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TrackIR3 Pro Head-Tracking System For Gamers
simfan writes "Ars has a review of the TrackIR3 Pro up that's worth a look. Using the TrackIR cursor control system originally designed to help the disabled, the company made a device that tracks your head movements in games. It turns out that this works really well in flight sims and other games where you can replace mouse control. There's some video of the performance as well."
Just have to get over the $140 price hurdle first.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
This just means that now she'll have logs to present to the court:
"Yes, your honor, and these prove that he was looking at my breasts while talking to me".
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Of course when you're playing and get hit in the back you'll have to be careful to when you whip around so you don't get whiplash... ;-) Of course at least some gamers will be getting SOME exercise while playing games. :-P
I wonder if they simply cannot make enough money selling to the disabled that the only viable market for such equipment is selling it to the gamers with disposable income?
the problem is that when your head moves your eyes still have to point to the screen. that does not work. i tried the ur gear headset before. it did not work at all. it would work better on a wall.
they originally designed it for the disabled and it only runs on "Software requirements: Windows XP / 2000 / Millennium Edition / 98 "? I guess they know what their target demographic is using...
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
Sure, your plane may turn but now you're stuck staring at a wall.
...okay maybe I should RTFA
so, my little sis who used to nod her head up every time she made mario jump would be pro at this!
So, technology is always used where it's least expected. A technology for disabled people is used for flight simulation games. Typewriter was meant to help blind write letters. Now it has morphed into keyboard to write worms and viruses (virii if you want pure English).
So how many such different uses of technology have you come up with?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
So, what happens in my flight sim when I Sneeze?
I can see it now, just before landing you start to feel a tickle in your nose.
these goggles don't seem to actually show anything, so you must continue looking at your monitor while using them, right?
that sounds uncomfortable and fruitless.
I'm just not sure if I want something that looks like a Might Morphin Power Ranger looking at me from the top of my monitor. Not to mention what stretching your neck might do to you while in game!
I can see the next version of Dance Dance Revolution on Playstation 3 using something like this. Combined with the Eye Toy, you could end up in some major traction!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Nice review.
I must wonder exactly how useful it is. I can only imagine the eye strain one would get by continually turning their head far to the right and left and having to keep your eyes focused on the screen. Getting a headache just thinking about it.
Till they make a version with force feedback?
Technoli
When I was a physiology student, we examined saccades - high speed movements of the eye. We do not smoothly transition our field of vision to something interesting, we tend to "snap" our focus instantly to catch a better glance.
Where this was interesting, I thought, would be if we could leverage this mechanism as an input device especially for FPS games. Instant targeting and pretty damned accurate aim.
However, there probably won't be too much of a market outside that though, since smooth and steady movements of the eyes are pretty difficult to achieve, if not impossible.
The article makes a small mention of VR, but really, this has to be pretty damn important for the behind-the-scenes push for VR game consoles in the next decade. Every game company in the world with a brain should already be planning for an eventual shift to a VR system, even if it's 10 years away, and both the dropping price and increasing functionality of this TrackIR product makes the feasability of a low-priced, easy-to-use VR console that much more likely in the coming years.
They track head movement, but your monitor is stationary. It's natural to move your head left to see things to the left, but with this you have to turn left and simultaneously look right.
I've looked into the hardware for making a real HUD/tracker, which has a display and does headtracking, and how to integrate them. For gameplay, it's mostly limited by the resolutions of current goggle setups. It's easy to find 640x480 goggles, but higher resolutions for gameplaying are much tougher.
If $140 makes you balk on one of the crappy units in the article, you shouldn't even consider the $2000+ it'd cost for a decent Head-mounted display.
They need to build the display into the headset if its going to work. I see other postings talking about having to strain your eyes to look at the screen when turning your head, etc. This is no good. I remember in 1994/1995 I was at this arcade that had virtual reality games... there were a few different ones... you stood up in this ring with a headset on... the headset had a display built in, when you looked to the left you still saw the screen... you could also see the other players walking around (Networked)... it was more of a virtual reality deathmatch. They need to get this sort of technology back. It seemed like there was so much hype back in the mid 90s, and then it sort of dissolved. Companies kept promising cool new VR products for the masses but nothing surfaced... people let go of the dream.
From the article: You just can't pull a Linda Blair to pivot 180 degrees.
I bet if you tried you'd start vomiting green and screaming explitives.
Game Play : Drink Whatever is shown (Head Fwd-Get Drink; Head tilt back makes game drinker down it).
Continue until severe forward head tilt - change to toilet scene. Game ends when dry heaves cause head shivers.
when I look to the left, so will my character.
wait a minute...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I've had the earlier version of this for several months. I use it to play flight sims. It takes a little getting used to, but it really does work great!
People are thinking you need to turn all the way to one side or the other, but sensitivity allows you to turn slightly for results... also, all you need is a little sticky dot, not head-wear.
Ha! And they all laughed at your tin-foil hat! You'll show them!
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
You can get the whole kit-n-kabootle here (for a pretty penny) - head mount display, head tracker, controller, force feedback vest and full retail copy of Doom3.
Wouldn't that be cool or what?
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The guys from TrackIR pro contacted us during the development of Motorsport to offer support in making their product compatible. Bravo to TrackIR for supporting the open source community.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
It gets irritating hearing how the latest technology is planned for the "disabled". We are all born disabled. Our disability can be summed up into two categories--lack of control of information going into our consciousness, and lack of knowledge of what is coming out of our consciousness. This is a step towards knowing what comes out of our consciousness. If we could only experience for just awhile what we will become, we will know just how disable we all are now.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I can already see it now...
FEBRUARY 3--A Tennessee man has sued NaturalPoint, a manufacturer of control systems for computers, on the basis that their product caused him physical injury and mental distress during its use. In his suit, the 26-year-old college student alledges that while playing computer games such as Far Cry, Half-Life 2, and Singles: Threesomes, his neck was injured while attempting to use NaturalPoint's head-based controller.
"I was clearing a corner on the new Dust map for HL2 and I heard a loud pop in my neck. I knew something had happened."
The plaintiff claims that since the injury he has not been able to fully enjoy his previous quality-of-life.
"Yeah, I tried to play Threesomes the other day and I totally missed out on the 6' redhead knockin' boots with the Japanese chick that I just got to move into the apartment. My life has truly went downhill since this injury."
The plaintiff has asked for an unspecified amount of damamges. Story developing...
...to play Hypersports.
Nouse
Nose as Mouse
All you need is a webcam and your face. Tracks your nose for mouse movement.
In case some of you are wondering why this is so vital to the flight simmer, well, it isnt.
But what it does it supposedly does very well. Being a former member of the IL2 Sturmovik community, home to some of the most insane, fanatical, and hardcore legion of gamers in the world, Track IR is a godsend to those whose day is ruined when they lose a dogfight.
Instead of having one hand on a mouse and the other on a joystick, they can now concentrate on the joystick.
Since IL2 is life to many a gamer, track ir really sadly enhances many peoples lives and contributes tp their purpose in living.
...a system that would cheat at cards. :) Very entertaining if it could be done right, so really you don't notice but others do :)
Some game, 3 cards, poker, blackjack, whatever. A cam that tracks head AND EYEBALL movement of the player, and when the player is not looking the game attempts cheats. Not replacing card values it dealt to "its own hand" in RAM, just displaying all the tricks, like sneaking an ace out of the screen etc, so all the tricks would be visible to everyone watching the game, but the player
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Right now, serious flight simmers use an eight-way hat switch for views, supplemented with a "look up" button. Looking down isn't used with this 8-point view system. Some sims do include a pure panning view system, and these can use the mouse, although they again are best triggered with a hat switch (four way, in general).
Us flight-sim geeks are serious, and the $140 price tag or whatever is not a big sacrifice. Heck, my Thrustmaster Cougar cost about twice that - and that doesn;t include the cost of the rudder pedals I bought for use with my first set of Thrustmaster gear.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
It isn't as difficult as you may think...
The human brain has reflexes, that conects the labyrithe inside your inner ear (built-in head-gyration sensor), and your occulars muscles.
This reflex stabilise the eyes, and makes you able de look straight ahead, even if you're walking and your head is shaking a litte.
In case of using a head motion tracking device, this reflexes help you stabilising your eyes and looking straigth to the monitor.
There are also other relfexes specifically designed to track moving object.
Like when you're looking thru the window of a train : you don't have to think to compensate the speed of the vehicle. You just "follow" the trees outside.
and of course, it can also help you keeping your eyes on the object that is interesting on the screen while it comes to the center, as you move your head.
Combination of these reflexes, makes it a little bit easier to use this kind of head tracking devices.
Otherwise, it would have been far more impossible to use them (like if you had brain tumors blocking neural pathways for these reflexes, or if you used retinal implants, or if you were just a robot).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
he was a motorcyclist who suffered a brachial plexus injury and subsequently had his arm amputated at the shoulder.
he plays IL2 sturmovik forgotten battles (which has a LOT of real commercial and military pilots playing head to head with the "civvies" like him) and his rankings are REAL good.
he swears by it.
I believe he uses it for cockpit (view from) viewing angles rather than actual rudder / aelieron control.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
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.
So frequently I have five or six shells open on different hosts and start typing, assuming that the window I am looking at has focus... doh! I want one of these so that the window I look at always WILL have focus!!
I can use this to play fps games easier with this. Finally, some hardware disabled gamers can use.
Greetings, I fly IL-2 Sturmovik and have since 2001. I also own a trak-IR unit and use it often. To clear some things up, first Trak-IR was developed as an aid for the disabled, not as a gaming tool first. Trak-IR came out roughly at the same time as IL-2 and the company was approached by members of the IL-2 community in hopes that there product could be better tailored for flight sims. The developers of Trak-IR are a great bunch and if there was an interest and demand for Linux support they would in my opinion make the software to support it. The product works as advertised and it is a great tool for those of us in the flight sim community. I would gander that 50% of those in the IL-2 community use the trak-IR. The amount of head movement needed to look/pan in the cockpit is minimal and from personal experience can say that eye strain and neck pain is not an issue. If you fly flight sims than this is a must buy. I have tried some of the other programs that use your web cam and they do not pass the muster at all as the FPS that the cam refreshes max's out at 30, compared to the 120 fps of the trak-IR.
I have a TrackIr 3Pro. First few days were pretty tough and made my neck sore after a few minutes. After about a week it becomes much more natural.
However, it does train you to look at the monitor while turning your head. While flying for real (CJ-6A), I have noticed that my eyes tend to 'lag' now when looking around.
I also tend to focus on the instruments more than outside but that comes from more flightsim time than real time.
-e.
This discussion comes up ~every ~time!
Say it right: "Nuc-le-ah Powah".
Perhaps you should read the article -- this device doesn't track eye movements at all; it tracks head movements. The primary game use seems to be for changing cockpit views in flight sims by actually turning your head instead of using a keyboard or joystick hat.
Causation can cause correlation
This would suck IMO for flight sims, you would be constanly looking out of the corner of your eye, as the screen will not move, just your field of vision. This will cause headaches and motion sickness.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
The next product from these guys should be some kind of high-refresh-rate pupil tracker.
Imagine the next generation of window managers, where the parts of the screen you aren't looking right at are shrunken, to fit more on the screen. Looking at a widget and pressing a button could simulate a mouse click, or documents could automatically scroll when you're reading close to the bottom of the page.
Or in an FPS, where the mouse still controls the first-person camera, but the gun points at where you look on the screen - dude that would be so awesome
Since no-one has mentioned it yet: The new, übercool racing sim GTR will have native support for the TrackIR.
The demo shows hint of one wicked racing sim and playing this online with the TrackIR will only heighten the sense of immersion. You'd basically use it to look into the turns and also to glance left/right to check for traffic. I really can't wait for GTR to be released; I'll order the TrackIR at the same time.
ISO certified == THX certified
I can see the slashdot article now... "First Gamer death to breaking his neck playing *insert first shooter*" Not only that, I could imagine some pretty neck straining dog fights in just about any flight sim with combat. And Virtual Valeri would cause a definate amount of repetitive motion stress disorders.. um... er... if anyone still has that.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.
There was a Atari 2600 product that claimed to use your brain waves (well, actually it worked by eye movement or something) to control the game. Sorry I don't have a link. Atarihq.com might have something.
It didn't really work, though. Hope this is better!
I know a lot of people have come up with a variety of different ideas for tracking head movement, but I've always wondered if it would be possible to know exactly where someone is looking as well, with an economical device hooked into the next generation of really high resolution displays.
Then you could tie this into a video rendering algorythm and adjust the level of detail to maximise it in the area you are looking at.
Just think.... A 40" display, with 10240x7680 resolution, with 80% of the rendered detail in the few inches of display you are actually looking at.
Now that would make a killer first-person shooter application or vehicle sim...
I know we've come a long way since opponents at distance were just a few fuzzy pixels, but I have a feeling that with technologies like OLED's that the resolution of display technology will quickly outstrip the processing power of video cards.
And most of that processing effort for parts of the screen we're not really looking at.
GrpAEnjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
In looking around for virtual reality solutions, I came across this Doom 3 virtual reality kit. It is $1450 USD, which is a fair bit, but for any hardcore Doom 3 fan it is probably a must have :)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Make it work, i'll buy it. It would be one of those games that sounds insanely entertaining, and has a slightly legitimate use, since it would develop one's attention. While your at it, make it more of a 3d rpg format, where one walks from table to table and ladies bring drinks. I'd love a card game that felt like a casino instead of a menu of games.
Looks good for your age..
I wonder if this is correllated in any way to the percentage of people that get seasick.. luckily, I don't, and I spent a summer many moons ago working in a VR lab - no ill effects from much HMD time. I know people who couldn't use the gear at all because it'd be instant spew time though.
One thing is, after long enough, your body adapts to the feeling. It is just unpleasant until that point.
..don't panic
The biggest problem with it is the VESA feature connector required. That along with the 256 color limitation, plastic uncoated optics and the crappy color rendition makes it painfull to use for more then 15 minutes at a time.
Still its cool.
Extinsive mod info at http://www.geocities.com/mellott124/VFXLinkbox1.ht m
Which I have just rediscovered, I've got to get to work, others have been busy. Even cooler!
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The VFX-1 is'nt right even as far as it went (CHEESY video comb of 640x480).
Higher resolution, better optics and a tracker that go's all the way vertical are needed. You also NEED something to hold onto (solid controls). The first gen arcade game where you stood up was an obvious loser. Stereoscopic is cool.
That said I was using mine to play FU2 earlier today (talk about synchronisity). It needs good controllers and game specific button programming to work.
But I repeat what's wrong with taking a break from gaming every hour.
I can't play Descent2 on them at all, that game just makes me puke within minutes. The fact that some games are MUCH worse then others tells me that with experiance VR games will get less pukey and generally better (assuming any are ever written, so far they are all hacked up regular games).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You can switch my radeon to trident ISA card, you can steal my HOTAS, downgrade the audio to SB Audigy but you'll never ever get my TrackIR without a fight. It really adds immersion to flight sims and I heard it works quite well with Nascar too. Closest to functional VR I've yet experienced, now let's hope someone creates lightweight _usable_ 3D goggles soon.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
If you turn your head, then your not looking at the screen anymore...
or else!
... again most gamers are cheap and do not want to spend the price of 2-3 games for a peripheral. I waited until logitech steering wheel came down to 39.99 CAD (which would be about 25-30 US). Most computer peripherals are over-priced esp when playstation 2 gamepads are selling for $12 CAD at walmart and the wireless goes for 29-39.99 CAD.
They have to get costs down before it becomes mass market IMHO. You eventually have to move beyond early adopters, the hardcore gamers, and whatnot to perpetuate support for your devices in games and for the device to become and percieved as 'necessary'. See the fate of microsofts game commander... practically no games support it natively.
sorry, if you won't pay over $100 for a peripheral then you should be called a "casual gamer" not a "gamer"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I came up with the same idea for head-tracking in a drunken ramble a while ago. Nice to see someone has done it.
;-)
Expanding on this idea how about a wearing an opaque pair of white glasses and sitting in front of a video projector. The projector projects light onto the glasses and you see the image. Kinda like a back-projection TV but the screen part sits in front of your eyes.
This way you have a lightweight, passive, cheap head mounted display. You'd need lenses in the glasses so you could focus on the image of course.
I've not done a good job of explaining the idea I know.. if you want a really good explanation read Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson - he describes a similar idea. Infact, read it anyway it's brilliant.
Hmm.. thinking about it some more you probably have read it, this being slashdot
You won't have a choice when facing a sentient being with a built in guass gun activated at a single thought.
-I am an elective eunuch.
I believe that there is Linux support for the TrackIR and SmartNav products. Though I think they are focusing more on the assistive/adaptive technology aspect and trying to get it integrated with the Linux desktop. As the gaming applications are still somewhat limited.
I did a google for trackir + linux and got their site, I believe it is trackir.superlucidity.net
If you are really serious about getting support for this bad boy under Linux I would contact them.