So, finally gave up on fiddling with the cheap options and bought a TrackIR. But I’ve been using small in ear Sennheiser bluetooth earphones with my PC for a few years now. Nothing special, but light and comfortable, I can forget I’m earing them. BUT I’m not going to wear a hat to fly a sim, so the hat brim clip is going in a drawer. So I need a headset for the Trackclip Pro. So wired phones are fine since that has a wire anyway.
But I would like two things in a headset. A: Removable mic so it won’t be bugging me the large majority of the time when not flying with a friend using Discord. And B: Surround sound that will track with my head. Now, the headphones don’t need to talk to TrackIR I assume because the surround sound changes based on the head position in the sim/game I assume? And C: of course the Trackclip Pro needs to attach to it in a nice way.
In short:
What surround headsets work great with head movements in MSFS? Ones that have a removable mic and fit a Trackclip??
I have an older non surround sound version of these that have lasted well the metal part that holds the ear pieces looks similar so should work fine with clipping on the trackclip pro. I do have to make the side with the clip on slightly longer but they still comfortable. Had them 4 years and still work as good as they did the day I got them.
Regarding surround sound I will say if you use the free windows Sonic for headphones or what I prefer dolby atmos for headphones it works well and gives the ability for stereo headphones to work like surround sound audio, you can tell where the sounds is coming from. Just YouTube it if want to see how it works if you don’t already know.
Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but did you consider the Tobii head and eye tracker? There are plans for this getting native support in game and it seems like it could be a better alternative than the TrackIR and I don’t believe you would need to worry about a clip. Me personally, I am using SmoothTrack (Cheap phone app) which works great and I might consider the Tobii in the future.
With that said, if you’re happy with the TrackIR then by all means enjoy. But honestly, it seems like an outdated (and expensive) technology and if the option to return it is there I would consider that.
Yeah, off topic, but that does look really cool, I’ll have to look at that more.
But that said, just got TrackIR in the mail yesterday and I’m the walking dead today because I COULD NOT TURN OFF MSFS last night until the wee hours of the morning. SO engrossed with this new experience of being able to naturally, smoothly, look around. And especially move around, lean over to look down out a side window, etc. Couldn’t top making steep banking turns criss-crossing rivers and mountain ridges and valleys. It feels like a whole new sim!!! Feels MUCH more like actually flying!
So, VERY happy with TrackIR, and spent a small fortune on it. Covid “tax”, the Canada “tax” and then the actual, literal taxes and shipping, etc. These are not great times to buy hardware in general. Used to be cheap options to buy TrackIR from outside Canada, but all of them were overpriced or unavailable at this time. So the one place I found both the TrackIR and the TrackClip Pro in Canada wasn’t cheap. 1/3 the price of a Reverb G2!!! Well, 1/4 the price once you put taxes on the Reverb. But still! But no regrets, I’ll surely get a VR headset eventually, but tracking while using a monitor will still surely be a way I’ll fly sometimes even after getting VR. At least until there’s excellent hand/finger tracking in MSFS.
Yeah, I had been using OpenTrack and AITrack for a while. Maybe I just didn’t ever get it set up properly, but while kinda usable I had to turn off movement and head roll, just have pitch and yaw turning and even then it was glitchy and unsmooth. Sometimes I enjoyed it, but I mostly didn’t bother using it.
TrackIR is a whole other animal in my experience. It works amazingly compared to my experience with OpenTrack and AiTrack. TrackIR with the TrackClip Pro cost a small fortune up here in Canada and I don’t regret it a bit! LOVE IT.
Hey that’s great, if you love it and it works for you then perfect. I was in the same boat though, I was looking all over to buy TrackIR but the taxes and shipping were crazy (I’m in Canada too) so I ended up trying the app instead. And yeah, head tracking in general is awesome, being able to look over the cockpit to try and find a waypoint reminds me back in the day in my flight training trying to find a familiar lake or road and getting worried that I might be lost ha.. Anyway, it is a game changer for sure!
Which app? Did you buy a Tobii? I am very curious about it. Having to put stuff on your head ain’t ideal for sure! But the TrackClip Pro isn’t bad at all if you are wearing a over the ears headset anyway. Which I haven’t been, but was thinking about even before being sure I was going to buy TrackIR. Than again, the wire on the TrackClip Pro is pretty regrettable. A rechargeable and/replaceable battery in that would have been great. I have seen clones of it on ebay that were battery powered and I am curious about those! I’m happy with the camera and software. But the actual on head trackers by NaturalPoint have room for improvement!
I think the hardest part is to configure the curves in the profiles to your liking. Out of the box it was truly horrible but I found some profiles in flightsim.to which made things much better. To be honest I don’t really use it often because I tend to move a lot while I’m in my chair and I find all the unnecessary head movement disorienting so I had to disable and then reenable/center it quite often. Not to mention it was a pain to have to constantly bend my head forward so that I can zoom in to some random display.
I still haven’t found a perfect setting but I’ll give it another try, as personally I dislike clips and hats and headsets very much and I find the prices of these other gadgets very high for my taste. I’d rather save and go for a 49" ultrawide screen and/or a VR.
Yeah, I’ve resisted paying the considerable expense and dealing with putting extra stuff on my head for sure. Maybe I could have gotten better settings, but I did put a good bit of time into setup with AItrack/Opentrack. Have you tried a TrackIR? I kinda recommend trying if you can. In my experience it’s SO much better, I won’t be flying without it I’m pretty sure! I am VERY curious about the Tobii mentioned above! If that can track as well as TrackIR or maybe better (the eye tracking too)? I might have to put the TrackIR on craigslist and get one of those!
I use a cap, got it from TrackIR and the cap has the center cut out, and the default clip with the 3 reflectors. Works like a charm. Any baseball cap will work too. I hate wearing a headset.
I’m using SmoothTrack on my IPhone. I think it was $14 for the app. I can’t compare it to TrackIR but for me it works great and you can’t go wrong with that price. Although it does drain the battery on the phone quite a bit and you need to have some light in the room for it to work. Setup was relatively easy though.
I haven’t tried Tobii but I’m waiting to see how the reviews are once it gets in game support for the sim. It sounds awesome though, easy setup, can work in the dark among other things. So we’ll see, either that or maybe wait for VR, or I might just keep the SmoothTrack..
I do want to try the basic clip and a hat. But I looked in my hat bag in the closet and not a single one of mine has a front brim big enough! So, I’ll have to find some fun aviation related cap to buy. But I really don’t like having a brim in my vision. So, we’ll see. I have no problem wearing substantial over the ear headphones and use a nice B&W wireless set when watching movies and listening to music so as not to annoy/infuriate my neighbors. Ah, urban apartment living. I can use those for simming, but prefer not to. Since the TrackClip Pro has a cord, I may as well get something corded for simming. And with a good mic for flying with friends.
Something that roughly resembled an aviation headset seems appropriate too.
I probably should have tried SmoothTrack! I have android, but looks like there is an android version? Looking on youtube it looks WAY smoother than my experience using my webcam with AiTrack.
The basic clip works fine with a headset and no hat. Especially if you have a headset with a metal strap rather than a padded one, it clips straight on.
You do look like a Looney Tunes alien with the cap clip on top of your headset but it works well.
This trick is especially good with a low mounted camera as the cap peak will block your camera.
Yeah, velcro might work? Maybe I should get a wireless headset, that way if I end up liking the basic clip more I’d have no wires at all. If I got to have the trackclip pro cord, I might as well have the headset cord. But no cord at all is nice!
