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In the world of PC
Gaming, the Flight Simulator fans have a pretty hard life. For starters, a
Sim
that's worth putting stick time on doesn't come around that often. Fact be known,
I'm still logging flights in Falcon 4 because of all the fan-based mods that
have been made available, such as Frugal's Super Pack. Because we don't have a
lot of software to purchase, there isn't a strong money pool for hardware
manufacturers to dip into to support our passion. Still, companies such as CH
Products and Thrustmaster have made substantial improvements to their Hands On
Throttle and Stick (HOTAS) combinations over the years. Even the
software required to program and operate a modern HOTAS setup is far less
complicated than it used to be so customizing a HOTAS setup for each and every
flight sim you own is very quick and painless. We now have Graphical User
Interface programs to help us perform the tasks that used to
take DOS .batch files.
It's called a HOTAS
because as the name suggests, the [virtual] pilot has one hand on the throttle and
the other hand on the stick, just like real world aircraft pilots. Each
appendage has many buttons and switches that perform functions that could be
very costly if the pilot had to move his hands further than a finger could
stretch. The most obvious function would be to fire a missile or activate countermeasures. One extra function that the virtual pilot has to
contend with is looking around the 3D world. To help us with that, a Point of
View (POV) hat switch is usually perched on top of the yoke-stick which we can
manipulate to move our head around within the cockpit. This puts us at
the mercy of the pan speed which is usually configured in the Sim's
options menu. The problem here lies in that a pan speed that may be very useful
in a dogfight situation, when you want to look up, down, and side to side very
quickly would probably be too fast when you're trying to do more sensitive
operations like navigate at low-altitude in terrain or engage ground targets.
The folks
at Natural Point have a very innovative product that is based upon military technology to once again make the
PC Flight Simulation community a happier place. Though the TrackIR 3-Pro looks
like an Extra Terrestrial, it is really an Infrared sensor that takes a special
reflective mark and converts its location into a pointing device. The link to
military technology stems from systems used in American helicopter gunships,
such as the Cobra and Apache, which use an Integrated Helmet and Display Sight
System, or IHADSS for short. Interaction with the IHADSS is done with a glass
eye-piece which is fixed to the pilot/gunners helmet. The eye-piece displays the
image of a target reticle superimposed upon the lens which the pilot looks
through and then uses his head to target the onboard weapons, rather than
turning the entire aircraft in the direction of the target. There are sensors in
the cockpit that detect the direction and amount of movement of the aircrews
helmet which translate into movement commands that are sent to the nose mounted
cannon. So, if the pilot moves his/her head to the left then the cannon would track to the
left with the aim point still being the spot designated by the IHADSS target reticle.
Image taken directly from Natural Point's website.
The TrackIR
3-Pro uses this same basic technology to offer a hands free approach to view
panning. A chief concern when using anything based on head movement would be
"how far do you actually need to move to provide input to the device?" After
all, if you have to be actually looking over your right shoulder to see out the
right side of the aircraft, it would be very difficult to keep your eyes on the
monitor. The image above clearly demonstrates the awesome capabilities of the
TrackIR 3-Pro when used with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004. Notice the small
amount of head movement required to pan almost completely around the cockpit?
I'll go more into the TrackIR3-Pro actual performance later..
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