OCR Not Working

Symptoms:

OCR is enabled but the dialog shows empty results
OCR returns garbage characters
“Tessdata not found” error
OCR makes PowerAim sluggish

Checklist

1. Tessdata installed?

PowerAim needs eng.traineddata to OCR English text. Default location:

%LocalAppData%\PowerAim\tessdata\eng.traineddata

The OCR Regions dialog has a “Download Tessdata” button that grabs it for you. If the download fails:

Download eng.traineddata manually from the Tesseract releases
Drop it into %LocalAppData%\PowerAim\tessdata\
Restart OCR (toggle off / on)

You can also point the Tessdata Path field (Settings → HUD OCR card) at a custom folder.

2. Engine actually enabled?

Two switches must both be on:

Settings → HUD OCR → Enable HUD OCR
The dialog’s Engine Enabled checkbox (mirrors the same setting)

3. Region defined and enabled?

Open the OCR Regions dialog. Confirm:

At least one region exists in the list
The region’s Enabled checkbox is ticked
The region’s rectangle covers the text you want to read

Use the Test button to OCR the region once without waiting for the polling tick.

4. Region rectangle is correct?

OCR regions are in screen-pixel coordinates (not normalized). If you change:

Resolution (monitor change, fullscreen vs. windowed)
DPI scaling
In-game HUD scale

…the region won’t align anymore. Re-draw it.

5. Results are garbage

Try in this order:

Increase the region size. Tesseract works best on text that’s ~30+ pixels tall. Cropped tightly is worse than slightly oversized.
Try the Invert toggle. Tesseract trained on black-on-white expects dark text. White-on-dark HUDs need Invert.
Tune the Threshold. Default 140. Lower for darker backgrounds, higher for lighter.
Use the right Kind. Number = digits only; Health = number + slash; Text = free-form. Wrong Kind = wrong post-processing.

6. OCR is slow

Tesseract is CPU-bound. Costs:

~5 ms per small region (e.g. an ammo counter)
~50 ms for a large region with lots of text

If you have 5 regions × 50 ms each, that’s 250 ms per tick — close to your interval. Lower the count or shrink the regions.

OCR Interval (Settings → HUD OCR) controls polling frequency. 500 ms is the default; 1000 ms is fine for health/ammo; below 200 ms you’ll feel the CPU load.

7. OCR works in the dialog but not at runtime

The dialog uses a working copy. Make sure you clicked Save to commit changes. Cancelling the dialog discards them.

8. Region jitters by a pixel each frame

That’s the binarization threshold being right at the edge. Adjust Threshold up or down by ~20 to give a clearer cutoff.