TrackIR setup instructions

[HomeBoy 1]

Since I help a lot of people with their TrackIR4 devices, I have been developing this document that details all the elements of setup.

 

Thought it might be helpful to share it here.

 

Hope you find it useful.

 

-mark

[Fortiesboy 3]

Homeboy S!

 

You are to be congratulated for this document, which is brilliant. It is well written, and will be a great help for those new to trackir.

I have had trackir for years, since trackir 1, but your document has clarified one or two matters for me.

 

Again, well done , and thanks

 

FB

[Olham 164]

My god - what a great job you have done here on explaining TrackIR step by step, HomeBoy!

This should be used by TrackIR themselves!

I read details I din't know, which will be very useful.

 

I must admit, I hadn't got used to the new forum form; and haven't been in this section before.

Thank you, Fortiesboy, for guiding me here!

[razgriz31m 0]

WOW! hooo! this is nice, i mean this is the shiznit, good work :)

[Gremlin_WoH 0]

Homeboy,

 

very good write-up. May I post this on Wings Of Honor also?

 

Cheers

[HomeBoy 1]

Glad this appears to be useful. Thanks much for the sticky too. Hopefully guys can get their TrackIRs all tuned up now!

 

Sure Gremlin, have at it. You're welcome to reference any of my stuff anywhere. The only thing I ask is you don't copy the material itself (only links to it) because I sometimes rewrite parts of things and I would like to know that everybody will see any updates I might make.

 

You might want to pay a visit to my website too just to see if there are other things you might find useful. I've been updating it for several years so there's a bunch of stuff there.

 

Enjoy. Thanks for the kind words folks!

-mark

[Test Pilot 0]

Really close to getting trackIR, but want to be sure that it works without problems in Vista64..... Is it good to go?

[+Polovski 460]

Yep we fixed the driver for Naturalpoint to work with OFF/CFS3 in Vista.

[werewolf1 0]

[

 

Nice Presentation

This will be one of the many helps that I print and put in a three ring ...

 

ww1

[werewolf1 0]

Mark,

 

I'm having a bit of trouble using my Tracker Ir 4 (i've just downloaded the lastest driver), i've read your awesome tutorial, but unfortunately I STILL am having difficulties with this. One of my biggest concerns is the size of the three dots ... (do they get any larger) mine seem to be small all the time. The other problem i'm having is one of my head movements from side to side allows me to look all the way around, but the other doesn't (is there a quick fix for this?)

 

Also, do you know of a good tutorial for using Track IR pro...?

 

Any help would be truly appreciated.

 

thanks,

 

Werewolf1

[+Polovski 460]

Try moving your Trackir receiver more to the left, if you use the track clip pro.

[borton 0]

I've just come back to OFF after a period away and have installed the latest update. Everything is great except for one problem with TrackIR4.

 

If I look to the left or the right too quickly the view breaks up temporarily. The effect is brief white jagged edges.

 

Fortiesboy has advised me to use Force Vertical Sync ON but this has not made any difference. Will using the above TIR setup solve this problem?

 

I am using twin ASUS 768MB 8800GTX PCI Express Video cards in SLI and an INTEL Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz Processor.

[HomeBoy 1]

Mark,

 

I'm having a bit of trouble using my Tracker Ir 4 (i've just downloaded the lastest driver), i've read your awesome tutorial, but unfortunately I STILL am having difficulties with this. One of my biggest concerns is the size of the three dots ... (do they get any larger) mine seem to be small all the time. The other problem i'm having is one of my head movements from side to side allows me to look all the way around, but the other doesn't (is there a quick fix for this?)

 

Also, do you know of a good tutorial for using Track IR pro...?

 

Any help would be truly appreciated.

 

thanks,

 

Werewolf1

 

Hi Werewolf1,

As Pol mentioned, make sure your camera is aligned with your reflectors (either hat clip or headset clip). It is important for your reflectors to be directly facing the camera (both horizontally and vertically). Adjust the camera placement and height until you are sure this is the case. The "reflector triangle" (the three green dots) should be pretty much right in the center of the window. If you're having trouble with movement on one side and not the other, improper placement is probably the problem. This is especially true with the headset clip as it is on the side of your head so if you turn your head (YAW) to the side where your headset clip is mounted, you can block the line-of-sight from the camera to the headset clip. You would be able to see this happen though if you do it while your reflector triangle is up. The dots should disappear when your nose (or whatever) blocks the line-of-sight. That's why setting things up using the reflector triangle is the most important part of setting up TrackIR.

 

The three green dots are actually the reflection of the reflector tabs on the hat clip or the leds of the headset clip. They will not get larger or smaller. The important thing is that they form a reasonably symmetric triangle. The hatclip should form an equilateral triangle and the headset clip will be more elongated vertically but both should not have a short leg or unusually deformed triangle. You want to move your head around as much as you can with your eyes still able to see the screen and not lose the track. If you are using the headset clip be sure the "Track Clip Pro" button is selected in the software. If you are using the hatclip, be sure "Vector" is selected. That will cause tracking problems if that is not set properly.

 

As for tutorials, you might find something on YouTube. I know there are a number of "advertisement" type videos on TrackIR and some of them do a pretty decent job of showing you how things should look. You'll just have to do a little googling and youtubing there.

 

Wish you the best. You'll get it, just have to work with it a bit. I'm extremely meticulous about everything I do and it took me several months before I was satisfied with my TrackIR setup with Aces High. OFF was easier mostly because I believe OFF handles TrackIR a bit better than Aces High does. Still, with some patience, you can really get things tuned quite nicely.

 

Since you're just getting started, you might want to go ahead and jump to TrackIR 5 software (if you haven't already) as it is definitely an improvement. I haven't done that yet mostly because there is no conversion capability between TIR4 maps and TIR5. Once they get that done, I will be switching to TIR5 (not hardware just software).

 

regards

-mark

[HomeBoy 1]

I've just come back to OFF after a period away and have installed the latest update. Everything is great except for one problem with TrackIR4.

 

If I look to the left or the right too quickly the view breaks up temporarily. The effect is brief white jagged edges.

 

Fortiesboy has advised me to use Force Vertical Sync ON but this has not made any difference. Will using the above TIR setup solve this problem?

 

I am using twin ASUS 768MB 8800GTX PCI Express Video cards in SLI and an INTEL Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 GHz Processor.

 

borton,

That's more than likely video card configuration issues and not TrackIR. If you haven't already done so, be sure to read through the OFF FAQ on configuring your VID card. Also, if you do some searches here in the forum, you will find long threads discussing VID issues. It's well worth a little use of the search function.

 

TrackIR actually makes a pretty good video card test tool. Nothing taxes a VC more than quickly changing the view. Anomalies as you describe can be addressed by fine-tuning your graphics card. It may not be possible to get rid of all that stuff completely but with some experimenting you should be able to improve things quite a bit. I still get anomalies a little bit when moving my TrackIR view, especially when my plane is sitting on the ground.

 

Good luck

-mark

[borton 0]

Thanks for your info, HomeBoy, I will look at the FAQs. I knew there would be something on this subject somewhere and appreciate your pointing me to it. :yes:

[borton 0]

I've set my cfsconfig file and NVidia settings exactly as recommended in the FAQs and although there is an improvement, the jaggies are still there albeit much reduced.

 

BTW I tried to change Composite Aircraft Texture Max Dimension from 1024 to 2048 but it wouldn't have it - it keeps jumping to the 5000s.

 

I'll try working on my TrackIR settings next.

[hood 2]

Since I help a lot of people with their TrackIR4 devices, I have been developing this document that details all the elements of setup.

 

Thought it might be helpful to share it here.

 

Hope you find it useful.

 

-mark

 

 

Thanks a million Homeboy.I'm waiting delivery of TrackIR 4 and already feel as though I almost know how to use it.Again many thanks

[Check Six 2]

 

For all those interested, this is the setup screen for TrackIR5. I am still learning it myself as it's not quite the same as TrackIR4, so I can't as yet provide a guide for users to setup. But I can tell you that if you read and understand Homeboy's great guide, you'll probably be able to stumble through setting Ver 5 up without too much stress..

Thanks Mark.

[HomeBoy 1]

I'll probably update my guide sometime in the future once I start using the V5 software myself. :blush2:

 

It was still pretty buggy when I installed it a while back and just decided to let it cook a little longer before I tried it again.

[Check Six 2]

Homeboy,

 

I for one am looking forward to a guide to ver5 from you. You did such a great job on ver4. I hope by then I'll have worked it out and not NEED your guide, but I'd still read it to get a better idea of how to set it up etc.

[Silver wings 0]

Hi Homeboy,

I tried to open your link for the document on Trackir but got a message that it was broken. Any help would be appreciated,

[HomeBoy 1]

Check here: http://snomhf.exofire.net/trackIR.html

 

In fact, everything I have written can be found somewhere at the site: http://snomhf.exofire.net

[Silver wings 0]

Check here: http://snomhf.exofire.net/trackIR.html

 

In fact, everything I have written can be found somewhere at the site: http://snomhf.exofire.net

 

 

Thank you Homeboy, excellent work. I am planning on buying a Trackir5, however I have a question about lighting before I invest in it. My computer is next to a window to the right of itat a ninety degree angle and another window is to the left of the computer behind it about 4 or 5 feet away. Will I have problems with lighting and consequently have to cover the windows with dark shades.

[HomeBoy 1]

Thank you Homeboy, excellent work. I am planning on buying a Trackir5, however I have a question about lighting before I invest in it. My computer is next to a window to the right of itat a ninety degree angle and another window is to the left of the computer behind it about 4 or 5 feet away. Will I have problems with lighting and consequently have to cover the windows with dark shades.

 

Good chance you will, yes. As you see in my article, I had problems with a window directly behind me and solved it with a low cost pull-down shade. There are four other windows in that room (one right beside the one with the shade). It gets very bright in that room, especially in the summer time but only that one window causes a problem. Therefore, though TIR is quite sensitive to light, it seems to only be sensitive to light directly in its field of view. Pretty easy problem to solve I think.

[jlay 0]

Homeboy,

Here's the problem : the blue LED light ONLY comes on if I click on the 'mouse emulation 'icon on desktop.then it goes out . I have followed your TR4 guide to the letter & many thanks for such a detailed explanation of this 'box of tricks ' which so far has been totally idle & unresponsive ! I read somewhere that if the blue light does not show then TR4 will not be active !... too true!

I'm using the Saitek Aviator joystick & have the 3 TR4 keystrokes programmed in. The graphics card :Nvidia 8800Ultra ( 768 mbs) configured as per the faq's + 2GBS of RAM + 2.4GHZcpu. Maybe you can get me out of this hole ?

Thanks anyway , John Lay