Shades Of Twilight

Right after I wrote this entry here, I visited Youtube to check out the gaming videos. One never knows what one might find, eh?

Good thing I did, because I came across something pretty cool. Before Johnny Lee invented his Wii Remote head tracking controller as seen in the previous entry, someone else did something almost as amazing – using your plain old webcam, which most people already own, and turning it into a head-tracker too!

The official FreeTrack website has loads of instructions and manuals on how to achieve head tracking. To whet your appetite, here’s a small excerpt:

FreeTrack is a free optical motion tracking application for Microsoft Windows, released under the GNU General Public License. Its main function is inexpensive head tracking in computer games and simulations but can also be used for general computer accessibility, in particular hands-free computing. Tracking is sensitive enough that only small head movements are required so that the user’s eyes never leave the screen.

Now is that cool or what? In short, you just need to go down to your local electronics store and get some LEDs. Plain old LEDs will do, but if you want better a experience, get those Infra-red LEDs. According to the website, you don’t even need a special webcam to read the IR LEDs! All you need are just any old photography FILM and put them over the webcam lens!

Ok that’s really cool because I never knew that!

The video above shows the software part of the setup. It’s very impressive indeed, and it’s all FREE to boot! The only thing you will be spending money on are to get the LEDs (and a webcam if you don’t already own one).

After seeing this, I am really tempted to try out FreeTrack myself. I have an old webcam lying around somewhere, and all I need is just to get 4 to 6 LEDs and find a way to make a harness to clip onto my head. Or, I could just stick the LEDs onto my headphones and the mic boom on the headphone.

A long time ago, someone came up with an idea to track head movements in a game, and it was very popular. The company, Naturalpoint, marketed this. Combined with the then-revolutionary 3D glasses, it transformed how flight sim games were, and still are, played.

Yeah well now I don’t use 3D glasses anymore because I no longer use a CRT monitor. 3D glasses work best with CRT monitors, due to the refresh rates you can set on them. LCD monitors typically are only 60hz or 72hz at best. CRT monitors can go up to 120hz or more. Higher frequency means less “blinking” on your 3D glasses and thus, alleviating headaches after prolonged use.

The TrackIR is still in use today by games other than just flight sims. For example, the game Armed Assault supports this natively, meaning you can go into the configurations page of the game and select which options are to be triggered by the TrackIR device. Most people, including myself, configured this for turning the soldier’s head independently of the body. That means now you can “peek around corners” realistically. In other FPS shooters, you can also use TrackIR to replace the “Q” and “E” keys for peeking if they are available (such as in GRAW).

In any case, recently I stumbled across this post here on Rudy’s blog. What I was amazed by is how the simple invention of the Wii console has spawned a branch of research into gaming controls. If you watch the video on that post in Rudy’s blog, you can see that the guy has done what Naturalpoint did for $50 or less. Well, $50 in addition to having a Wii console

Before you guys say it’s stupid to turn your head in real life while playing a game – yes you can STILL see the screen. You only turn your head 1 or 2 cm. The TrackIR amplifies the turn and you turn in-game 45 or 180 degrees, depending on how smooth or sharp your head turned in real life. You can set the sensitivity yourself.

First of all, click on the link above and find out all about TrackIR. If you really wanna get one, run down to Tecdrome at Sim Lim Square, level 5 near the escalators. It’s a game shop, and it sells gaming peripherals too.

Now, I bought this TrackIR thing around May 2005. Didn’t really use it much because at the time I was heavily addicted to Everquest 2, an MMORPG, hence I have very little use for it.

Lately, since I have been taking a break from Everquest 2, I decided to play my older unopened games which I bought last year too. Yeah I have quite a number of unopened/unfinished games cos EQ2 kinda took over my gaming life.

Anyway, I loaded up Falcon 4 Allied Force which I bought (yeah I know, downloading the Balkans campaign for free off the net as well as patching Falcon 4 original to Superpak 3 status is the same thing). I also decided to “get into” Lock On more seriously.

I do remember from my initial trial run of the TrackIR that it was really changing the way I play flight simulations. No longer do I need to use the POV hat switch on the joystick to look around. Now I look around the cockpit by turning my head.

“Wait” I hear you cry. “That is the dumbest thing I ever heard of. If I turn my head, I can’t see the monitor!!”

Well, not really. It’s a head-turning amplifier. You control how sensitive you want the amplification to be. You may turn your head 2cm to the right in real life but in the game you might have already turned 45 degrees or more. Looking up and down is the same. I have a weird problem with my head cos apparently I need to adjust it to almost max amplification for my head to look UP. Left, Right and Down remained at default settings, with some very minor tweaks to compensate for my unconcious head movements (which I didn’t find out about till I got this gizmo).

Anyway back to flight sims – yes, with this new gizmo, not only have I freed up 4 more keys at least (my hat switch is 8-way, but some games only recognise the 4 cardinal points), it made some game functions like PADLOCK VIEW obsolete. I do not need to “padlock” it in the game anymore. I can just LOOK at my target and use my head and eyes to track where the target has gone.

Trust me, if your head is titled up and to the right, your hands automatically know where to pull the joystick to, to bring the crosshairs over the target. In the past I have been trying to use the padlock function in the game but without much success. I usually get disoriented using the POV hat switch to slew the views around and it kinda gets all messed up.

What’s great is that now when the wingman says “Check your six”, I just turn my head and look at my six. If there’s a bandit on my tail I can pull a split-S without taking my eyes off target till it’s in my crosshairs and I get a splash.

I have tried to make TrackIR work with Operation Flashpoint though, but apparently the support for it back in 1998 (yes that is how old Operation Flashpoint is… it came out in 1998) was almost non-existant. It would be cool to turn the soldier’s head without turning the body.