Bloody buggering hell.

[Rick Rawlings 138]

I have a 25" monitor and fly at 1900x1200. Even with padlock on, it can be very difficult to spot the planes within a few hundred yards. AI planes can spot you from WAAAAAAY beyond visual range and will dive from heights where they are invisible to even the sharpest resolution that I can get. So for those of you who use TAC alot, don't let anyone talk down to you. And should anyone laugh or throw stones, well, just lock onto them with your TAC and

 

RR

[Over50 0]

Attached File(s) Trackir.bmp ( 522.67K )

 

Thanks for the info

[Over50 0]

With apologies to Siggi for hijacking his thread - one last question on TIR:

 

For those who do wear glasses, do you use a regular ball cap (which I don't wear at all) or visor type headband for the head mount device (assumes no mike attached as well)? Or if neither, what do you use?

[Olham 164]

Siggi, as far as I know, the earliest Albatros D II is in September 1916, in Jasta 2.

I fly with them. And the plane is at that time a very dangerous warcraft.

If you don't turn too long with the Nupe 11, but boom and zoom rather, you can shoot

any plane to pieces with your twin guns. And when they've got the speed of it right, now,

it can also run away from them. No one on the Allied side has 1.000 rounds with him.

The sheer extasy of toasting them all (Lol!)

Edited March 18, 2009 by Olham

[Siggi 10]

Siggi, as far as I know, the earliest Albatros D II is in September 1916, in Jasta 2.

I fly with them. And the plane is at that time a very dangerous warcraft.

If you don't turn too long with the Nupe 11, but boom and zoom rather, you can shoot

any plane to pieces with your twin guns. And when they've got the speed of it right, now,

it can also run away from them. No one on the Allied side has 1.000 rounds with him.

The sheer extasy of toasting them all (Lol!)

 

Cheers Olham. Should be getting mine any day now.

 

Flg Rutger Hauer is doing alright with the old Halb though. Just bagged my second Tommy, a Be2. Took about five passes though, I'd have problems hitting a barn-door with the lash-up I've got.

[Bigfish2 0]

Missed this as I've been away fishing. As this interesting thread has now become in part "How to wear spectacles in OFF and survive" I can also confirm that if you set TIR up properly spurious reflections are not a problem at all, and frankly I can't imagine flying OFF without TIR. Just save up and buy it! However you do have to be able to look "sideways" at the screen as you turn your head, and I found that my varifocals were pretty crap in this regard - I could barely see an EA sneaking up on my six. Since I find it much more fun/immersive to fly without labels on, spotting where the EA are is vital, as is being able to keep them in sight as you manouevre. Blurry varifocals lead to early death. So I persuaded my optician to make me a pair of wrap-round frames with lenses which are tuned to stay in focus as I turn my head. Awesome, and no doubt the bill will be too when it arrives. I think they had to be made in the States. If anyone's interested I'll ask him for the technical details.

[Olham 164]

Siggi, my best momentary pilot Juergen Mahlo from Jasta 2 is just back with his D II

from what should have been an artillery mission. But the bloke always takes every

chance to attack planes rather.

He spotted a flight of 6 FE2b short after takeoff. As he hasn't yet got to grips with holding

her really still, his shooting was rather bad. But downing two of the Fees was no big job.

He could have made them three or even four, with better shooting. You'll like it!

 

PS: actually, that would be an Albatros D I in September. But that would have meant to

build another 3D model, as it looked different. We are lucky there: the forward/shooting

vision was far worse than in the D II.

[TSmoke 2]

With apologies to Siggi for hijacking his thread - one last question on TIR:

 

For those who do wear glasses, do you use a regular ball cap (which I don't wear at all) or visor type headband for the head mount device (assumes no mike attached as well)? Or if neither, what do you use?

 

 

Just a quick reply I wear proggressive bifocals which suck for computers and use trak ir. Not to many problems with the blurries but you will tend to get some neck strain with the cockeyed angle you have to hold to head to get the clearest view of your monitor. But you get used to it LOL.

 

I use a regular hat with the top cut off for my trak ir clip thingy, I hate hats as well but I stiched that clip onto my half azzed hat and have no major problems with trak ir and bifocals, just make sure you set the centering button on your joystick cause you'll need it alot just because of the reflective angle you need for the bifocals.

[Typhoon 5]

I wear bifocals and found it absolutely imposssible to use them with the computer, either gaming or at work. This was my soluton, I went to Dollarama (dollar store) and bought a pair of their glasses, they were marked +3.25 or some such number. I use them all the time for gaming with TIR4 and when using the computer at work. I have had no issues using them at all. They only cost a dollar so I didn't have much to lose. I have since bought a couple of more pairs and keep them at work and various other places. They're only a dollar a pair.

 

Tony

[Siggi 10]

I wear bifocals and found it absolutely imposssible to use them with the computer, either gaming or at work. This was my soluton, I went to Dollarama (dollar store) and bought a pair of their glasses, they were marked +3.25 or some such number. I use them all the time for gaming with TIR4 and when using the computer at work. I have had no issues using them at all. They only cost a dollar so I didn't have much to lose. I have since bought a couple of more pairs and keep them at work and various other places. They're only a dollar a pair.

 

Tony

 

How much were they?

[Bullethead 12]

So much for TIR ....

 

I think that if you use the Pro Clip thingy, you don't have to worry about glasses. I don't wear glasses myself, but there are all sorts of reflective surfaces and even light sources behind me at my desk and TIR has no trouble with them.

 

TIR works in 2 modes: active and passive. Active was the only choice originally. The little gizmo on your monitor spews IR over a wide area because it has to cover everywhere your head could be. This IR is supposed to bounce off the reflectors on your head and back into the gizmo. But because it covers a wide area, this IR also hits everything else in that area, such as your glasses and anything else reflective behind you. Plus, the reflections the gizmo is looking for are relatively dim, and thus hard to distinguish from the "noise" of spurious reflections. Also, the IR emitted by lightbulbs behind you is within the "signal" level that TIR is looking for, so also confuses the poor thing.

 

With the Pro Clip thingy, however, the TIR gizmo on your monitor is in passive mode, so there's no wide area of IR hitting stuff around and behind you and creating spurious reflections. Instead, the IR emitters are on your head aimed at the monitor gizmo. Hence, your glasses will never have IR hitting them. And the IR LEDs on your head are small, bright, point sources in a specific formation. Apparently, the monitor gizmo knows to look for these characteristics when deciding whether the input is "signal" or "noise". Thus, it does a good job ignoring the IR from lightbulbs behind me.

[Over50 0]

I wear bifocals and found it absolutely imposssible to use them with the computer, either gaming or at work. This was my soluton, I went to Dollarama (dollar store) and bought a pair of their glasses, they were marked +3.25 or some such number. I use them all the time for gaming with TIR4 and when using the computer at work. I have had no issues using them at all. They only cost a dollar so I didn't have much to lose. I have since bought a couple of more pairs and keep them at work and various other places. They're only a dollar a pair.

 

Tony

 

Not an option (off the rack corrective glasses) for me with much different vision issues between my left eye and right eye. And as I mentioned everything is a blur without my glasses unfortunately so not wearing them is not an option as well.

 

But really appreciate all the responses in any regard. I would be less hesitant with the $130 TIR purchase is it was possible to return it if I found I couldn't use it because of my vision issues.

[Olham 164]

OVER50,

it WILL work with glasses - don't worry.

You may just have to experiment with the light in your room.

There is a window, showing the three reflecting points from your cap device, when you adjust it.

Only when I have a bright light on in front of me, two red dots appear (reflections from the metal frame of my glasses).

But the sensitivity can even be adjusted as Winder said.

 

You don't need to worry - it will work! And you wouldn't miss TrackIR, once you got it, I promise!

[HomeBoy 1]

Sorry to break in here as I'm am very much a new comer but I believe I can help.

 

With respect to TIR, I'm not a new comer. I've been using it for several years now.

 

TIR is very configurable. You can certainly tune it to filter the reflections very successfully. It should pose no problems at all with your glasses. I normally wear progressives but for computer gaming I wear 3X "drug store" reading classes as you really want all portions of the screen to have the same focus points. Moving your head (except when appropriate) while using TIR is unacceptable. There is no way I could wear progressives, bifocals, etc. while using TIR! The reading glasses work very well for me. If I had to though, I would ask my doctor to fit me with a prescription that would work! After all, priorities right?

 

If you are new to TIR, prepare to spend some time developing a good TIR profile. I spent literally a couple of months getting mine right. Turning off "roll" was something I finally realized was messing things up for me pretty bad and turning that off made a big difference. That's not an issue with OFF of course since it's already 5DOF. Another thing that seemed counter-intuitive but made a huge difference was making TIR more aggressive, not less. It takes a bit of getting used to but once you do, it really is more natural that way. Now, I am so used to TIR, I am not even aware I'm using it. I can snap my head around like nobody's business; rivals those with POV hats! I use TIR in Aces High (my primary game), LockOn, and FSX. I use the same profile for each and anticipate it working well with OFF too.

 

In case you're interested, here is my TIR profile.

 

Again, sorry to break in but I felt this might be helpful.

-HB

 

Edit: Oops, sort of forgot this was a thread about Freetrack not TIR. One thing I wanted to mention about TIR versus FT is having the X and Y axes are really important to me (especially for a WW1 game) because there is so much cockpit stuff to look around. Having the ability to lean left a little bit to look around a strut is huge (to me). FT is only 2DOF (as I recall) and you will not have that ability. With that said though, FT really does work well and is certainly a cheap way to go.

Edited March 19, 2009 by HomeBoy

[Bullethead 12]

But really appreciate all the responses in any regard. I would be less hesitant with the $130 TIR purchase is it was possible to return it if I found I couldn't use it because of my vision issues.

 

If you get that Pro Clip thingy, you shouldn't have to worry about your glasses because no IR will be hitting them to confuse the system. I think that was one of the reasons they developed the Pro Clip.

 

My old pappy came to visit a few days ago. He loves flightsims but hates having to use hats and buttons to look around. He's also "Over80" and wears impressively large and thick trifocals. I put my Pro Clip on him and he had no problems at all. As soon as he got home, he ordered himself a TIR4 and Pro Clip.

 

I don't wear glasses, but since you started asking these questions, I've tested the Pro Clip as best I can using safety glasses and shades. Not the mirror kind, but very shiny black. No problems encountered at all.

 

So while I'm not willing to pay you for TIR4 with Pro Clip if it doesn't work for you, I still think for you it would be a pretty safe bet :).

[griphos 0]

Hey Homeboy,

 

Thanks for offering that profile. I guess I'm going to have to get some of these drug store glasses!

 

I'll echo Homeboy on the importance of side to side movement as well. That's the one mod I've made to my profile. I have that axis set to VERY aggressive. I have a big dead spot, but then, when I lean left or right to look past the nose, I want to be at the limit pretty quick. Sure makes it easier to spot those head on closings and also to land and taxi.

[Over50 0]

Many thanks to Olham, HomeBoy and Bullethead for the additional input (and the profile link). Based on what you've posted and the fact my computer glasses are prescription with total mid-range ability and full side to side view focus in the upper 2/3's of the lenses (with bottom 1/3 a closeup focal point) these should be ok. I'll revisit the TIR web site in particular the Pro Clip attachment - which I thought I read was only compatible with earlier versions of TIR. Again my appologies (and thanks) to Siggi for hijacking his thread with my TIR questions!

Edited March 20, 2009 by Over50