I have suffered with this my entire life: needing to get close to small print to be able to read it. I will be getting a TrackIR 5 soon but there is something I don’t understand about it. What happens when I lean my head forward to look at a guage, the FMC or a switch/knob label? Will this be anything like zooming in would be or will I still need to zoom? Right now, I definitely need zoom to see this kind of thing, even if I bring up a certain instrument view. So, what should I expect from trackIR when leaning my head forward, physically getting close to something to read it, just like IRL for me? I’ve read everything on this form TrackIR-related and watched a bunch of videos.
Thanks so much in advance for any advice.
TrackIR movement can be set to any level of movement magnification you want using curves you control for each axis. As you move towards the instruments for a closer look, so your view is enlarged. You can set it as 1 to 1 for just like in real life or increase the ratio to get a larger view; however, as you use more exaggerated ratios to increase your viewing scale, so movement is also exaggerated meaning that every small movement you make becomes a big movement making it hard to read. You can practice keeping steady but it’s not so easy and can may you feel nauseous until you build up some tolerance, personally I would keep it at 1 to 1 for your forward and back axis and have a zoom function when needed. I also temporarily turn trackIR off when reading to keep it steady.
I lean forward all the time when using TrackIR to set the AP or read the G1000. What I do to hold steady is just put my elbow on the desk and rest my chin on my hand. If need to also get low, like flicking on and off lights in the Cessna, I’ll slouch and rest my cheek on my hand instead. It’s kind of neat because these are viewing positions you don’t normally get unless you setup a custom view position and save it with a hotkey.
In short yes, you can configure trackir to tilt, pitch, yaw, go up/down, go forward/backwards, etc. according to your head movement.
You can also configure how match/strongly these head movement are translated in the game-view.
Thanks so very much for ideas. It almost sounds like moving closer to the screen can function as kind of a pseudo-zoom. I can’t wait to try this thing. I wonder if as I get up close to the screen, if the thing will lose “track” (sorry) of me.
Forgot to mention that I plan to map controller buttons to pause and re-center the TrackIR. Some people say they map on/off, but I think a pause toggle will do the same thing. One side-effect my issue has is that when I look close to do something (read compass, etc.) is that it takes me to long and I end up crashing since I’m not looking outside while I fiddle!
FWIW, Since I control throttles and mixture with my yoke, I didn’t need the F1, F2, and F3 buttons in the sim. I programmed F1 for center, F2 for slow precision and F3 for pause. I seem incapable of holding my head still enough to get the arrow on the controls and have found F3 perfect for this. Of course, you could program any button(s) of your choice. Hope you enjoy msfs as much as I have.
Just curious, how does ‘slow precisition’ (‘smooth’?) help, i.e. when is it useful? Thanks.
Redeyesjm I’ve not found precision to be very useful when trying to center the mouse arrow over a button or knob. Pause works better for me.
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How did you remap TrackIr F keys???
Try to edit profiles/default.xml, but not working …
Just found solution…!!!
Same here, I just pause tir whenever I need too. I have tuned my trackir profile curves well enough that I only ever really need to pause when I want to turn a knob like the gps. I never use precision mode.
But I use FSRadioPanel on a tablet, so I almost never need to pause my tir.
