Track IR - love it or hate it...

[CW4 Stowe]

Good evening everyone,

I dropped some coins on a Track Ir Pro setup and I hope to have some of your Track IR experienced players to give me some insight/suggestions on fine tuning this device.

I flew around tonight and admittedly there is a learning curve that I need to overcome and believe my Arma Profile needs some work and adjustments.  So far I am enjoying the device as I have used two other devices and thus far this one seems to be doing a fantastic job.

Your thoughts?

Tony

[Ellros]

  The clip is crap.  Literally.  Wayyy too fragile.  I personally use a TrackIR 5 camera, but I have the LED's from Trackhat.org.  They are much more robust and can handle some usage.  Otherwise TrackIR is great.  I find it much smoother than Trackhat.

[CPT Tell]

I’ve been using it for over a year, which equates to approximately 2200 hours of using it in Arma. Although I agree that the clip isn’t particularly robust, as long as you’re not throwing or dropping your headset while it’s attached you shouldn’t have any problems with it.

Unlike most ppl that I’ve talked to, I even use it as infantry. After a while, you’ll get to where you can’t stand playing without it. It’s extremely convenient (and helps with immersion) to be able to just turn your head in real life to look in a direction. Most of the time using your alt key is not a big deal, but there are times when you’re already doing multiple things with your hands when you also need to quickly glance over your shoulder (ie leaning to the right which is done by leaning you real head to the right while pieing a corner and you need to transmit on your radio (so no voice activation) and you need to glance to make sure your battle buddy is in good position before continuing to move). Obviously that’s a very specific example, but there countless times where being able to glance without having to stop my hands from doing something else has been very helpful.

One trick that I’d recommend (at least as infantry) is make sure you have a reasonably sized dead zone, where you have to move your head more than a fraction of an inch before your it responds. Otherwise a couple things will happen. First is that it will become very annoying very quickly how often you have to hit the key to have it reset to where your current head position is looking straight ahead. Most ops I never have to reset that. But when I first started I had the dead zone very small, and I was hitting it every several minutes. The second reason it’s helpful is if you shoot without sights sometimes (which I rarely use anymore for the 40mm for example), if your in game head isn’t looking straight but rather is looking slightly to the side, no scoping becomes way, way harder to do accurately.

Good luck with it. You’re right that there’s a learning curve to get used to it, but once you do, you’ll never want to go back.

[SPC (Ret) Chaney]

I was just talking about this as I am getting into DCS and been looking to get so If anyone has any recommendation feel free to send me some links..

[Rollins]

I began using TrackIr and the clip a few years back. Problem I had was beside the clip being flimsy as mentioned, sunlight would screw it all up. Sometimes, if the sunlight would reflect off the wall just right behind me, the tracking would go shithouse. Very bad when flying into an LZ and you are suddenly looking at the soldiers behind you! Long story short, I ended up building an EDtracker and no more problems. Never needs to be recentered and is not reliant on a camera or sensor. One downside is no forward/back axis. So you can look left/right/up/down but no leaning forward or backward. I never miss it. Plus the EDtracker was like $20 to build if I remember right or you can buy one for about half the cost of trackIr.

https://www.edtracker.co.uk/

[CW4 Stowe]

Thanks everyone for the feedback; CPL Tell, how do I change/add the deadzone that you mention?  Setting the curve or getting that chart setup to make the head movement better is driving me crazy.

Rollins.  I purchased and used the Edtracker Pro earlier last year and it was a great device but I believed that I wasn't setting it up correctly and sold it...  I imagine the error was moreso me than the device as it performed as advertised and was extremely easy to setup.  Honestly, I was quite impressed with the pro version with the only small setback being the cable that came with the device failed after one week; however, the vendor refunded the cost of the cable and I purchased a cable locally and it worked great ever since.

That being said, I sold the edtracker pro some months back even though I longed to have that freedom of head movement so I purchased TrackIR with hopes that I would more easily set it up and get to work without becoming frustrated while flying.  Wish me luck.

Tony

I’ve been using it for over a year, which equates to approximately 2200 hours of using it in Arma. Although I agree that the clip isn’t particularly robust, as long as you’re not throwing or dropping your headset while it’s attached you shouldn’t have any problems with it.

Unlike most ppl that I’ve talked to, I even use it as infantry. After a while, you’ll get to where you can’t stand playing without it. It’s extremely convenient (and helps with immersion) to be able to just turn your head in real life to look in a direction. Most of the time using your alt key is not a big deal, but there are times when you’re already doing multiple things with your hands when you also need to quickly glance over your shoulder (ie leaning to the right which is done by leaning you real head to the right while pieing a corner and you need to transmit on your radio (so no voice activation) and you need to glance to make sure your battle buddy is in good position before continuing to move). Obviously that’s a very specific example, but there countless times where being able to glance without having to stop my hands from doing something else has been very helpful.

One trick that I’d recommend (at least as infantry) is make sure you have a reasonably sized dead zone, where you have to move your head more than a fraction of an inch before your it responds. Otherwise a couple things will happen. First is that it will become very annoying very quickly how often you have to hit the key to have it reset to where your current head position is looking straight ahead. Most ops I never have to reset that. But when I first started I had the dead zone very small, and I was hitting it every several minutes. The second reason it’s helpful is if you shoot without sights sometimes (which I rarely use anymore for the 40mm for example), if your in game head isn’t looking straight but rather is looking slightly to the side, no scoping becomes way, way harder to do accurately.

Good luck with it. You’re right that there’s a learning curve to get used to it, but once you do, you’ll never want to go back.

[CPT Tell]

When you have your tracker window open, on the bottom left corner you'll see the dots with the lines coming out of them. Basically creating a curve. Move the dots that are closest to the line all the way to the bottom of the graph, and move them a short distance from the center line. The further they are from the center line, the greater the deadspace that I'm talking about. A quick example of what I'm talking about can be seen here.

[SFC (Ret) M. Brewer]

I used TrackIR for awhile but had some of the issues others had said, having to hit the re-center key all the time, the sensor getting washed out by sunlight and quit working etc.  Mine's been on the shelf for awhile now.  I have the freelook keybound to a button on my mouse and is really easy for me to use.  It's absolutely great for flying, but not worth much to me on the ground.  I guess what I'm saying is that I don't miss it....

[CW4 Stowe]

Thank you very much!  I made the changes as you mentioned with the deadspace and that has helped out a lot. 

When you have your tracker window open, on the bottom left corner you'll see the dots with the lines coming out of them. Basically creating a curve. Move the dots that are closest to the line all the way to the bottom of the graph, and move them a short distance from the center line. The further they are from the center line, the greater the deadspace that I'm talking about. A quick example of what I'm talking about can be seen here.

[Pacheco]

Hello Gentlemen. I know this post leans more towards the Track IR, but I also wanted to show something I have found searching Online for the ones who like to save money and dont mind some slight changes. I did find this device called TrackHat ( https://www.trackhat.org ) pretty cool and affordable, it does use a Ps4 camera to track the movement of your head but has same effect as Track IR and it saves you a bit of money! Go on the website and have a look! Im planning on getting one soon. Lots of videos on youtube also from unboxing to how it works! I hope this helps. I love TrackIR but it will take me a few to save up for it.



Unboxing and Review Link: https://youtu.be/bk9lhAEGZkA

Link for Helo flight with Trackhat: https://youtu.be/Erjf-nwbkG8