TrackIr best product for my upcoming Sony HMD?

[CyberVillain]

It's sad that Sony didnt put tracking in their product, but we get an hell of a product from them anyway.
So Im a big BF3 junkie, already at level 32

And guess what, Dice did put in head movement in most land and air vehicles , so I really, really need atleast rotation tracking, but 6 DOF would be nice (I play some Arma 2 from time to time). Is the TrackIr system the best way to go? It feels a bit clumsy to have that IR camera in front of screen, also will it be able to track all the way to the left and right? I want 1 degree head movement to map to 1 degree in game head movement... Since the TrackIr is desinged for a screen not HMD will it support full movement range?

I sadly do not have time to build something myself, it has to be a finnished product, or close to finnished product... So any tips guys?

[cybereality]

The TrackIR only supports a limited number of games, mostly simulation titles. I don't they support, or have any plans to support, Battlefield 3. And they are real Nazis about using their SDK, so I don't think people will be able to use the device with custom software (for example, my mouse emulator). There is also FreeTrack: http://www.free-track.net/english/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; , which is an open source competitor. But remember if you are using optical tracking, then you will always have line-of-sight issues. So while you are facing forward (mostly) then it should work fine, but obviously you won't be able to do a 360 degree turn.

If you look around the VR sub-forum, there is a lot of discussion about possible head-tracking solutions:
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=13884" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=13771" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[CyberVillain]

I thought TrackIr did joystick emulation.. hmm..
Yes, I know about the other threads, but they mostly take up the DIY solutions, is there anything other than TrackIr out there?

Freetrack looks nice, might go that route if I cant find a complete product... Will it track 180 degrees atleast?

[cybereality]

Ah yes, the TrackIR does indeed support mouse emulation. I did not know that before (since I've never tried one). That does change my opinion somewhat, though I am still upset they won't allow hobbyists the chance to use the SDK. Might boycott them just because of that.

I don't think tracking 180 degrees is possible either. It uses line-of-sight, so in order for all the LEDs to be visible (or whatever it is you wear on your head) you cannot turn the full 90 degrees in either direction. I would guess its more like 120 degrees, but it could be less. I don't know for sure.

[Aeroflux]

I thought TrackIR removed the mouse support ever since they brought out that other tracking hardware that controls the mouse cursor only...???

There is definitely some bad blood between TrackIR and FreeTrack. Somebody on the AVS forum told me he had a friend working at TrackIR, and claimed that the guys over at FreeTrack stole TrackIR dlls to get it up and running and continue to steal resources from the software. This is not politics. I will support an upstanding business, not a thief. What truth is there to this?

[cybereality]

This is not politics. I will support an upstanding business, not a thief. What truth is there to this?

Well maybe if NaturalPoint actually supported the community, they would see people building software for them for free and promoting their products.

[CyberVillain]

So there is no complete out of the box product that uses gyros and accelerometer hardware?
I guess the brain would get use to that 120 degrees maps to 180 degrees in game, but i would prefeer 1 to 1 mapping.... Also it sounds on cyber that ir tracking isnt very accurate...

[cybereality]

Well, you can just duct-tape a Wiimote w/ Motion+ to your head. GlovePIE supports this, and it works fairly well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4KAfhNsOJU[/youtube]

Also, if you are using an HMD you don't need 1:1. You actually cannot tell the difference once you are immersed. I was using 2 or even 3:1 with head-tracking on the 1200VR and it was perfectly natural.

[CyberVillain]

Well, you can just duct-tape a Wiimote w/ Motion+ to your head. GlovePIE supports this, and it works fairly well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4KAfhNsOJU[/youtube]

Also, if you are using an HMD you don't need 1:1. You actually cannot tell the difference once you are immersed. I was using 2 or even 3:1 with head-tracking on the 1200VR and it was perfectly natural.

Cool, didnt know it would feel natural with those ratios.. Whats the best route then GlovePIE with wiimote or freetrack?

[Fredz]

Somebody on the AVS forum told me he had a friend working at TrackIR, and claimed that the guys over at FreeTrack stole TrackIR dlls to get it up and running and continue to steal resources from the software. This is not politics. I will support an upstanding business, not a thief. What truth is there to this?

This guy and his friend should read this :
http://naturalpointofview.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cybereality]

This guy and his friend should read this :
http://naturalpointofview.blogspot.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well I thought they were bad, but I had no idea it was that bad! Wow!

[CyberVillain]

Thats a good enough reason not to choose TrackIr!
For now I think i'll go with the free track solution, maybe buy the TrackIr clip so that I do not need to make one myself

[Aeroflux]

Hmm...two sides to a story, one of greed, one of theft. It's back to functionality then...

So, in FreeTrack, is it possible to flip and reassign the defined axis? (ex. X=Y axis, Z=X axis, etc.)

I'm curious as to whether IR LEDs mounted on top of an HMD (camera mounted on a frame and pointing straight down) would result in a greater range of freedom. Yaw is the axis we use most. It wouldn't be able to track 360 degrees unless we could implement a non-symmetrical IR-LED pattern.

[CyberVillain]

What I understand free track does only support 1-4 led pattern, so even if you place LED's 360 degres around the HMD's it wont be able to track them... Or did I missunderstand your question? edit: ok, missed the part with the camera having a birds eye view...

btw, Im going to borrow my friends Wiimote tonight and test with GlovePie and BF3..
But its not a motion+ but the differences are just the accuracy right?

[CyberVillain]

ok, so debug = Wiimote.Pitch works, but Yaw return zero, any guess why? thanks

[cybereality]

You need the Motion+, but I guess you already figured that out.

[CyberVillain]

You need the Motion+, but I guess you already figured that out.

I'm actually looking into the sparkfun solution, I think it can be worth the money if its really accurate, the problem like i talked about is that the game I want to play with it doesnt work well with yousticks :/

When i look 90 degrees left I want the game to postion the camera 90 degrees left aboslute, now it does just rotate to the left while looking left until it it's the end of the axis, will not feel one bit correct...

[cybereality]

When i look 90 degrees left I want the game to postion the camera 90 degrees left aboslute, now it does just rotate to the left while looking left until it it's the end of the axis, will not feel one bit correct...

Theres no reason that this 1:1 motion could not be done with relative movement. Assuming the tracker had no drift, this would be basically 100% identical to absolute movement. The only problem areas would be looking straight up or straight down (since the game will clip your movement). But if you avoid those areas, it should be the same. Now, in reality, trackers do have some drift, so you will need a way to "reset" or "recenter" the tracking. But this seems like only a minor annoyance.

[CyberVillain]

Thanks for all the replies cyber....
I do not really understand how you can achive this with relative movement? How do i know whats center, and of do i calibrate games center to the headtracking center?

[cybereality]

Thanks for all the replies cyber....
I do not really understand how you can achive this with relative movement? How do i know whats center, and of do i calibrate games center to the headtracking center?

There is no concept of center. What you do is start in the correct position (lets say total center, facing forward) and just move from there. Its all relative. If the tracker is accurate enough (ie no drift) then you will always be facing center if you look in the real center.

[CyberVillain]

I cant understand how that will work, if you are in the center the headtracking software tells BF3 that you want 0 speed on the x axel (Since thats how BF3 joystick freelook works). If you move head 45 degrees left you tell BF3 you want to start moving to the left at 50% of total speed (If your head stays at 45 degrees you will pretty fast end up at 90 degrees in game since the camera will keep moving while head is not at center), if you move 90 degrees to the left yuo tell BF3 you want to go left at 100% of total speed... How can that ever feel like the game camera is tracking your head?

edit: The only way ican see to might get it to work to know how BF3 calculates its axis speed from joystick input, and then take the inverse of that algorithm and apply it to the output of joystick emualtiion.

step 1) Get the speed the head is moving in a direction
Step 2) Convert that to a axis value that will correspond to the same speed in bf3. But that sounds like it will get out of sync real fast

[WiredEarp]

Re FreeTrack having code from TrackIR - that was just PR BS from Naturalpoint.

Also re freetrack, I've wondered if it would be possible to modify it (it IS open source I believe) to accept more than 1 camera. If you could rewrite it so it 'handed off' to another camera (perhaps, have one behind you, or 3-4 around you) then you could get 360 degree tracking fairly easily. This could be as simple as code to determine which camera was seeing the most LED's and transparently switching to that camera opinion of the head location and orientation.

You could also possibly do something similar wihout a rewrite in Freetrack by having an array of LEDs around you, spaced at a decent spacing, and the camera mounted on you, so that as you turn, it picks up 1-3 LED's at once and pans/tilts you accordingly. Sort of like how the wiimote works with the sensor bar?

TrackIR/Freetrack is the best solution if you want easy, native head tracking in sims (racing and flight mainly). If you don't need this, i'd go with the Sparkfun or a Hydra setup, as both of those will provide 360 tracking compared with the 90-180 degree tracking you get with trackIR.

[pierreye]

I think it is doable using 4 wiimote pointing to 3 IR LED point on the HMD. GlovePIE allow up to 4 wiimote so you can position wiimote at N,S,E,W and write the script for intepretation in 1:1 3D space. It is also possible to use the IR point to determine if you are standing, crouching or squatting base on IR point x,y position. Each wiimote can track up to 4 IR point.

[CyberVillain]

Now I've ordered a Playstation 3 Eye + clip
and a TrackIr Clip Pro (Dont have the time to build one myself)

Lets hope the Free track software is up to the task

[WiredEarp]

Interesting idea Pierreye. That could work...!

@ CyberVillain: freetrack is actually pretty sweet. From what I remember, its actually more powerful than the TrackIR software (can assign keystrokes to 'zones' etc). I think you can make it enulate TrackIR 3 for TrackIR compatibility, or do this in GlovePIE (its been a long time since I played with it).

[WiredEarp]

@ CyberVillain: I dont know anything about Sparkfun, but when using TrackIR or Freetrack, you make it emulate a MOUSE, not a joystick. That allows you to have the correct head tracking you are talking about (as you say, using joystick outputs will just feel wrong).

Of course, if you are playing mainstream racing or flight sims, you should use the built in TrackIR interface (either via Freetrack or GlovePIE), to eliminate the problems with mouse emulation. TrackIR gives you absolute orientation, so forward is ALWAYS forward etc, whereas with mouse tracking it can lose alignment and need recentering, etc.

[CyberVillain]

@ CyberVillain: I dont know anything about Sparkfun, but when using TrackIR or Freetrack, you make it emulate a MOUSE, not a joystick. That allows you to have the correct head tracking you are talking about (as you say, using joystick outputs will just feel wrong).

Of course, if you are playing mainstream racing or flight sims, you should use the built in TrackIR interface (either via Freetrack or GlovePIE), to eliminate the problems with mouse emulation. TrackIR gives you absolute orientation, so forward is ALWAYS forward etc, whereas with mouse tracking it can lose alignment and need recentering, etc.

Sadly for BF3 I use the mouse for flying helicopter and you loose some of the point with headtracking if you can not stear the helicopter while looking around for enemy or incoming stingers :/ Oh well....

edit: Lol, just read that BF3 sucks even more for headtracking, while in freelook move you cant steer the craft at all, even if craft is controlled by joystick and freelook with mouse.. Lol, nice work Dice...

[WiredEarp]

Actually, I think DICE have done that with EVERY Battlefield so far. Certainly on BF2, you also can't freelock AND turn your plane. REALLY stupid. I think they did it to make those who dont have hat switches and TrackIR competitive, but it really makes flying the planes a pain once you are used to looking around. If someone ever does come up with the 'universal game view changer' driver we have discussed in other threads, then this would be the first game i'd try it with.

BF3 just has way too much crap wrong with it really (no lan play or private servers? wtf!). Don't think i'll buy any new games for quite a while now. I have pretty much several of every genre nowadays anyway, and lets face it the improvements are not great with most of the newer game sequels etc. Different guns, different perks, different maps, thats about it. COD:MW3 is really no more fun for me than playing COD4...

[mAchiNE]

@WiredEarp
I totally agree about the COD series, its almost the same game over and over again every time a new one comes out (probably because the game engine has not changed since COD World at War).... Battlefield 3 however is a bit different, they have actually done a reasonably good single player mode for a once, and the multiplayer may be very similar to BC2 but the game engine is much better, mostly the physics and destroy-able terrain are done a lot better now (well once they fix all the bugs it will be ). Battlefield is the jack of all trades, mixing FPS and Flight sim so of course the flight sim experience will not be as good as a dedicated Flight sim game, however I think they should enable freelook in all modes in battlefiled 3 not just in vehicles, like in ARMAII so you can have separate head tracking even on foot

[PalmerTech]

Yeah, I don't know why they don't enable freelook in addition to aiming. Seems like such an easy thing to add.

[mAchiNE]

Yeah, I don't know why they don't enable freelook in addition to aiming. Seems like such an easy thing to add.

Because they don't see enough demand for it, even for the small amount of effort it would take to add it to the game, basically only a few sim racers with track ir who also play fps and us VR enthusiasts with tracked HMDs would probably use it, hopefully SONY add some sort of htracking to the HMZ-T2 so then developers might actually develop for it on the PS3 and then it may bleed through to the PC on cross platform games like COD and BF

[bobv5]

Because a lot of people that play these games would consider trackir to be somehow cheating.

[mAchiNE]

Yes some people might think progress is cheating..... does that mean using 3D screens in cheating because you can judge depth better? does that mean 5.1 surround sound is cheating because you can pinpoint sound direction better, does that mean high DPi mice are cheating because you have better control over cursor movement? does that mean using a GTX580 is cheating because you get no frame lag?

not to mention tripple monitor setups which these games do support, is that cheating? because it gives the same advantage as teadtracking only you turn your head in real life to see out the sides not in virtual space....

The argument that using an interactive device is cheating because it somehow gives and advantage is a load of crap IMO, must we stay using inputs designed in the 1980s?

[bobv5]

I agree. I wasnt saying I thought it was cheating.

As it happens, I have met plenty of people that consider using a "turtle beach" to be cheating. I'm pretty sure that is just a brand name on a slightly less crap than usual pair of headphones.

For all we are trying to make games more realistic, some people will deliberately remove imersivness if it bags them a few more kills. Others will say all the things you mentioned are cheating.

This is why I don't play multiplayer, these people are more interested in winning than enjoying the game.

[WiredEarp]

Yep, I can't stand these idiots who think that everything different to their setup is 'cheating'.
Lets face it, the biggest advantage often comes from having a better PC than everyone else, and no-one seems to be bitching about that.

As bobv5 says, most people are more interested in getting frags, than in greater realism/immersion.

I think its obviously a stupid idea on DICE's part, since as Machine points out, those with 3 monitor setups get very similar advantages to those that have TrackIR, and there are no restrictions on its use, unlike TrackIR.

@ Machine: BF3 seems a great game, but the fact that I can't get together with my friends and play without having to worry about random people jumping into our game sucks (no private server support? wtf?), and also the fact there is no real single player vs bots (unlike every previous BF) means I cannot get any practice at it without jumping onto public servers, where (and this is a pet hate of mine) the perks seem to be way more unbalanced than previous battlefields. In BF2, the perks didn't really give you that much of an advantage - it was more of a personalisation thing. Whereas in BF3, it seems unless you play a lot and unlock some decent perks, you are really at a disadvantage. It seems pretty hard to hide and snipe, when people have infrared, zoom, and uavs, all giving away your position without you even firing a shot. I really dont like this modern trend of giving better stuff to reward those who play for hours a day - its all ok if its just customization, but when its giving those who already play more genuine advantages, it seems a bit unbalanced. Add to that the fact that the helis are way less realistically handling than BF2 (which were again crapper than Desert Combat) and BF3 really hasn't grabbed me like BF2 did yet.
I do love the destructible environments, the new graphics, 3d stereoscopic support etc, however.

[PalmerTech]

An easy way to keep the "cheating" down would be to only allow free-looking over the same field of view that you can get with 3 monitors. Realistically, there will be very few times when you would be pointing your gun more than 90 degrees off axis from your view.

[CyberVillain]

About BF3 and private servers, its almost free to rent a 24 or 32 player server, me and 6 colleagues of mine have done that and it costs me maybe a pint of beer for 6 months. The only problem is that if you password protect your server you will invalidate the servers Ranked status, which will is sad for those that have not yet unlocked everything... A solution for that is todo like we have done, keep it public but restrict the number of players so it mathces the numbers of friends playing, you might have to kick some people which will make the server unpopular in the end.

I think its stupid to call head tracking cheating, sure it gives you a small advantage, but like others have pointed out its a small advantaged compared to a fast rig.
A good advantage is to have the game installed on a SSD, you will load faster and that means you will be able to pick the best vehicles for your self before everybody else. I always get the helicopter this way It only works on maps that let you preselect vehicles though.

But I wouldst call 3D a cheat, as long as the games do not have proper 3D support it will be a disadvantage with 3D, at least in first person shooters, its much harder to aim in 3D because today games display the sights for both eyes. In real life you look down the scope with one eye and the other eye is used to spot enemies. And games that do not have sights and only display a cross hair are impossible. The enemy is 200 meters away and the cross is displayed at Z = 0

[mAchiNE]

@bobv5
My rant wasn't really aimed at you just furstrated at the people you were refering to, its people like that that just want to get as many frags as possible and not really find ways to enjoy the game more that are part of the reason that holds back immersive technology

@WiredEarp
I Agree with pretty much everything you said about BF3, and mostly its commercially driven, LAN modes and eventually private servers were done away with because of game piracy, if there are no private server modes to hack then you can't play a priated version multiplayer or online at all, and the unbalanced perks/upgrades in BF3 are EAs way of trying to compete with COD commercially by having a similar style perk system which is desgined on the WOW model to get you addicted to the game by offering rewards for the more time spent playing the game, this way you will probably buy every map pack that comes out etc etc, Personally I agree that older style FPS with more balanced perks/upgrades (or none at all) were much better and being good at the game came down to skill not how many hours you spent playing the game to get the good weapons!, I dislike the fact that someone with the most experience in the game has all the best weapons etc, actually I thought homefront did a fairly good job of a balanced perk/upgrade system

[CyberVillain]

In the end a good player with iron sight will beat the hell out of a noob with Scope.. The perks are nice, but skill still matters the most... I like BF3, the only thing I do not like is EA and their Origin crap, they should have went with Steam instead.. Battlelog is nice, but its too often a join to a server fails..

[CyberVillain]

Got a mail today that my Playstation Eye is ready for pickup.. Sadly the TrackIr clip hasn't been delivered yet :/