Cheap PS3 Track IR next year?

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by winny

Hmm. I can see how it would be useful for looking around the framework of the cockpit. However turning your head left and having to look right (at the screen) seems totally counterintuitive. The whole point of turning your head to the right is so you can look right.. With this you end up looking left.
Does anyone use this in conjunction with a VR type headset? As I said before it's pointless without one.

I'm afraid I can't understand your logic atall on this one winny. When you look left, right, up, down, where ever, your eyes are always planted firmly to the screen & so you're never really moving your head to the left & looking right at all. It's an absolutely natural experience & a great way to overcome the limitations of playing a game on a 2-D screen.
Whatever your head does is mirrored perfectly in the game & the movement in real time is so slight, you are always in constant eye contact with the screen & always with the utmost of comfort.
Regards to your last sentence; you've confused the hell out of me to be brutally honest. When you say VR type headset, do you mean the sensors that have to be worn with the Track IR system? If so then yes. As I explained in the video, Track IR consists of a USB Infrared camera that is placed around eye height, on top the monitor or screen. The user then wears some form of sensor on the head, be it a clip that attaches to the front of a baseball cap, or a more hi-tech gadget that can clip onto a headset or a simple headband (which I use).
I was hoping that my video showing the simple wireframe models would've answered your questions. Oh well. Good try I guess, lol.

[winny]

My logic is sound. My explaination may be a little confused...

What I'm saying is that if you turn your head right to "look" right in game, your eyes will then be looking to your left to be able to see the screen. So in practice whichever way you turn your head your eyes have to go in the opposite direction to remain focused on the screen. Which is counterintuitive. When I say VR headset I mean one with inbuilt screens. I totally get how it works and how it could be usefull but you are basically controlling a hatswitch with your head. For it to function in a realistic way, ie. looking over your shoulder to "look" behind you, it would require the screen to be attached to your head...

In fact I'm surprised that no-one has come out with a system that does this..

If I was designing one it would be made to look like a modern fighter pilots helmet with the screen built into the visor and all the track-IR stuff on it. A video lead and some headphones built in.. Probably be too expensive to do but would be good to try out.

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by winny

My logic is sound. My explaination may be a little confused...

What I'm saying is that if you turn your head right to "look" right in game, your eyes will then be looking to your left to be able to see the screen. So in practice whichever way you turn your head your eyes have to go in the opposite direction to remain focused on the screen. Which is counterintuitive. When I say VR headset I mean one with inbuilt screens. I totally get how it works and how it could be usefull but you are basically controlling a hatswitch with your head. For it to function in a realistic way, ie. looking over your shoulder to "look" behind you, it would require the screen to be attached to your head...

In fact I'm surprised that no-one has come out with a system that does this..

If I was designing one it would be made to look like a modern fighter pilots helmet with the screen built into the visor and all the track-IR stuff on it. A video lead and some headphones built in.. Probably be too expensive to do but would be good to try out.

? I think you've just dreamed up a video game perepheral in the region of thousands of pounds, lol. I'm still completely baffled to your theory. You are only going through a slight motion in turning your head to the left, right, up or down. The movement is so slight. Not once have I, or any other user that I know of, have used the Track IR & thought "Hmm that's a totally counterintuitive experience there. A glorified hatswitch for the head is what it's not. Show me a hatswitch that is capable of movement around all 6 axis of 3-D movement. You can even crane your head in such a way that you can look fully around the cockpit flight controls (not that you would really want to). To the wearer, it's the most natural experience when placed infront of a 2-dimensional screen & it beats the hell out of the laborious 'padlock' switch. The user can implement natural skills of keeping tabs on his enemy.

There's alot of talk of bringing head tracking to PS3 & 360. Those 2 machines are fantastic consoles & are fully capable of keeping up with most PC's of today. It's time barriers were broken & console gamers got to experience head tracking in games. I'd be lost without it where my aircraft & motorsport sims are concerned.

[winny]

I'm not saying that headtracking is a bad thing. It is just a way for you to move the camera with your head though. That's all.

I would like to try it because it looks pretty good, but to argue that it isn't counterintuitive is pointless because however you dress it up, in real life, if I want to look left I don't turn my head to the left and continue to look straightforwards with my eyes. Which is what you have to do with current headtracking.

I was just suggesting that in order for it to be true headtracking you would need to be wearing the screen on your head like a Virtual Reality headset.

I've just seen a VR headset that works with PS3 for £200..(it's a bit crappy) Give it a couple of years and I bet you see someone release something that incorporates IR tracking and VR headsets. Now that I would definately buy.

[InfiniteStates]

Cool, now I get it, thanks for making and posting the video. It's pretty much as I envisaged it. I just didn't occur to me it would amplify the rotation so it's not 1:1. That makes sense, but does it have low level dampening so that it's not hyper-sensitive in the "still" region? I guess it must have because it doesn't appear jittery in the video...

Originally Posted by winny

...it would require the screen to be attached to your head...

In fact I'm surprised that no-one has come out with a system that does this..

Many people have done this, but it requires a screen or screens really close to your eyes. The other advantage with this is you can have independent screens for each eye, which also yields true 3D vision (by rendering a scene from two slightly different camera angles). The downside, however, and the reason why none of them have made it to market yet, is that you can't play for very long without feeling sick...

[winny]

Originally Posted by InfiniteStates

The downside, however, and the reason why none of them have made it to market yet, is that you can't play for very long without feeling sick...

Ah.. vomitting is a bad thing when playing video games.

[Houndstone Hawk]

Originally Posted by winny

Ah.. vomitting is a bad thing when playing video games.

Lol. Brilliant way to train for the Apache at an early age, just have fun, at home, playing on winny's patented VR_BOP

[winny]

Originally Posted by Houndstone Hawk

Lol. Brilliant way to train for the Apache at an early age, just have fun, at home, playing on winny's patented VR_BOP

Got it.. I'll just include an oxygen mask that doubles as a sick recepticle, connected to a bucket. I'm gonna be rich!

[the_somme]

Very interesting discussion here. The Track IR thing looks really neat and I really hope that the consoles get something like this in the near future. Would make a ton of difference playing games where head movement is important ie. fps games, racing games and flying games.

[PaulDPearl]

Originally Posted by winny

My logic is sound. My explaination may be a little confused...

What I'm saying is that if you turn your head right to "look" right in game, your eyes will then be looking to your left to be able to see the screen.

You only need to move your head slightly, and it's quite intuitive when you do it. Your eye stays in place because the brain is just setup to work that way, even though you're "looking left" you're not thinking about your eyes, you're thinking about where you want to look in game, which is "right" and to look right you move your head right. (the only way to really show someone is to sit them down and have them try it)


The TrackIR system uses reflectors that reside on the rim of a baseball hat. 2 in front, one in back (in the middle).

To look all the way behind me in FSX and other Flight Simulator games, I simply turn my head about 10, maybe 15 degrees... It even tracks the rotation of your head, which adds an extra feel of realism to the effect, and that is something you can't do with hat switches or the PS3 controller... You can also use it to zoom in, without actually getting close to the monitor, just lean forward a bit and it will zoom in.

The only drawback with them is when you move to an angle where the camera cannot track you, it generally gives you an undesirable viewpoint... but just set it up right and that isn't a problem. (it also usually requires low lighting).