Hi, another vote for smoothtrack, easy set up, works perfectly on my set up (I’m running it on an iPhone SE)
Cheers
Steve
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If you want 6DOF then TrackIr is the only way to go. There really is no competition.
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Simply wrong. I think you did not even tried „Smoothtrack“. Try it and you will never go back to TrackIR. My TrackIR (4pro) … anybody wants to have it? I give it away to the fastest pick-up.
LOL… more “who has the longest” please 
Have just remapped my Trackir pause button to mouse wheel middle click and disabeled mouse zoom in the cockpit.
Now if I want to fx look closely at the g3000 screen or the touchscreen I just lean forward so I have a nice close wiev and hit the mouse wheel click and a have a solid firm window to work in without the risc of accidentally zoom when turning knobs.
By the way …would not fly one foot without Trackir.
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of course, or to the joy button…
Another hint related to the discussion , TackIR or something like Smoothtrack…
With TrackIR you can go the “active” way, means with active LED and you can play in dark rooms. With solutions per camera, you can run into an issue in such conditions. ( what not means, that these solutions are bad )
Had it on my Honeycomb yoke but often when you want to focus on something you are seldom holding the yoke…but you are certainly holding the mouse.
Well looks like someone has produced a head tracking application that supports 6dof…well done. But as I sit in a sim pit with a 43" monitor in front with the room darkened, this will not work. Pretty good for those sitting at a desk tho.
Thanks. My biggest concern eliminated.
Thanks to all of you for your valuable inputs. 
I have decided to go for the TrackIR.
I’m sure the SmoothTrack solution works just as well, just not for me. I need my iPhone to be easily available at all time, and my setup makes it virtually impossible to place it where it would work.
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Oh and please dont compare TrackIr 4 with anything. It’s old and no where near as capable as TrackIr 5!
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I was gonna buy trackir 5… but it seems so hard to find in the uk. Only cheap clones that are selling for not so cheap prices. Came across an app called SmoothTrack. It’s 8 quid, instead of the 130+ for a trackir clone… and you don’t need to wear anything on your head or think about charging devices (except your phone, I guess). You run the app on your phone, run some free software on your pc and hey presto, you now have head tracking. Great stuff!
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I have posted my custom trackir setup in this post How I moved away from clicking in and around cockpit for control - cheaper alternative compact home sim - #28 by Rosen213
After experimenting with AITrack + OpenTrack for face tracking, I decided to go with hardware. TrackIR is still back-ordered from most places and there was a 10 - 15 day lead time for ordering directly from NaturalPoint, plus stupid-expensive shipping costs.
Instead, I went for a semi-hobbyist solution from Grass Monkey Simulations. It’s a super-lightweight 3D printed IR emitter and housing that can be attached to a provided 3D printed headband or your gaming headset of choice, combined with OpenTrack open-source software and a customized USB IR webcam in its own custom-printed housing and monitor clip. I just received it tonight and after getting OpenTrack setup, it works quite the treat! While I’ve used OpenTrack before experimenting with AITrack face-tracking, Grass Monkey provides a well-illustrated guide to setting up a profile to use his IR emitter and even some sample user profile files to get started.
The hardware is super light, needing only a single AA battery to power three very low-power IR LEDs, and after a moment wearing it, you hardly know its even there. MSFS recognizes the OpenTrack output as “TrackIR” in the Controller options and you don’t even need to set anything up at all. As soon as you turn on OpenTrack and click “START”, the sim will “see” it and it just works.
I need to tweak a few of the movement settings in OpenTrack from the sample config provided, mostly to allow a bit more left-right translation to see some obscure switches in the old warbirds I like to fly in the sim, but really that’s it. Motion is very smooth and steady, very stable, and feels quite natural. The entire thing is 3D printed and feels quite sturdy and well-made, though obviously not as slick and professional as injection-molded commercial stuff. The whole thing is easy to setup, easy to use and at about $80 shipped by Priority Mail in the US, it’s really hard to top in terms of value.
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does anyone know if trackIR is any better at tracking when the camera is palced high above your head?
I tried this position on face trackign software like AItrack, but it get confused with pitch and Z axis’.
I’m using smoothtrack+opentrack at the moment and it works VERY WELL, but settign up the phone position can be frustrating…and it also means that I can’t check my phone while I’m simming.
Interested still in trackIR, but think it’ll be just as much hassle setting up if I need to clip it onto my touchsrceen monitor each time…so ideally I’d like to clip it above my tv…but it’s a 55 inch tv that I sit probably only a few feet from (if that)…so I’m assuming that I’d have to point it downwards and that it’ll confuse axis’ like other methods?
Saw the YouTube video by Pilot1620, was impressed and ordered it. I received mine last week but haven’t been able to use it. It seems Windows won’t let me replace its camera driver with the CL-Eye driver. I keep getting ‘No Camera Found’. Messaged GrassMonkey, no response yet. I presume you are in Windows 10. How did you manage to install it ?
I went the opposite and placed the camera below the screen on a short pedestal. It does mean you need to give up on a track cap as the peak blocks the cameras view. I just attached my old school reflector clip directly to my headset.
I’m actually running Win11, but I don’t think it matters. Did you buy the whole setup including the camera? Because the camera he’s using now is a generic 640x480 USB cam with the IR filter removed, and mounted in an entirely 3D-printed housing. I plugged it into my powered USB hub and Windows just recognized it automagically, no driver installation required. It shows up in my Device Manager like this: “USB Camera” - and get a load of how old the driver that driver is. That’s what Win11 pulled out of its guts and is using.
it depends how “short” is short 
Brainstormiung: If you happy with your current phone+smoothtrack+opentrack solution, why not buy a “cheap” new phone ( or a just a new one and reuse your existing ). TrackIR5 get each year more expensive ( the recommended ‘active’ solution is in meanwhile by more than 200€. I bought it years ago for ~150, so far I remeber ). I assume for 200€ you get also a relativly good new phone 
Got it working without the special driver. My driver has a different version number, but the date is also 6/2006. Weird. That driver is at least 9 years older than Win 10. Yes, I bought the whole setup with the little modified camera. I have some basic mapping done. It’s pretty smooth. Was using a phone with Smoothtrack then moved to a Samsung tablet. Too much trouble setting up and positioning the tablet every day. If it lasts, this unit is worth it at about 1/3 the cost of TrackIr or Tobii.
I like that.
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