SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: TrackIR3 in Motorsport Sims

Testing Richard Burns Rally, I had a small problem getting the device to work, until I visited the NaturalPoint Forum and learned from a thread there that it would be better if I did not run RBR in high priority mode, which I had become accustomed to doing when starting RBR from the shortcut in the RBR Mod Collection. Running Richard Burns Rally in normal priority mode made all the difference in the world, and it was in Richard Burns Rally that TrackIR3 really proved its usefulness.

I had settled for the Joux-stage in the French Rally, with it's many tight hairpin turns so I could use TrackIR3 to its fullest potential; letting me better see where the road went. It worked very very well. Looking into the turns is a big help, nonetheless, one of the hairpins got me and I didn't make the turn but ended up with the front of the car against the Armco. While looking into the corners on my way up the mountain, I had noticed that I could see the right-hand side interior of my Subaru ´03, so when I got stuck with the nose of the car against this Armco, I decided to back up a bit before continuing, and intuitively, and on a almost completely unconscious level I turned my head as far as possible to the right while keeping the eyes on the screen, and I could actually see where I was going out of the rear-window, when backing up! Now that is not only very useful but also very cool!!

One more thing that is extremely entertaining, and this covers all the sims that will let you zoom in and out; when you crash and roll, oh boy, this is so convincing in RBR that I almost scared myself here. You really feel that the only thing left out now is the actual physical impact. It's that close to real.

F1 Challenge 99' - 02'

In F1C, I tested the RH 2004 and Sports Car Challenge mods, and it worked right off the bat for me. One caveat. You can look left and right as well as up and down, but leaning closer to the monitor won't get you any closer to the dash. Anyway, I'm very pleased with the results.

I thought I did detect some sort of "nervousness" in the tracking but I can't really be sure if it was a combination of low frame rates and my jerky head that produced this result at times.

One word of advice regarding TrackIR3 and F1C, or rather any ISI-engine based sim is that you should never run the 3D Config utility while having the TrackIR3 profiler software open. The config utility can't cope with the profiling software being active and will take a long, long time to tell you. You can have about 1 million triangles instead of the 60 million or more you're accustomed to seeing.

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season

NASCAR Racing 2003 Season proved to be more difficult. First off, I had to follow the steps outlined in a post on NaturalPoint's Forum and ask for some additional help there as well. This is what I did to get left and right views to respond to TrackIR3:

Download PPJoy joystick device driver and TrackIR2Joystick
Unzip and install PPJoy into your OS (mine is WinXP, but this will work in Win2000 okay). Click Next all the way until it is finished.
Run PPJoy's "Configure Joystick", hit "Add...", and select Parallel port as "Virtual port", Controller number as "Controller 1".
Let Windows install the new device.
Go to Control Panel's Gaming Options (aka Joystick), you should able to see a new stick named "PPJoy Virtual joystick 1.
Start TrackIR3 and enable "Enhanced Mode".
Unzip TrackIR2Joystick into its own directory, than run tir2joy.exe
You should be able to see a window with title "TrackIR2Joystick", and while you moving your head in front of TrackIR, the "Status" will now show your head position (X=xxx, Y=xxx).
Go to the Control Panel's Gaming Options (aka Joystick) again, double click on "PPJoy Virtual joystick 1" and move your head, you should be able to see the joystick marker moving as your heads moving. Map your left and right keys and your done.
Remember to calibrate the new axis in-game!
Start racing and have fun.

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