I decided to try and save some money and went for a Delan Clip and OpenTrack. Both have been working great and at a fraction of the cost.
I also really like the Trackir. It’s so nice on downwind to be able to glance over your shoulder to see the runway. Some say it feels unnatural but the way I have it set up works for me. Two thumbs up for Trackir.
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I got my TrackIR last week and dreaded installing it. And, boy was I right about that. Back in the box it went for the time being.
The IR receiver did mount worth a darn on the very thin top bezel of my LG C9 TV. I would have had to tape it on there. That was a joke right up front. The (worthless) Instruction manual didn’t go over anything about that.
The software would not, no matter what I tried allow me to center my head at 0/0 degrees of X and Y. After screwing around with the software for an hour by myself and then watching videos for another hour (not supplied by TrackIR…) I gave up. It may be related to the height of my 55" TV versus where my head is at vertically. I don’t know, and personally, I don’t care at this point!
I’m not looking for any help, so please, save your time. Maybe some day, after having a shot of some 18 Year Sherry Oak Cask, Macallan Scotch Whiskey, I will be up for another try at it. 
Sorry for sounding negative. That is not my intent. I just don’t care for cheese that much. It did not go well for me and I was really wanting it too.
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Take that shot, in fact I’ll have one as well. I also have my monitor mounted high on the wall and placed the camera on a small stand on the desk in front of me. That way the camera gets to see the three reflectors all the time. Once it can see them you should be in business.
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In camera view it was seeing all the reflectors perfectly so that wasn’t it. I had to tilt my head to the right (X) by about 20 degrees and nothing adjusted it out. Like I mentioned, back in the box and a dark cabinet it went. Maybe someday.
My place, 6 pm EST, shots for all, Dudes only! Who gets the yoke is a different problem… Spin the bottle?
- 1 for smoothtrack on iOS. Brilliant!
It seems to me that a lot of folks making negative comments about TrackIR probably never performed the sort of adjustments and personal calibration so well described in the Jabbers tutorial video.
For example, some folks say that they have to turn their head so far to the left or right and then look sideways at the screen to see around and behind them. Jabbers clearly describes how to create small dead zones near the center of view and adjust the sim motion multiplication factor vs. the angle of real world phyiscal head turning so that you can look 180 deg behind yourself while only looking in reality about 45 deg to the left or right, and looking straight ahead at either corner of your screen when you want to look behind yourself in the sim.
The other thing that I wonder about with some of the negative comments is whether folks are talking about TrackIR 5 and v5.4 of the software? And whether folks were careful to make any hand-designed profile “Exclusive” so some other profile, like the Default, is not used instead when they launch MSFS 2020.
One thing that’s great about the interaction of TrackIR and MSFS 2020 is that you can make adjustments to your profile literally “on the fly” (pun intended) while flying in MSFS.
A great VR headset might be nice - but a VERY expensive experiment. And I like physically using expensive flight controllers that give a real tactile feel to the sim. I don’t particularly look forward to throwing away the use of physical controllers that I can’t see when “blinded” by a VR headset and flying virtually with a set of VR controller sticks. But maybe it’s like TrackIR itself, something you can’t imagine how new and useful it can be until you try it (and carefully follow an excellent setup tutorial).
I bought it for FSX a few years ago and found it was a very expensive waste of money. I just want to warn people that they may be throwing a lot of money away like I did.
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Its terrible for standard Flight Simul. You move your head/neck and have to keep your eye in the same place. Look at ppl pn youtube using it, they move like robots. Its funny. It would only be interesting if the Monitor would move along with your had 1:1 hahaha. THis is just handy when playing fighters sim. Thats it. The POV and mouse along with chaseplane/ezdok is the best minimalist solution. Best option is multi monitors. As hor VR, i will wait 30 years until they come in glasses size.
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Don’t forget the silly hat that you have to wear indoors. I was brought up to take my hat off when entering some ones house.
Yeah hahaha. If were to try that pitful thing again, id go for Tobii eye tracker 5. At least you dont have the hat or clippers on headset… but its bad either way.
So, keeping your head in the same place and having the world spin around you (moving screen with mouse and keyboard) is also perfectly natural - an adaption we were born with?
I think it’s the same thing as learning to catch a flyball as a kid or trying to hit a curving ball. Or bowling a strike by not rolling the ball straight at the pins head on. Initially, one might be spastic and disoriented because the physical/mental coordination isn’t there. But humans are amazing adaptive at what they can do - at least most of us are.
So from my point of view, folks dissing TrackIR are not really honestly criticizing the hardware/software but rather their own adaptability, whether they realize it or not …
Its was a very uncomfortable experience for me. But im not forbidding anyone to enjoy it. It has it PROs too. So good for you, if could pass through the CONs. For example: one of it pros is not having to look at my ugly face everytime i want to fly, like those webcam headtrackers.
Yes, but I wear a baseball cap when I fly planes. I’m not using an “enter someone’s house simulator”, I’m using a “flight simulator”. Wearing a cap seems completely natural to me.
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So if you are walking along a street and you here a crash you just turn your move your eyes and don’t turn your head to see what’s happening, how strange
For me the key with TrackIR was to think of it not as something to give 1:1 mapping of head movements into the simulation (that’s what VR is for) but rather as something that turns the head into another set of convenient input axes.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a full sized yoke and throttle setup that’s perfectly matched to the ones in the sim, chances are you’re already making hand and wrist movements on your HOTAS axes, mouse or gamepad that are different in magnitude to those displayed in the simulated aircraft. It’s something you get used to so quickly that you hardly think about it.
TrackIR is basically the same, but using your neck as the input axes. Trying to map it 1:1 won’t work for obvious reasons, so don’t be afraid to crank the movement gain right up to where it’s comfortable. At first I found it odd to be moving my head a maximum of 45° while seeing 100°+ movements on screen, but it was literally only for the first few minutes.
After that it was second nature. In fact a recent prescription change has meant that my room-distance screen glasses have a narrower focus zone than my previous pair, and I’ve had to reduce the relative head movement in order to keep everything in focus when I look off-centre. My whole head movement is now no more than about ±20° but it still feels fine. It’s just another convenient axis.
For anyone who genuinely can’t cope with the disconnect you have my sympathies, because that’s was my fear when I first tried TrackIR and I’d have hated it if I couldn’t get past that. Maybe I was just lucky, but once I stopped thinking about it as a head orientation tracker and more as a relative movement input everything fell into place.
I still use hat switches and keyboard/mouse controls to assist with external cameras and focusing on instruments, but for general panning around I can’t imagine playing any sort of cockpit-based simulation on a flat display without TrackIR. In fact when I play a cockpit game that doesn’t support it (No Man’s Sky used to be like this, but may have been updated by now) it drives me crazy having my “head axes” clamped.
For TrackIR? I’ve been using TrackIR for over 10 years and never had to wear a hat.
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I wonder how many that are mocking track ir have actually used one.
Like anything using tracker takes a few days to a couple of weeks to get used to it.
After a while you don’t know it’s on and you look around seamlessly without thinking about it. Once that happens you’ll never want to play without it.
For me the biggest benefit of TrackIR are not the rotational movements but the translational ones. For example, when on base judging when to turn to final, the runway view can be obstructed by the cabin metal structure, so you just move your head forward or left to see the runway. You can move your head up to better see the runway threshold when on final (over the engine cowling). You can move your head closer to any instrument to read the small letters. You can even move your head left, past the cabin wall and look down at your landing gear (in C172) and the terrain below.
It requires an hour to tinker with the deadzones and profiles, typically separate tuning is required for each plane (you have different needs when flying aerobatic plane vs. airliner), you can do it when flying, whenever you see your head movement is too small or to big. When done, I can’t imagine flying without it.
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It makes me chuckle when people start complaining because they have to have a clip or a hat to use Track IR. With a simple clip on a modified cheap headphone bracket the clip with LEDs really doesnt look much different to a headset with a mic, neither are not worn for beauty contests after all. If people feel silly wearing one, perhaps they are little bit too focused on the wrong things.
It makes a massive difference when you can just turn your head to look out of the window, not to mention checking the runways you have to cross and looking around whilst taxiing. Its a huge improvement.
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