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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
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."
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.
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.
Being serious for a moment, maybe they could use that as a marketting point.
"For every 3 gamers who buy one of these, we give one to a disabled person who desparately needs it". Do it right, they may be able to set themselves up as a charity and get tax breaks
World Vision spends rediculous percentage of its donations on marketting, but they've worked out (I hope) that the net amount of money passing to the causes they promote is maximised in this way.
So how about a charity or company who works to provide benefits to the disabled? And to top it all off, we never need feel guilty about computer games again.
"Get off the computer"
"I can't, Mum. I'm helping a disabled guy".
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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?