Which Tracker is "best"?

brumster

brumster
I can appreciate some might think me biased, but I won't speak for TrackIR simply because I have never tried it.

However before this bloke pocketmoon came along and destroyed my social life ;) (just kidding Rob ;) ), I had made up my own 3-point model IR tracking solution using Freetrack. It's similar money, maybe slightly cheaper depending upon the webcam you source, but I can tell you now EDTracker knocks it into a cocked hat.

No worrying about background infra-red ruining your camera reception
No faffing around stripping apart a webcam, sellotaping exposed film over the lense, and constantly having to tweak the camera driver settings based on sunlight
No issues with one of the 3 points on the model dropping out of view as your head moves
One less USB socket used (unless you powered it with batteries I guess)
Much better latency/response

I can be objective though. EDTracker has it's limitations, but I will attempt to mitigate them...

1) It's only 3DOF. Personally, that's all I need in the games I play, but serious flight simmers might feel let down by that. It's certainly all you need for ED.
2) The current flash/build process is a pain for non-techies. Buying it pre-built solves this, and we have an update tool in the making that will make this process a whole load easier for those who aren't interested in faffing around with IDEs, code, compiling and flashing.
 

Completely Harmless

Completely Harmless
Well, for me (disregarding the fact that when I got mine, OR didn't exist) it is two factors;

1) I don't like wearing something on my face that obscures everything else (where's me keyboard, why does my keyboard feel like a cat, etc...) :eek:

and

2) For me, $100 difference could as well be $1,000 or $10,000 -- I just can't afford it (or I would have been in Alpha, ha!) :(


I still think OR is a good idea and hopefully the start of actual, proper VR for the people. :D

Meanwhile, I will hold onto my TiR, more than my wheel or joystick... :eek:


Oh, and also, at the time I got TiR I had no webcam, so basically it came to the same sum (I got TiR a bit cheaper at the time too). :)
 

timbow

timbow
brumster said:
1) It's only 3DOF. Personally, that's all I need in the games I play, but serious flight simmers might feel let down by that. It's certainly all you need for ED.
Click to expand...

The device is 6DOF, the software is 3DOF - get to work ;)

The comment on flight simmers is an interesting one. Lots of z axis tends to be used to "zoom in" on instruments, displays, or even outside features. When I've flown aeroplanes in the past, I didn't carry around binoculars to look at cockpit instruments, so in fact EDTracker would work just fine!

BTW, I found some code somewhere for linear acceleration for the MPU-6150, was thinking of building another "dev" one and having a go, but my code and maths is probably nowhere near the mark!
 

brumster

brumster
timbow said:
The device is 6DOF, the software is 3DOF - get to work ;)
Click to expand...

There's MPU marketing speak for Degrees of Freedom, and then there's what's actually captured/represented by the device in-game. I was keeping away from the MPU speak - you've got MEMS units out there touting 3, 6, 9 and 10 DOF (like atmospheric pressure is a degree of freedom ***....).

I would hate to say EDTracker has 6DOF as that is clearly not the case from a product perspective. Yes, the sensor we put in it is marketed as 6DOF, and we could certainly attempt to track 6DOF with it, but that's another conversation.... :)
 

blacky75

blacky75
not yet into ED, but I used the TrackIR5 under XPlane10 (flight sim) and racing games.... workd like a charm, very reactive, just perfect, couldn't imagine any better.
 

n0ahg

N
brumster said:
There's MPU marketing speak for Degrees of Freedom, and then there's what's actually captured/represented by the device in-game. I was keeping away from the MPU speak - you've got MEMS units out there touting 3, 6, 9 and 10 DOF (like atmospheric pressure is a degree of freedom ***....).

I would hate to say EDTracker has 6DOF as that is clearly not the case from a product perspective. Yes, the sensor we put in it is marketed as 6DOF, and we could certainly attempt to track 6DOF with it, but that's another conversation.... :)
Click to expand...

Strange, I was just trying to explain 6DoF in sensor speak vs the freedom of movement of a rigid body in three dimensional space in the other thread and apparently didn't get it across :-(
 

Nomadski

Nomadski
Commander Regel said:
What's the story behind the company's dubious reputation? I don't know the background to this.
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Its another one of these things in the internet age where a company spends a lot of money developing something, then the internet believes it should be free kind of things.

I've read the blog linked above, while I think he makes a few good points, he seems to have this "open for all, free for everybody" view on life which quite frankly isn't fair for those spending money on developing something that works amazingly well.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but IMO if you make something, you deserve to be paid for it, and if you try to capture a market, your merely performing your duty in a capitalist world.

Hypocrisy is rife in this open source mindset we have right now. I would bet most people reading this would take an affront if something they made for commercial use was modified for the good of the world.

This ain't a knock at EDTracker btw, just that White Knight blog.
 

Athan

Athan
Nomadski said:
Its another one of these things in the internet age where a company spends a lot of money developing something, then the internet believes it should be free kind of things.
Click to expand...

If it was that truly innovative surely they'd hold patent(s) on the technology and use those to enforce a monopoly for the lifetime of said patent(s) ?

Of course I'm personally against software patents and most of this is s/w, so the patents would need to be on the hardware side, with no prior art.
 

n0ahg

N
Athan said:
If it was that truly innovative surely they'd hold patent(s) on the technology and use those to enforce a monopoly for the lifetime of said patent(s) ?

Of course I'm personally against software patents and most of this is s/w, so the patents would need to be on the hardware side, with no prior art.
Click to expand...

They didn't file for any patents for the hardware but it had 'patent pending' markings on it anyway. As their software patents were based on known techniques with very minor changes (some of which they didn't even use) they use a copyrighted poem in case the patent system comes to it's senses.
 

CaptainSodom

CaptainSodom
What is a tracker? I get that it tracks head movements, but what does that do or help with? Your monitor stays in the same place, so what's the point? Or is this for Oculus Rift only?
 
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