Never used head tracking before. Ordered about a week before release and it came finally a week ago.
So much better now. I’ve never gotten along with a hat switch for view and I really have too many non-aviation peripherals that I use that I am extremely busy with the right hand with my rudder control being on my throttle but not being able to reach any buttons while using the rudder, I was trying to view around with the mouse on top of that while turning in the pattern and such.
Can’t wait to use it in ATS as well, though I’m having a difficult time getting into the truck to haul a load when I can haul an FSE passenger or 2 down the coast in my Cessna.
Protip: use the TrackIR precision mode when interacting with switches etc.
For the profile I find the “Smooth” one coming with TrackIR to be perfect for Flight Simulator, no need to create a custom one.
Make sure the correct profile for Flight Simulator is selected in the TrackIR app (titles tab), or set your current profile to exclusive so that it disregards the titles tab.
Sold my TIR5 a couple of years ago when I got my VR headset. Nearly bought another until I realised the VR headset can be used for IR tracking using opentrack. Not the most comfortable when placed at the top of your head but a good substitute until VR comes along!
It takes a few weeks for the head movement to become second nature. Once it does you’ll never want to do without.
Mine arrived this afternoon. Will probably set it up this weekend. Can’t wait
TrackIR Profiles will only work perfectly for others if your monitor size and viewing distance is exactly the same. Otherwise, you’ll need to calibrate it for your monitor extents and viewing distance.
This is a great calibration tutorial that will give you the best results for your monitor and viewing distance.
If it works for you that’s awesome I can see where it would be really handy. For me it gave me a terrible headache and neck issue, I look with my eyes before I move my (apparently very stiff) neck. Getting used to the required movement was very unnatural and uncomfortable for me. I work around with button mappings and custom camera presets.
This may be my problem. I am using a 32 inch monitor and I can’t sit 32 inches away because it won’t go far enough back on my desk from my joystick and keyboard which are on the same desk and which I have to be close to be comfortable.
A 32 inch shouldn’t be a problem
I use a curved 40 and straight 32 inch on a desk.
I think it works better with bigger screens because you don’t have to move your head as much.
Plugged it in this afternoon with default profile. It was like riding a bike. Looking around like actually being in cockpit. No mouse or hat switch with mapped views needed.
The point I was making is that another person’s profile won’t necessarily work for your setup. I have a 43" and I sit pretty close to it. Ultimately, you’ll want to customize the axis to match with your monitor dimensions and viewing distance. That vid will get you all the way there.
All I do is set set Smooth (under Motion control) all the way to the right, set the profile to Smooth and enable the Exclusive option so it’s used all the time with every game I play. (I also change the Action buttons but that depends on your hardware). Very easy to set up, no need for specific profiles, works like a charm for me.
Another tip while I am at it: place the device on the monitor straight ahead (of however you say that in English) of where your Pro Clip is! I know a lot of people put the device in the middle of the monitor for some reason but that way you will quickly lose contact when looking left.
Smooth is perfect for Flight Simulator indeed. For combat flight sims (e.g. IL2 or DCS) though, you want a profile where you can look behind you easily, which the smooth profile doesn’t do.
I tried AITrack and OpenTrack with my Logitech 1080p webcam (and a 640x480p setting in AITrack). I was a bit disappointed that independent of my head movement, the software generated view movement in MSFS with the latest versions of the two apps several days ago, especially at the extremities of my view settings.
Today I got TrackIR with the TrackClip Pro. Wow! Straight out of the box, after starting it up and starting MSFS, it has just worked great. I just used the default profile and have made no adjustments whatsoever so far. Here’s the yaw profile:
I was so stoked that I made a YouTube video of an EXTERNAL camera view looking around left, then right, and then down and behind me. The video is supposed to illustrate that with no adjustments to the default profile that I can easily take in a 360 degree view in the yaw axis, a 90 deg view down in the pitch axis.
Any herky-jerkiness in the video is just my uncertainty as a brand new user moving my head - the actual screen video is fantastically smooth. Undoubtedly it helps that I’ve cheated and have Pause On for the plane movement.
After starting TrackIR, MSFS did seem to take a long, long time to load initially compared to its usual load times for loading a saved .FLT file. Don’t know if it was making adjustments for the new presence of TrackIR? Second launch still seemed to take longer than usual without TrackIR but not as long as the maiden launch with TrackIR for the first time.
Couple of comments on TrackIR with the TrackClip Pro.
First, I thought it was pretty silly for the cost of the item ($180 for TrackIR, TrackClip Pro with shipping) that NaturalPoint does not include a head clip - a woman’s plastic hairband of the right size would probably do just fine. Instead, NaturalPoint expects that you have a headset and will clip the TrackClip Pro onto that - which might occlude one ear with the ear piece if you don’t plan to pipe sound through a headset in the first place but just want to hear your computer speakers clearly.
The other thing that I thought was lacking were clear instructions on how to use the camera mounting clip on the monitor and how to open the TrackClip Pro clamp to clamp it around a headset clip - without a more detailed explanation, I mistook the TrackClip clamp hinge for the clamp opening point until I realized you pull out on a piece of plastic on the other end of the clamp to open it (I thought the hinge pin was a locking pin that had to be removed to open the clamp!). It’s kinda silly to make the out-of-box experience with TrackIR a puzzle-solving challenge.
Haven’t found yet whether there’s a full user manual to download but there was no included advice on how to store the TrackClip Pro. I figured with my computer setup on a large dining room-sized kitchen table in a big nook that I didn’t want cooking grease from across the room settling on the IR LED’s when not in use. So I found that a plastic sandwich bag is just the right size to drop over the LED clip to shield the infrared LED’s from dust and dirt when not in use.
Edit_Update: Manuals for the TrackIR and TrackClip Pro can be downloaded from here: https://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/downloads/ (not mentioned in included product literature but discoverable below software download section on NaturalPoint website)
I did find that after I removed a paperclip from the thick Software Download Instructions card that behind the thick card there was a foldout Quick Start Guide for the TrackIR that detailed how to mount the camera, including the reasonably important point of using a a wire strain relief clip in the camera base to secure the wire just before it enters the camera - I managed to mount the camera with the stand backwards without securing the camera wire to the stand clip, not realizing that I was looking at rear views of the mounted camera in the TrackClip Pro Quick Start Guide that I was ignorantly using as my setup guide.
The ironic thing is that with the camera stand on the monitor backwards, the angle of the IR camera looking forward and down is a lot more adjustable. Otherwise, the top of my monitor is thick enough front-to-back to make putting the TrackIR camera stand on the monitor securely at just the right forward facing angle a bit touchy when the camera stand is used the “right way” around. The TrackClip passive reflective clip that comes with TrackIR by itself, to be mounted on a hat, seems designed for a lot higher forward facing camera angle than the TrackClip Pro, designed to be mounted lower down on the side of the head clipped to the sideband of a headset. Vertical camera angle really isn’t covered at all specifically in the setup instructions but I imagine I’ll get to that down deep in the TrackIR software guide in due time.
I set up a web-cam head tracker to see if I liked it. I didn’t. Not one little bit. Glad I didn’t spend any money. I’ll keep my Tartarus controller, thanks all the same.
Yes all animals evolved with a neck that rotates so that you can look around without having to move your eyes a lot sideways. This device wants you to rotate with your head and leave your eyes where they are. I found it so unnatural I got giddy. It is also very expensive for what you get especially when you find you can’t use it. You could buy a lot of add ons for the same cost.
You’re misquoting me on “touchy” - that comment applied to mounting the camera the right way round on my very large monitor - my comment has nothing to do with the performance of the device.
Previously I’d been having trouble in the 5th Sedona MSFS flying pattern tutorial looking around while flying as I don’t find it very handy to look around by using either the mouse or the keyboard. I found the free AITrack/OpenTrack software brought a new dimension of both immersion and capability in VFR flying - I could easily click away the co-pilot’s yoke and observe what I was doing to the flap control lever while moving it with the keyboard function keys at the same time using that free head tracking software with my Logitech webcam I’ve had for years for Skype.
Maybe some people are cut out to be jet jockeys and other people will never get away from the barf bag. I haven’t had any problem with either AITrack or TrackIR with any motion problems - perhaps because I’ve spent a significant fraction of my life looking through a dissecting microscope at 25x or 50x magnification for most of the working day where the distances you see and the movements of tools that you hold in your hand are tremendously magnified compared to the real life versions of what you hold in your hand and your associated real life hand movements. I haven’t experimented very much with TrackIR but with the out-of-the-box settings that I tried for version 5.4.2 of the software, as I demonstrated in the YouTube video that I posted above, I was amazed that I could look 180 deg behind myself without looking very far to the left to the left or right using the default settings, I did find the dead zone/reduced sensitivity area in the center not as much as I would like. But I had zero discomfort in looking around.
So one can go with the decent FREE head tracking. Some people say Aruco Paper is better than AITrack. But considering the cost of other peripherals ($250 for a Honeycomb yoke), I don’t think the current price, $135 with discount applied, for just the TrackIR camera and passive TrackClip hat reflector is excessive and it can be used in other games like first-person shooters as well as in flight simulators.
I can appreciate head tracking hardware/software, the same as VR, is not for everyone. But then, too, a corollary must be that that doesn’t mean it’s not for anyone. Some of us love it and find it adds significantly to the MSFS 2020 experience.
I’m using Smoothtrack and I’m quite happy with it. Make sure you don’t have too much interference on your WiFi, otherwise it can be rough (try experimenting with 2.4 vs 5 GHz, or just use USB tethering). I haven’t tried Trackir or any of the webcam solutions however, so I can’t compare.
