how has this person made hus helmet turn when he wants it to ?( look at vid)
it's really realistic how is it done?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJxbI3uAXG0

He is using a TrackIR.

wots a trackir?

How is TrackIR related to the poll?

Quote from egghed6 :

wots a trackir?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackir

Is it me or am i confused?

The original post is asking about TrackiR, and yet the poll is "how did you discover LFS?"

Eh?

His head is a bit eggy, hence the off topic poll.

What was this?

Quote from Video description on YouTube :

Live For Speed (w25), Racing Simulator, with new feature: TrackIR support with 6 degrees of freedom. Basically, you can move your head around in any direction and it is simulated in game. Sorry for the woeful driving, I just jumped in without any practice :P

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

Is it me or am i confused?

The original post is asking about TrackiR, and yet the poll is "how did you discover LFS?"

Eh?

yeh lol...i don't understand what he is getting at too, lol...late night? i guess for him!

i know that my poll is unrelated but it is my first poll and i just wanted to try it out/see how they work.
sorry for any confusion- but im a noob in the process of learning.

Look at a program called freetrack. I used it with my standard webcam with exposed camera film over it and it worked really well with no setup needed in lfs.

Was pretty cool and easy to setup......But then got over it pretty quickly though.

I used an optiical mouse as the infrared source just to test it out. Only need one infra red led to be able to look left, right, up and down. Read the freetrack website for more info on degree of freedoms.

Thanks for the idea, ill hav a look.

after i looked at the site i was wondering if it is possible to buy a webcam and attach to my moniter, then make my own headset with a few spare LEDs ive got knocking around at home.....? is that possible? (it sure makes it cheaper!)

Quote from egghed6 :

after i looked at the site i was wondering if it is possible to buy a webcam and attach to my moniter, then make my own headset with a few spare LEDs ive got knocking around at home.....? is that possible? (it sure makes it cheaper!)

Completely possible, and actually what's FreeTrack all about - a free alternative for TrackIR.

that's great! so all i need is an old walkman set of headphones, some red LEDs and a webcam-? sounds good!
thanks for ur help frokki

If someone could post a link or something that explains how to make an alternate TrackIR, that would be nice. Thanks in advance!

yeah it would be good if a dev/vet could post a trackIR 'how to' thread in technical assistance-it would be of great use.

Wouldn't the LEDs-on-headphones idea be sort of useless with a poor quality webcam or non-perfect lighting? I don't know how TrackIR works, but I'd imagine motion detection devices would be a better idea. A WiiMote for example.

What would you do with a Wii mote? Stick it on your forehead?

I have no idea, but there's a video of it on YouTube somewhere...

I've heard about this great website called google, supposedly it has all kinds of information about everything.

pbrown: lol mouse on head

If you already have a webcam then chances are it'll work. The exposed film is a ir filter and filters everything out except infrared. Infra red led's are cheap, even use a mouse to test it seem it gets power from the usb. I pulled apart a spare mouse and stuck the led on a baseball cap's peak to test it. One LED worked surpisingly well for me. Cost me nothing except for time to pull the mouse apart.

As I said, worked really well with hardly any setup. Can't see the reason to buy a track ir if you already have a webcam. My webcam lense is quite wide so it covered a fair range of head movement. As I said LFS worked straight away and detected the freetrack for looking around.

You can also use a normal remote in front of the camera with the ir filter on the camera's lense just to see how it works. Problem here is the ir beam can be narrow and needs to point at the webcam and it also flashes so not ideal but easy to see if it works.

For those asking questions, read the freetrack site. Works on the same principle as the trackIR. Not exactly new technology.

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

Wouldn't the LEDs-on-headphones idea be sort of useless with a poor quality webcam or non-perfect lighting?

I used freelook for head tracking with a crappy webcam and it worked just fine.

The cam isn't a problem, but the lighting is. I could only use it in a darkish room., but it wasn't an IR led system.

Freetrack looks a bit better than Freelook

Here's the site for those lazy buggers that cant use Google

--url removed after copyright claim by TrackIR--

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

Wouldn't the LEDs-on-headphones idea be sort of useless with a poor quality webcam or non-perfect lighting? I don't know how TrackIR works, but I'd imagine motion detection devices would be a better idea. A WiiMote for example.

This technology has been around for so long. You can buy cheap sensors (accelerometers) to do this. I bought some for work for under $40 australian dollars that measures 3 dimensions.

But the problem is these types of motion detection (acceleromter type and the wii controller) work on acceleration so a slow movement won't be detected, only quick movements and would still think you're in the same location. The freetrack setup senses absolute position rather than acceleration so if you move slowly or it misses some info, then when you return to the centre freetrack still realises you are in the centre.

I had no drama's with any amount of light due to the ir filter. In direct sunlight it may make it not so perfect but inside a house, lights on or off, it worked well.

Ah, I forgot it was IR (even though it has it in the freakin name :shy

I've never even looked at this stuff before, but now I want to try it

I'll knock up a headset tomorrow, I seem to have a store of old mice

One thing: What is the IR filter for the webcam? Is it a physical filter that I put on it, or is it done through software?