Slashdot Mirror

Pay no attention to all the technologies that came before it.

As a point of comparison: it's considered cheating in most first and third person shooting games multiplayer to increase your FoV beyond certain limit.

An attitude which I never understood. Games designed to enforce a 90 degree FOV fail to take into account that on average, our peripheral vision encompasses about 150-160 degrees for most people.

This is so because it gives you vastly superior awareness of your surroundings, making it much harder to surprise you with flanking.

Well, that's sort of the point of peripheral vision, isn't it? There's an easy test that I was taught in junior high that quickly demonstrates this. Hold your arms out in front of you, thumbs up. Move them to the edges of your vision on both sides until you can just see them. Stop, and take a quick look left and right. If you're like most people, you'll find that you're arms are now almost straight out from your sides.

Games which take into account this awareness tend to to do one or both of two things. The first is to allow an FOV up to some arbitrary limit somewhat greater than 90 degrees, say 110 or 120 degrees. Anything after that tends to get so distorted as to be useless on a single monitor anyhow.

The second option is to show some sort of indicators on the side of your monitor and/or allow a quick free look around of just your head. The best implementation of this model belongs to an FPS series that emphasizes realism in its player model to an extent that I've seen nowhere else. I'm speaking of course of the Operation Flashpoint/ArmA I-III series. This game series has been working on this basic model since, what? 1998? The ArmA branch of that series has also provided native support for multiple monitors and TrackIR since the first iteration.

If a FPS this fanatically dedicated to realism (OK, as long as you forget the brain dead AI and concentrate on everything else!) thinks this is OK, then why can't other games at least acknowledge the issue?

I agree with the foot pedal idea.

You can also use a head tracker for mouse moment. You don't have to have an HMD, this one can mount on your ear or hat:
http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/02-products/product-TrackIR-4-PRO.html

I use (the fairly old) Voice Commander II to do speech recognition. It lets you set up macros like:
you say, "Machine Gun" = switch weapon to machine gun + reload + crouch + deploy

TrackIR has existed for some years and there is also a free clone of it with FreeTrack.

You could add a http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/products/trackir5/ , quite easy to set up and it works, been using one (or older cousins) for ages.

Natural point tracks head movement and has for almost a decade.
Seems much cheaper and simpler than $7000.
http://naturalpoint.com/

with SmartNav.

No retinal risks either.

That completly depends on the actual implementation, TrackIR for example seems to be quite popular and allows you to do more in a game then you could with just a keyboard/mouse or gamepad. Similarly I could easily imagine a game where you for example would throw a grenade via a Kinect motion or lurk around a corner by tilting your body or just give hand gestures in multiplayer.

The whole running and jumping, yeah, that won't be of much use other then party games until everybody got an Omni-Directional Treadmill and a VR helmet in their home.

It is how we use the technology that will be important. It might be a fad in games but this has so many other uses and might present a cheaper method for many people to enter into this field (motion control portion not the game portion).

An interesting potential use is like TrackIR for head tracking and controlling the game camera. Especially for flight or driving games where it's inconvenient to use the right thumb stick to look around. I can envision other, similar uses to augment standard control schemes.

Gaze tracking with fairly decent accuracy, usually by watching the eyes with one or more IR cameras is already available for specialty applications. Something like this seems more or less representative. Their failure to list a price anywhere suggests that it doesn't come cheap; but it is already acceptably small for desktop use, and for mass deployment you could probably crunch it down to one or more IR webcam and illuminator pairs embedded in the monitor bezel, along with some suitably clever software on the client. If you are content to deal with just head tracking, rather than gaze tracking, that is the kind of off-the-shelf that you can actually just plug in a credit card and buy. Here, for instance. I'm assuming that there are others.

The tricky bit would be interpreting it usefully. The various patterns that people's eyes naturally follow when interpreting stimuli are complex and can vary considerably depending on what the user is trying to do, how experienced they are, and probably other factors. Creating a "natural gaze" interpreting interface without an unacceptable rate of false positives would be quite tricky indeed, and setups where you have to treat your gaze as though it is a mouse pointer would be pretty wearing on the user. Having to stare and click beats the hell out of the alternatives when it comes to helping paralyzed people; but it is likely to be considerably slower than just using a mouse. For interfaces that are mostly keyboard; but require occasional mouse input, I could see considerable promise, however.

Here you go

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

Why is it that no-one seems to remember the fabulous TrackIR (http://naturalpoint.com/trackir/) when discussing Johnny Lee's headtracking gizmo? Is there any reason why this tried and true device couldn't or shouldn't be used in this application?

... it sounds like a cool idea, but it seems like it would require either excessive movement on your part to do anything meaningful, or it would require you to sit almost absolutely still in order to keep your display even semi-stable...

I play a lot of flight simulators, and for those head-tracking is great. Movements are amplified (adjustable for every axis) so you only need to move your head a little bit for a much bigger movement on the screen. Precision is excellent, and it can be helped even more by setting a dead zone at the center. Check out some of the videos here:

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/02-products/product-videos.html

I couldn't imagine going back again.

I was looking at this as a replacement for WAY more expensive systems like OptiTrack or the Flock of Birds. It's a bit limited in that it does not seem to let you "point" at a certain things...the video looked like it created a "bump" roughly where your hand is.

I wonder if you could refine such a system using electrostatic sensors alone to resolve individual fingers and hand orientation.

With some refinement and augmentation from a single camera, it could turn into a gesture recognition system for VR or a video game interface much better than the Wii. Of course, it still doesn't solve the head tracking problem... [Perhaps full-human body tracking with a bunch of these sensors behind a 3D projection screen?]

I think they already have something along those lines. http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

Smartnav uses head movements for mouse control. http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/products/compare.html

The current state of voice control is, unfortunately, rather clunky. On the plus side, there are slightly nonstandard peripherals that might do the job instead.

For some years now, there have been pointing devices for the disabled that essentially involve an IR webcam and a reflector or LED stuck to whatever part of the body the user can still move. http://www.naturalpoint.com/ make some such, I suspect that they also have competitors. On the cheap side, there has been a fair bit of buzz lately about using video processing software with ordinary webcams. A bit of googleing should turn up stuff for Win, Mac, and Linux.

On the keyboard side, silicone rubber flexible keyboards have proliferated alarmingly of late. The keyfeel is bloody awful; but they are cheap, fully sealed against moisture, and can survive cleaning with various moderately horrible solvents.

With a simple USB hub, you should be able to leave the keyboard and webcam in the hood, never having to touch the webcam, and dousing the keyboard in whatever horrible substances are necessary to keep it sterile, and just plug in the one USB cable to your laptop before you begin work. Not wildly elegant; but it should provide you with a standard keyboard and pointing device that fulfill your requirements.

Imagine pairing this with a http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/TrackIR or http://www.free-track.net/similar system. With a larger FOV you could turn down the sensitivity (which makes it so you don't have to turn your head away from the monitor to see "behind" you) on the tracking system and provide a more lifelike and immersive experience. You still wouldn't have 1:1, but you could tone it down to maybe 1:2.5 or less.

Eh, sort of like what TrackIR already does? This is not all that innovative, just on-the-cheap.

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

Headtracking for games has been around for a long time but this solution really takes the cake for using inexpensive, off the shelf technology..

The TrackIR solution linked above costs around as much as a Wii itself.

If regular input devices cause you so much distress, perhaps you should look for some less painful alternatives. I don't know much about arthritis, but I do know that your controller options shouldn't be limited by regular keyboards and gamepads. There are trackballs, head trackers, eye sensors, one button joysticks, large button keyboards, speech controlled mice, etc, etc. Instead of thinking how to spend your 'last hours' with regular controllers, I would advise you to do some research and get an input device that will help you overcome this horrible disease and keep enjoying the things you like in the future.

There are some links you may find useful. I wish you good luck and happy gaming.
http://www.naturalpoint.com/
http://www.game-accessibility.com/forum/viewforum. php?id=2
http://www.3m.com/cws/renmouse.html
http://www.aroga.com/com_access/comaccess.asp
http://ablegamers.com/component/option,com_facilef orms/Itemid,26/ff_name,ReviewList/ff_param_section ,5/ff_param_cat,allcat/ff_param_limit,20/ff_param_ order,SubmissionDateNew

You could try "Optitrack" by naturalpoint software. Seems really useful, actually and for $249, it's worth taking a chance on too.
Here's their link:
http://www.naturalpoint.com/optitrack/

If you have Poser(and free time), you can also try the Rotoscoper plugin by PhilC as well.
Huge link follows:
http://istore.mikrotec.com/philc/index1.html?page= catalog&trackerid=1661406456&category=a&vid=208024 5373&pid=924839477&oldvid=2143420604

From the Quake 2 demo, it's really not giving any advantages because your moves with the gun and the body. In Armed Assaunt (or Operation Flashpoint for that matter) where environment awareness is much more important (and *gasps* you head is not attached to the gun!), being able to look around means you have a much greater field of view and able to spot more enemies, check on your team mates to stay in formation, and maybe avoiding the helicopter collisions that we so often have.

I went through a similar situation with my hand and did a fair amount of research a couple years back. Have you tried roller mouse http://www.rollermouse.com./ A co-worker with Osteoarthritis loves it. It worked well for me but I found a combination of a vertical mouse and a Kinesis Advantage keyboard works best for me. I have always wanted to try one of the hands free IR based systems such as the ones offered at http://www.naturalpoint.com/ (Note: used for example purposes, not meant as an endorsement).

So it really could have nothing to do specifically with the thumb (especially since she experiences pain in her hand and arm too) and more to do with ergonomics, posture, or just a natural tendency towards being more susceptible to RSIs due to biology (I'm 23, I got mine young because my forearm-elbow angle is naturally larger than most people's). Rather than a new mouse, she should see a doctor and get treated, not fired - she (hopefully) has health insurance (I don't, I developed mine before I had a real job, been suffering for a year now with no hope in sight for the surgery I need), and she did receive this damage working for the company. Firing her would probably be grounds for a nice fat lawsuit. Surgery might not be necessary - there are physical therapies, braces (worn while working or while sleeping - a fair amount of symptoms can be relieved by wearing a wrist brace at night, because some people bend their wrists for hours at a time while sleeping, compressing the nerve - before I had CTS, I had an unrelated case of tendonitis which was gone within a few months of drugstore naproxen and wearing braces at night), cortisone injections, cold compressess (good for immediate short-term relief) and more exotic input devices like speech recognition and head-mounted laser mice .

If all else fails a new job should be a last resort - I don't think anyone here on slashdot would like being told "find a career that doesn't use computers." Years of schooling, experience, and knowledge down the drain. Good luck finding a professional office job that doesn't require computer use. Also, once you're already injured, ordinary tasks become painful and aggravating as well - driving, yard work, cleaning... and you might as well forget about playing musical instruments. These injuries are devastating, psychologically/emotionally as well as physically. Constant pain, surgery, months of rehab, the possibility of various degrees of permanent incapacitation, career derailment - it's not something to be taken lightly. I know it has caused me several major depressive episodes when despair sets in.

Don't be so sure it won't happen to you - you're still young, but after *years* of repetition it can happen to anyone, ergonomics be damned.

The sooner that woman gets treated, the better - the earlier you catch it, the less likely the damage will be permanent. Don't waste time with fancy keyboards and mice (though they may be necessary) - get her diagnosed first, and work with a physical therapist from there.

NaturalPoint's SmartNAV system enables mousing with your head/neck. There is a IR emitter and camera that you mount/place on your monitor, and it tracks a reflective dot that you either wear, stick to glasses, or put on a hat (the kit comes with a hat with integrated reflective dot). Clicking is accomplished by the software mapping convenient keys on your keyboard, or by voice activation.

The system is suprisingly sensitive and intuitive, with a little practice it becomes second nature to point with your head. For the record I'm not an employee of NP, but I am right in the middle of a product review on the SmartNAV3 AT package (and will be posting it at FresHDV in the very near future). I have to admit that I did not anticipate that it would be a very intuitive system. And I've been pleasantly suprised. The system is not cheap, but the relief for those plagued by RSI is well worth the cost. What's great is NaturalPoint offers a evaluation period, you can return the product within like 30 days if you aren't happy with it. It would be well worth looking into for your co-worker.

Track Ir is actually trought to be used in online games, especially in simulations where you would like to use the hands for steering input and the head for looking around in your vehicle.

AFAIK it emulates the mouse (because most simulations use the mouse for moving the view angle) and therefore shouldn't need any special drivers for applications.

this might be geeky but it might be worth a try (i am really not sure if it is usable as mouse, in games, it works like a charm).

I would recommend the person to try some of the solutions from Naturalpoint. I'm using the TrackIR myself in flight simulators to control the view, but the product was originally designed as a mouse replacement. It works very well and completely eliminates the need to use the hands to control the pointer.

http://www.naturalpoint.com/ cost $199 - $399
http://www.cameramouse.com/ cost $299 - $429

http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/tools/mice.html $45 touchpad - $299
http://www.enablemart.com/productdetail.aspx?store =10&pid=174&dept=12 cost ???

I developed tendonitis in both hands two years ago, and there are a number of solutions I've found. The HeadmouseExtreme by Origin Instruments http://orin.com/access/headmouse/index.htm, the Tracker Pro by Madentec http://madentec.com/products/comaccess/tracker/abo ut-tpro.html, and the SmartNav by NaturalPoint http://naturalpoint.com/smartnav/products/at/at_ov erview.html are all head pointing devices that use near IR to track a reflective dot you stick on your head.

The first two cost around $1000, and the SmartNav costs between $200 and $400 but my favorite by far is the Headmouse Extreme. It and the Tracker Pro work on any machine just like a USB mouse, while the SmartNav doesn't work with Linux and requires special software.

I use a Kinesis Savant Elite triple-action footswitch http://orin.com/access/headmouse/index.htm to do my mouse clicking for me.

They are probably borrowing the designs of naturalpoint's TrackIR.

http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir

It uses an infrared camera to track the location of three reflectors. I image they will do something along those lines with their new offering.

BTW, the TrackIR is great for simulation games.

You need a TrackIR (http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/). You can physically turn your head and "look around" in the sim cockpit. I'm a Private Pilot and I practiced in my own simulator, using head-tracking to eye the landing pattern.

Now I've upgraded my simulator and am using it to practice IFR.

http://www.fxtech.com/gallery/simulator/IMG_2949_e dited

Look into the SmartNAV at naturalpoint.com.

I fortunately only lost one hand in a car wreck last year, but I was certainly looking into alternative HID if it made computer usage easier. I've since learned to type fairly well one-handed.

Windows only, but works very well.
http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

TrackIR! It rules for flight simulators, http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

Allows you to use your headmovement instead of a hatstick to change your view direction in the game!

what you want already exists: http://www.naturalpoint.com/

Mainly good for flight sims. You will need someone likely to help you configure it: http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/

He could also use Smartnav , or since it is practically the same thing at half the price, Trackir.

Provided you set it up properly, the only operator training needed would be for someone to put a ball cap with the reflective dot on your father's head. Lots of people use it for flight sims, especially the IL-2 series .

Since they use as a Situation awareness aid, they all know how to set it up.

He could also use Smartnav , or since it is practically the same thing at half the price, Trackir.

Provided you set it up properly, the only operator training needed would be for someone to put a ball cap with the reflective dot on your father's head. Lots of people use it for flight sims, especially the IL-2 series .

Since they use as a Situation awareness aid, they all know how to set it up.

I've been using voice for about 6 months. I had a big issue with right hand pain this year so I talked to a fellow developer who helped me get setup. We've done some custom grammars in python for or dev environment. It's been helpful. It's a long way to go if you want to reduce mouse usage. The mouse has to be the worst peripheral for the PC. I'm considering buying the SmartNav http://www.naturalpoint.com/smartnav/ to get rid of my mouse. I've messed with one on a PC with 2 screens. It was nice.

In the world of flight sims (I play IL-2), the TrackIR is amazing. You move your head, the view moves. Very natural, and makes the first-person view the best. And SimBin's GTR will support TrackIR.

This was mentioned earlier, but I didn't see much information on the Dasher website about actual input devices (though Dasher is a neat way to handle typing).

As a recent UVA grad I heard a lot about the ERICA project while I was there. It's an eye tracking system that's pretty neat, though I think it's basically just being used for research at this time and I don't know of a way to actually purchase it.

I believe there are some commercial eye tracking systems out there, but head tracking is simpler, and therefore cheaper. One I've seen is from here. For $300 you can get the package your friend would need which allows for hands-free clicking through either clicking after the mouse pauses for a second, or through use of a big external button.

I believe Windows XP includes an on-screen keyboard already, but I'm sure typing using only that would get tedious. This is where something like Dasher that was mentioned previously is helpful, as it uses a dictionary to guess which letters you're most likely to type next and make it easier to type those letters. Of course he could still use speech recognition for typing, and rely on something like the head mouse for pointer control.

After a suprise christmas bonus; I've just ordered these little toys to play with:

eDimensional 3D glasses and a TrackIR2

I really really really want an eye tracker myself, the cost has been prohibitive I have found for the lowly engineer. However, these might be helpful.

also the Ability hub has an interesting piece on accessibility.

The TrackIR GX looks interesting, although not as a mouse alternative, it can be used to make your neck hurt so you can script 17 actions with the movement of your head.

IBM has been working on an eye tracking solution, I remember seeing something on TechTV a while back, anyone know the progress on that?

Spending money on computer ergonomics is a wise investment -- way better than the fastest cpu.

www.naturalpoint.com -- this is a hands-free mouse that you aim by head motion, and click with an add-on footpad. I've been using it for about a year because of rms (the medical syndrome, not the guy). I also have an ergonomic keyboard-cum-chair from ErgoKinesis, and they might have some adaptive keyboard products you'd find useful.
BTW, the comments on the order of "just whack off with the other hand" are pretty damn insensitive, if you ask me.

Concern 10: If only it worked in Linux, Mac OS, windows 3.0, etc.

Reply : Several members of our development community are working on linux drivers. And if we sense a lot of interest in a certain platform (like the macintosh OS. nudge nudge), we'll go ahead and crank out drivers for it.

Cheers,
-j.

problem is, it says here that the erica system gets only "approximately 0.5 to 1 centimeter accuracy on a computer monitor when sitting at a normal viewing distance", versus the trackir, which gets a sensor accuracy "greater than 1 mm in translational reporting RMS, accuracy is about .5mm" at 18" from the unit, as reported by an employee on their dev boards here.

btw, trackir also has mostly working linux drivers, and a freeware non-commercial activex component.

problem is, it says here that the erica system gets only "approximately 0.5 to 1 centimeter accuracy on a computer monitor when sitting at a normal viewing distance", versus the trackir, which gets a sensor accuracy "greater than 1 mm in translational reporting RMS, accuracy is about .5mm" at 18" from the unit, as reported by an employee on their dev boards here.

btw, trackir also has mostly working linux drivers, and a freeware non-commercial activex component.