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"there is no input device for your own body"
huhhuhhuh.
I would tend to disagree ;)

I agree that the mouse takes you out of the game. I don't like one hand mouse and one hand keyboard.
(Granted, the Nostromo Speedpad n52 eliminates that, but I use mine more for Photoshop, music and video work).

I picked up Freelancer when it first came out and was so dissappointed by the lack of joystick support. Upon reading various message boards, I discovered viscious arguments about joystick/mouse gaming. I would say the game was -fun-, but I want fun AND realism.

I'm a joystick gamer; space combat sims being my lasting love (I suck at air flight - the whole gravity, fall down go boom thing - except for the original Gunship by Microprose). With my Saitek X45 and a good space combat sim, I'm in some semblance of gamer heaven. I NEVER have to touch the keyboard when playing.

Granted, any control system is completely arbitrary. They are designs that suited whatever team that designed them, and thus became the norm in that particular arena. A joystick feels natural to me for flight because it's what I was raised with, with regard to space/flight sims. A mouse does NOT feel natural to me.

Ultimately, what I want is a complete seperation of ship control and viewport control. I'm going to try Freelook soon and try to configure that to control view only (only in a game that allows smooth and continuous view changes)

But now I'm babbling :)

A far more polished piece of software is cam2pan, which works wonderfully well in all manner of lighting situations. A far less polished piece of software is freelook (which is a project of mine).

Just have to get over the $140 price hurdle first.

If you're serious, then do it yourself. Notice how the TrackIR advertisements say "More Hertz than a Webcam"? That's because normal webcams, plus a little software, are competitive to their product.

For $20 you can buy a USB webcam, and then $10 for Cam2Pan, or $0 for Freelook. Now all you need is a sticker on your forehead...

Although it doesn't claim quite the specs and ease-of-use of the TrackIR, and only works with games supporting mouselook (LOMAC and IL2 being the important ones), I wrote Freelook for people with a standard webcam who feel like trying this form of headtracking out.

PS It's free.

Most firewire video cameras, and some USB ones just automatically show up as attached video devices, and so can be accessed through VFW or WDM, in the exact same way you grab an image/stream off a webcam. It makes no difference that it's Firewire, or that it's a DV cam as opposed to a webcam.

For example, many of my users use Sony, Canon and JVC DV cameras in my machine-vision application, Freelook.

Unless you attached it to your head and used mouse-look in a first-person shooter.

While this is a generic utility, I've found that Shoot, by Martin Traverso provides an excellent way to add voice control to any Windows game, and it's free. Once trained, the accuracy is phenomenal.

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Freelook - A Free Headtracker for Games and Disabled Access

when i can get it for 15$ on ebay?

It's a collectors item - in addition to all the second hand $15 copies on eBay, it's still possible to see a unopened mint-condition Freespace2 go for over US$80.

Here is an example from Jan 6 this year, where it went for US$92.

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Freelook - A Free Headtracker for Games and Disabled Access

If thats the case, then why don't I see games with camera input for my PC?

Webcams used to come with such games - I remember basketball games and so on, all pretty similar to what the Eyetoy has (although less polished). Problem is, these sorts of games are really dead boring, and it's just not as exciting seeing yourself sitting in a chair in front of a monitor as it is dancing around in front of the telly.

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http://freelook.org/ - A Free Webcam-based Headtracker for Computer Simulation and Disabled Access.