OSC configuration file”.
So there is a configuration file for this purpose, the OSC port and adresses could be listed in it ? But I didn’t find any reference to it anywhere. In the folder Cubase 10.5 → Components, there is indeed “headtracking.dll” but it’s not tweakable.

Next clue : if we hover the mouse on the little “i” next to “OSC Server”, this text pops up : “Steinberg - OSC Listener - HeadPose - Firmware 1.0”.
Once again, I couldn’t find any reference to it. Someone only mentionned it two years ago on the Nuendo forum but that’s all. I tried to use the 7755 port (the Gopro VR Player one) with some adresses like “/HeadPose/yaw” but it wasn’t successful.

I eventually asked for Steinberg’s Support, but their only response was that I should update my eLicenser and Cubase 10.5.

So here am I, stuck in my little investigation… Maybe someone figured it out and could enlighten me on how to use that OSC Server feature that’s build in the Head Tracking window of Cubase ?

Best regards,
Valentin

PS : I know there are some other ways to track the head with 3rd party plugins, in fact my tracker works with IEM SceneRotator and OSC, but I would love to use the built-in ambisonics workflow from Cubase, because I find very convenient.

2

I’m on a similar mission to connect my Waves NX head tracker to Nuendo. I’ve managed to use this software https://audiooo.com/nxosc to transmit the data from the NX tracker into OSCulator https://osculator.net/ . From there OSCulator can (hopefully) convert / redirect it to whichever port Nuendo is listening to. According to the manual Nuendo can receive tracking data from external VR controller devices like head-mounted displays or 3D mouse devices. Is there a standard port nr that these devices operate on? Which port nr is the Steinberg OSC listener set up to receive data on?

3

Well I haven’t gotten it to talk to a headtracker, but it looks like it listens on UDP port 7000. When I open up the head tracking window, set it to OSC server, and turn on the tracking I see UDP 7000 show up as one of the ports it is active on. I can’t get it to do anything with the headtracker (supperware) but that does seem to be the network port it listens on.

Sadly there is no documentation I can find on it.

1 Like
4

I would be interested to see resolve on this issue, as I too would like to use a head tracking device through the Nuendo input.

5

Hi everyone !

Thank you for your answers. I saw the Nxosc software, it looks like a good idea for a quality headtracker, it would be great with Cubase/Nuendo’s ambisonics workflow.
Unfortunately we still have that OSC communication problem (and also unfortunatly, I think that Nxosc is only developped for Apple’s ecosystem)

Sycraft-w brought us a super usefull tips in our quest for OSC headtracking in Cubase/Nuendo :fire:
I also checked my port with TCPView and the 7000 UDP port is indeed activated when I press the “Tracking” button of the head tracking window with OSC Server device (and it’s desactivated when I uncheck the button)

So now that we know what port Nuendo/Cubase is listening to, we “just” have to find what OSC messages they’re listening to.

I asked Steinberg’s support this very specific question : What are the OSC adresses that Nuendo’s Head Tracking’s OSC Server is listening to on the UDP Port 7000 ?

But they only responded me by sending these links :
Head Tracking Window
Playback of Ambisonics Audio

I think that we are on a good way to solve this mystery !

(If by any chance a developper was passing by this thread, it would be great if he/she could enlighten us on this specific aspect :pray:)

6

Good news! As regards the Supperware Head Tracker, Bridgehead 1.11 (released today) has a HeadPose profile that works with Nuendo.

To use the new profile, you’ll have to go to the Bridge Panel in Bridgehead, ‘Show file’, delete Profiles.txt, and click ‘Refresh’. Assuming you never created any custom profiles that you want to copy over. Otherwise, the profile that works looks like this:

Nuendo (HeadPose, 25Hz)
/head_pose
0,0,0,0,-pitch,-yaw,-roll
local 7000

Note that you’ll still need to upgrade Bridgehead, as those padding values aren’t recognised by earlier versions.

I had no help from Steinberg with this but I have poked around gently inside the .dll and it looks like it is supposed to support a number of formats (HeadPose, hedrot, OpenTrack …) and to customise the format and port via a configuration file somewhere. But I suspect that Steinberg isn’t supporting this properly because it doesn’t yet work properly. So far, HeadPose on port 7000 is the only profile I could get to work.

You’ll have to turn the tracking rate down to 25Hz in the Bridge panel, and occasionally disconnect and reconnect so that Nuendo can catch up with output data if it starts to get laggy …

Feel free to request such stuff directly via the Supperware support email address in future! (PS Thanks to Subin, who brought this issue to my attention that way.)

3 Likes
7

Got here from this video: Simple Immersive Monitoring of Dolby Atmos in Cubase/Nuendo with Native Headtracking - YouTube

@supperware Thank you for your hard work on this. Steinberg really should do better concerning OSC documentation.

1 Like
8

Hello,

I made a small app that bridges between nxosc and nuendo.
It works and it’s free to download here:
http://hapax84.free.fr/downloads/Nxosc2nuendo.zip

fxw

1 Like
9

how can i install it?. can use it like a 3d panner controller on vst nuendo multipanner?