So I watched the American Truck Simulator Quicklook. And simply put, I was enthralled. I simply had to get something close to that set up. However my main problem with that was spending the $600+ dollars needed to match the GBeast set up. That is crazy. I'm not saying it isn't worth the money but that is still a lot of money for me to spend on something that I really only want to use on one type of game. So with that in mind, here is my pretty ghetto but functional driving wheel and face tracking set up:

Look at it! In all its ghetto glory! It's beautiful! In case anyone is interested in doing something similar I'll break down what I did in full detail.

Racing Wheel: This was the most expensive purchase for my setup. Thankfully I did some extensive research and didn't go out to Gamestop to buy the wheels for Xbox One. Apparently even though I have a windows 10 Xbox One controller receiver these controllers only work on Xbox One (Im guessing they all connect via their own USB cables and don't use an actual wireless signal. So, I bought a Thrustmaster VG Ferrari Italia off of Amazon for $90. It's a pretty dang good wheel and I like it a lot. Obviously it's not as good as the one GBeast has but it gets the job done. There is no clutch petal but I'm honestly only driving automatic right now. I may buy a separate shiftier sometime later and switch to manual but those are real expensive! If you are wondering what I have it mounted to, it's a rubber real feel practice pad on top of a snare drum stand. My super technical pedal pad weights? The biggest Harry Potter books I could find in my closet. It still slides a bit but again, it's functional.

Face Tracking: This is where my biggest savings came into place. TrackIR seems like an awesome thing to have but they definitely have a monopoly on the scene right now and starting at $150, it's a steep price for this game. I think if you want face tracking for games like Elite Dangerous you'll definitely want to go this route. But for American Trucker, where all I really need is to look at both my rear view mirrors or to my side when I'm turning, I don't need THAT much precision. Thus, I turned to a free software that I got off a tip from a fellow user, @konig_kei. FaceTrackNoIR allows you to use any webcam as a face tracking tool. While researching this option it seems like the general consensus was that the Playstaion Eye is the best camera for this software as it records video at 120fps. I personally had an old iphone which already had an app called iWebcamera which turns your iPhone into a webcam. It seems to do the trick just fine.

However, the most challenging part of this whole set up was getting the software to work properly. I originally had my phone sitting directly on my entertainment stand but it didn't work very well, You need to get these cameras as close to your face as possible. Thus, I employed ANOTHER practice pad on snare stand and the mount for my phone is actually a POWER A MOGA Hero Controller. I know, super technical, right?

The last step in all of this was getting the software options configured correctly so the face tracking wasn't spazzing out. I probably could've figured it out myself through countless trial and errors but I instead just Youtubed some tutorials and came across this one. In the notes he links to a ini config file which you can get here(direct download link). However, after you load the ini file you still need to tweek some settings. At around the 11:50 mark he shows you what he changed in the curves section of the software. Basically this limits the face tracking to stay within the boundaries of the car and significantly improves the usability of the software.

So there you have it. That's how I pulled it off and it works pretty damn well all things considering. A lot of these parts can be interchangeable depending on what you already have or what you want to get. All in all, this setup will run you at just about $100. Much more reasonable than $600+ right? I hope this was helpful to anyone who wants to get a setup like this but doesn't want to spend the money on all the top quality gear. If you guys have any questions at all I'll be happy to answer!