Reviews > NaturalPoint TrackIR 4: Pro
(PC) Review
June 29, 2007
It was the middle of the day, but all of the window curtains were pulled closed. The lights were off, and in the oppressive darkness, I sat, lit by the glow of my computer monitor, in an unnaturally prone position, head locked in place. Flying into a rage over and over, I struggled to complete the task I was faced with, simultaneously fighting hard to keep my head stationary, doing anything not to upset the strange, spider-like object mounted just over my face. 10 minutes later, I had finally managed to configure my controls for Armed Assault.
NaturalPoint's TrackIR device seems like an awesome idea, and it certainly costs as much as you'd expect for one, but the reality falls far short of the expectation. Mileage varies based on what sort of game you're playing with the TrackIR headset, but, regardless, it never works out as cool as you hoped it would be.
The premise: with TrackIR, you can mount the optical head tracker on your monitor or other nearby surface. The optical tracker then receives an infrared signal, the IR in TrackIR, from either the clip-on headset or the little reflector set mounted on your headphones or hat. By following the reflected IR points, the head tracker determines the way you're moving your head, which, after some configuration, translates into actual game actions. You move your head, and the character moves in-game.
Unfortunately, the system is plagued with issues. For one, the configuration is very finicky. I had to keep the configuration program open for it to be activated while in-game, and the system would constantly lose track of one of the three infrared points, causing my character in Armed Assault to slam his head all the over the place, then to freeze in place looking either straight up or straight down, as if he'd suffered a seizure on his feet and continued to walk around despite his neck being permanently locked into a 90 degree angle.
However, even if you overcome the difficulties of getting the head tracker to pick up the signal properly at all times, removing all other sources of light in the room, and the random lockups of the configuration program, you still have to deal with the fact that you cannot move your head. As I bound my controls in Armed Assault, the showcase game for the system, I had to keep my head frozen in the exact position I had calibrated it at or risk the motions registering as inputs for whatever game control I was trying to configure. Once in-game, I couldn't shift position in my chair without having to deal with recalibrating the system or just playing the game looking permanently up and to the left.
Even when TrackIR is working at its very best, it just isn't that useful. In the Ship Simulator demo I tried it with, it allowed me to look around and see what was happening, but I could have done the exact same with my mouse. In Armed Assault, I was able to look left and right without actually turning that way, but as an FPS veteran it actually made things more difficult because my gun was still facing in the other direction. So if I spotted an enemy, I still had to rotate my head back to center and turn my mouse to aim. Normally, I use my mouse to look around as fast as I need anyway, and just shift my usage of the movement keys to maintain my motion, so TrackIR does nothing but add to the difficulty of the interface here.
TrackIR fails to deliver on all the potential coolness, but you can still expect to pay far out the ass for it. The minimal setup is $179.95, but if you also want the flimsy clip-on headset, you can get it bundled together for $199. TrackIR, which actually does almost the exact same thing as the pointing functionality of the Wii controller, ($40) minus the other movement tracking built in, costs almost as much as a brand new video card. That amounts to little more than blatant robbery. Even your TV remote does the same thing as TrackIR, generating an IR signal on one end and receiving it on the other. I'm imagining the people that are going to think about how cool this seems and sacrifice half a month's rent on it and it's infuriating me. Do yourself a favor and don't get this.
*Brian Schulman - Associate Editor, GameWad.com
