TrackIR and Projectors?

In my post about the progress of my own sim project, I mentioned that I had picked up a big projector at a bargain price......but there was only a couple of hundred hours left on the bulbs, and the cost of replacement bulbs was almost £300, well I have just managed to get a genuine replacement bulb for £55

This now means that my temporary display solution is more long term now, meaning I can allocate more money to getting the motion sorted :yippiee:

I looked on the trackIR website and think that it could be good for me allowing to look sideways for corner apexes and checking side views when there is a lot of traffic on the track.

But I have a number of concerns........

When I have motion sorted, will this result in too much head movement and screw up the projected image? Or does it provide a realistic racing experience?

The other issue is that my screen is about 6 feet from my head, making it well out of range for the IR camera. I did read that the camera can be mounted behind you, which is no good due to the racing seat head support. But I did see somewhere, but cant find it again that the camera can be mounted to your side (90 or 270 degrees of front view), if this is possible then this would be a good solution for me.

Any comments and advice from TrackIR users would be much appriciated, and if someone can confirm that the camera can be mounted to either your left or right side that would be great.

I managed to sell a load of unused stuff on ebay this weekend, looks like I will be able to afford scn5/sx3000 kit fairly soon :

Thanks in advance

Deaks

As far a I tested, trackIR's main problem is that when you move your head off the screen, you will not be able to see the center of the image, which will become, after your head movement, the center of the side you wanted to see.

As an example, if you want to look left, you will rotate your head to the left, and the trackIR will display the left view. However, because your head is rotated to the left side, you will only be able to see the left corner of the screen, which will be the leftmost corner of the panorama.

In order to get a perfect effect from trackIR, the best solution (but complicated too) is to built a pan tilt sistem to hold the projector, and to control that system with the data came out from trackIR. This way, the projector will move as your head moves, meaning that your eyes will be always oriented to the center of the image. This project will also need a plain surface all around the projector, for the projected image.

This is only an idea, i never tried this project, but it would be interesting if someone would do it.

Sorry for my poor english, I'm not a native.

The issue I had with a Trackir and a PJ is the image/light from the beamer interfered with the track IR. made it pretty much unusable.
Instead of projecting the image from behind you maybe a dome option and a front projection is the way to go as I have found the best emersion is from a dome as opposed to the rear projection
.

I use trackIR for my flight sims and racing games (RFactor), you need only move your head a very little distance to change the view on screen. And you can adjust this distance as well as assign dead zones so your normal head shake (from bouncing, etc) will not affect it. The program is very configurable. You never need to turn your head so far that you cannot see the entire screen. My headmovement is no more than an inch in any direction so my nose is always pointed at the screen no matter what the onscreen view is. In other words, it is a ratio, 1 in real life equals 5-10 of head swivel in the game.

There is also a DIY setup out there that uses pretty much any old webcam and you make your own headclip, this system is called Freetrack. I have it as well and it works as well as TrackIR.

I had no problems with my projectors and TrackIR, as the camera is looking for IR light and you can direct the camera to look only in your direction.

I know that TrackIR's configurability allow you to make the image move a lot more when you only move your head a few degrees. But this is where the realism lacks.

I was just trying to post an idea of a perfect sim when it comes to realism which costs way less than a 3-5 monitors (maybe more) configuration. This is more like a suggestion for anybody who has the time, the skill and the money to build such thing as long as it was never tried before (afaik).