Every now and then something really exciting happens, like a new graphics card or a new CPU that promises to make wonders. Things we know will enhance our experience playing simulators. Still, is there something else around the corner that will make that experience better using other kinds of hardware? Virtual reality is something most of us have not been able to afford but that may change, and drastically so. A few companies have popped up with some very promising hardware at a cost that makes graphics card and CPU manufacturers blush. In this article we will look at a few chosen, affordable virtual reality gadgets that might enhance your gaming experience. In fact, I would say it will, and maybe give you even more for your money than the newest graphic card.
Virtual reality; what does that mean? There are different approaches to interpret what virtual reality is. I imagine it is anything that lets you believe you are experiencing something real even though you are not. Most of us using simulators are participating in Virtual Reality to some extent by racing or flying, while not actually doing it for real. The main aim is to come as close as possible to reality, whether it be the best physics, graphics, or both. What I would like to do in this article is to make an unbiased representation on why or if these devices can make your sim-racing experience better. Not that this equipment will necessarily make you faster from the word go, but simply more involved and immersed. None of these items has to do with being totally immersed in a virtual reality environment. Total immersion would require a full 360-degree, 3-Dimensional field of view. Without saying too much at this time, being �totally immersed� or just �really immersed� is the difference between being seated in a NASA developed simulator or laying out a few hundred bucks.
Even though flight simulator development seems to have more support dedicated toward visual immersion, this doesn't mean that racing simulations can't gain from those developments. There seems to be a strong willingness however, to support the racing community from the developer�s perspective understandably. I have had the good fortune to have been provided a small mouse look feature added as a patch for NASCAR Heat. The Live for Speed crew found time to implement a quick mouse look feature in their beta demo. Another talented and dedicated third party developer for Grand Prix Legends has allowed me to test an upcoming release of the popular GPLShift software. I'm going to focus mainly on these titles since today, the three above, are the only ones fully supporting the hardware I am going to take a look at, namely the TrackIR device.
TrackIR
The TrackIR system is simply a camera that tracks a reflective dot placed at an appropriate place on the user, which translates the users� head movements on to screen movements. This reflective dot can be placed at the tip of a microphone, on a cap, on the forehead or wherever it is most convenient. This system emulates the movement of the users� mouse. The TrackIR updates at 60 Hz per second, meaning it tracks the dot 60 times per second. The device is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. If placing it on the top of the monitor, it looks like a little alien looking down at you. That alien soon becomes a very close friend. The closer you can get to your �friend� the better off you are. Meaning the closer the dot is to the camera, the greater the reaction of the device.
The newly released software TrackIR V2.0 features some user requested items regarding speed and dead zone that can be customized to your application. These settings are crucial to making the tracking software work properly so you need to spend some time adjusting to get the best set-up for a particular game. These set-ups can then be saved as profiles that can be loaded prior to using it with the game intended.
The first title I tried this device with was MS Flight Simulator 2002, granted not a racing sim but it had dedicated support for it and seemed to be the best application to test this device. It appears that the flight-sim developers have adopted this device faster than any other. The most surprising thing I found was that if I just turned my head a few inches to the left thus making the view turn left, really fooled me into thinking I was really looking left. I was amazed at how my brain actually adapted to this strange situation. I would never have thought that I could actually use this device as a believable tool. How on earth could I look at the screen, at the same time as turning left and believing I was really turning left? That was one of the questions that I got an answer for big-time using it. It works! If supported in the code by developers, it �remembers� where it was centered and you can actually step away from the screen and when you return you will have the exact center you set. Without dedicated support, it works exactly like a mouse. Therefore the software doesn�t remember your last position. If you turn too hard and the cursor comes off the screen, it is off until it is back in view, often totally in the wrong position. That can lead to some not so accurate centering. To get the most out of it, you really need dedicated support, but more on that in awhile. Now let's move onto the real stuff; Racing Simulators.
I will begin with Live for Speed. It will be a hard game to have missed if following the development of racing simulators lately. LFS aims to be a simulation providing a realistic experience for the PC. At the time of this writing, there is only a �pre-beta demo� available for me to test. The developers are very aware of this hardware though. Although their very quick implementation of mouse look is far from being perfect, it�s impressive that they were able to implement it at all. Live for Speed had another issue that can interfere with the chosen view. Mainly that the animation of the characters head driving dictates the direction of the view. Hence, if you steer violently in one direction the view changes even if you don�t want it to. That was a big issue in the earlier demo releases. Thankfully there is now an option to disable it by setting the feature, �move view with animation� to off, and then you are allowed total control of the view. That single improvement made the TrackIR experience much better.
The TrackIR development team is providing a development kit but then allowing the developers to make the most use of it. In the case of Live for Speed, they haven't found time to do a proper implementation using those tools at this time. It now supports mouse-look, but not dedicated TrackIR support. My understanding however is that they intend to fully support this device in the future and that will mean a lot of improvements to the current implementation. For instance, whenever you move your head totally away from the TrackIR camera, when returned to center, it will be centered in the game. That is not the case with pure mouse support as in LFS as explained before. Instead you would have a totally wrong centering of the view, needing to center it with a button. This is how the mouse-look feature works in LFS at the moment. Although the current operation is better than nothing the constant fear of not regaining the proper center makes you a little too careful using the look feature. It is best to set the device so it is very sensitive, but only moves the view a very small amount. The result is a subtle change of cockpit view. It lets you see the turn in to a corner properly and you can counter steer a slide by looking in the direction of travel. It all comes very naturally. In the tests I have done, I decided to concentrate on the driving instead of over-using the ability to look left and right.
"Mouse-look" is essentially the only thing the TrackIR hardware can provide you if not supported natively. That means it can be used in all titles supporting the mouse as a look device. In all honesty, if liking flight simulators as I do, this is nothing short of a real bargain being that Mouse-look is widely supported in most flight simulators. TrackIR supports IL2 Sturmovik: Forgotten Battles natively, and it�s nothing short of stunning. The turning view is smooth as you can imagine and has the best support for this device that I have found. Any self-respecting racing-sim developer owes it to their customers to at least look into this. I happen to know Racing Legends is doing just that, thankfully.
One other game that has adopted the mouse look feature for use with the TrackIR device is NASCAR Heat. That seemed unlikely, since the game was released years ago. In fact, NASCAR Heat took the crown of being the first released racing game/simulator that supported mouse look. Live for Speed coming in at a close second. As it is now NASCAR Heat has the best native support for TrackIR of any racing-sim that I�ve tried. This is due mainly to superior X, Y-axis support using the mouse. Feeling less restricted using the mouse look feature in the cockpit with the TrackIR device adds to the immersion factor even though not totally necessary. However, if you position the �alien� too far from the dot, you will notice a jerky motion using the mouse emulation mode. This is more apparent in NASCAR Heat where X and Y-axis are used. NASCAR Heat gives you good freedom of movement, and can use the TrackIR device in the manner intended. This allows the user to look into the corners without feeling restricted and also provides a natural view movement that corresponds with what you might expect when looking around in the cockpit. With this hardware, I must say NH is very much the top of the line in that perspective.
Grand Prix Legends. The game has become a legend in its own right. GPL has a very strong following, and deservedly so. Not only because it's a great simulation, but also because it has a great feeling to it. Capturing the heart of the era and making it a great challenge - a huge challenge depending on how you look at it. Either way, using the third party add-on called GPLShift, you get TrackIR support via mouse-look. The first version was not that great because of too much view angle and non-linear view movement but it was a good start. The developer of GPLShift has seen the limitations though and through some e-mail correspondences, I was able to obtain a beta version of the next release. It has all the features the TrackIR user will need. In all fairness having a game released so long ago, it�s amazing to see it works as well as it does with newer gadgets. The latest revolutions of Papyrus NASCAR games and others are challenging the popularity of GPL. I still contend that nothing comes close to the experience of the TrackIR hardware coupled with the latest GPLShift features. It genuinely seems open wheel simulators benefit more from using this device. You can accurately place the car into corners and clearly determine where the wheels are in relationship to the track. Some corners I had grown to hate, like the hairpin at Zandvoort, are now something I look forward to at each run.
The benefit of this is that you can put the view of the cockpit much closer to the actual track. Having the freedom of movement, you can look into the corners and judge the position of the car better. You use the mirrors by simply turning your head slightly. It all feels very natural after just a few minutes of play although it can take longer to feel totally comfortable. As with all software only supporting mouse look, you are always leery of not having the view centered. However, if a button can be mapped on the wheel that can center the view, you can live with that. I assume the next release of GPLShift will be able to do this. This labor of love from �*JSJ*� has provided something for free that breathes new life into GPL.3D GLASSES
Now putting a real 3-D experience into the equation will make things a little different. While seeing how well you are able to control the view, how can it work using 3D glasses?
There are many things that have surprised me during the years of using different software and hardware. I�m always striving for the best simulation experience I can get for my money spent. I have never ever had such a surprise turning on the 3-D support with the nVidia drivers together with the eDimensional glasses. To make a long story short, I just couldn't believe my eyes. How on earth can one sit in front of the computer and actually see items in three-dimensional space? Could a pair of shutter glasses really work in doing that in a believable fashion? I have heard a lot of people having received glasses with their cards promising to deliver a good 3-D experience. Many have said it didn't work well. I have now learned to form my own opinion. If using eDimentional 3D shutter glasses at least, they couldn�t be more wrong. Although I have upgraded my computer numerous times and in various ways, I have never encountered such a vast improvement in my experience with simulations. It's very hard to describe the impact these glasses have on a racing game. When using these glasses together with a software package that uses 3D well, the result is amazing. The experience can�t be described by words alone. You have to see it to believe it.
Once again the brain takes over and fools you into believing that you are actually looking at things at various distances. Meaning if you are approaching a corner, you can actually tell if you are 20 or 50 feet away. The same goes if you�re in a tight battle on an oval because it�s no longer difficult to determine if someone is right beside you. You can easily judge the distance of another car. The depth perception is just unbelievable. Again, this was something I was very sceptical about, and again, I have learned better. In fact, every time I turn it on I�m totally amazed even after weeks of testing.
I used the NVidia 3-D software drivers for my graphic card. Not all simulators are supported in there. In many cases, one needs to tweak the settings for each game to get the desired effect. Knowing not all users read the manual that comes with the glasses, many have not been able to realize the full benefit of using these glasses. I will try to write a small guide on how to do that fast and easy.
First of all you need to set up some sort of command buttons. You do that by accessing the driver set-up screen. After installing the drivers, you will have a stereo option right in the NVidia options tab (using Win Xp), you need to set up the stereo separation buttons to quickly enable the necessary changes. As well as the convergence buttons! (Those can be found in the game configurations screen under configure hotkeys.) There are many tweaks one can do, but these two are likely to be the ones used most frequently. You need to get on the track and use the stereo separation buttons to get the track to look good in your eyes, disregarding the cockpit. If possible use a view where the cockpit isn�t visible. When you get a good 3-D view of the track using the stereo separation buttons, switch to the cockpit view and use the convergence buttons to adjust the cockpit. The cockpit initially will look totally offset and blurred but once you adjust the convergence, the cockpit will come into focus. These two setting are likely the most important to make a racing game/simulator work perfectly. I have been informed that a new driver will be released very soon that will support exporting and importing customized settings. As of now, it can�t be done, so the best I can do is to provide this little tutorial for non-supported games.
The only glasses that I have used are the eDimentional glasses so I don�t know how well any of the others work. These shutter glasses work by using your monitors refresh rate. It separates the left eye from the right to give a good 3-D impression. It does that extremely well. On my system, my monitor only could go as high as 85Hz per second. Meaning that I was seeing 42-1/2 frames with one eye and 42-1/2 frames with the other. I saw some minimal �ghosting� around some objects although it was nothing that adversely interfered with the game play. I eliminated all surrounding light sources, which seemed to help. Some flicker was apparent, especially at light parts, but you adapt to it easily. The manufacturer's recommends a refresh rate of 120Hz or more, thus giving a refresh rate per eye at 60 times per second. I could use it for hours on end without troubles or any adverse effects. This can vary though and this is just my personal experience. The bottom line is, the higher the refresh rate on the monitor, the better. If you have a monitor capable of 120Hz or more, you shouldn't experience any problems with light sources. One other thing I need to add is that the images actually appear to be of higher resolution using the glasses. Jagged edges are almost completely gone using a low resolution such as 1024x768 even without the use of anti-aliasing. When switching back to 2D I really did break out in a little giggle. Seemed silly, compared to how it looks using the glasses.
VIRTUAL REALITY IN GENERAL
We have found tracking to be a good thing when supported properly and the shutter glasses worked exceptionally well. How do those two applications work together then? Would there be a frame rate loss? Before we get to that we should examine a few of the other products on the market that don�t live up to their billing. First we have the I-O Glasses. There are many to choose from. Many are on sale at eBay, and there is a good reason why. The earlier models only support a very low resolution. Even if it takes 640 x 480 from the graphic card, it only shows half of that. If using the �fantastic� 3D option, the definition gets even worse. Look closely at what resolution is supported; anything less then 800x600 is not going to work well at all. The glasses are too old and much of the software is not supported by newer operating systems. Beware many of these items are sold for 300 dollars or more, used! It is also difficult persuading WinXP to let you use 640x480 as an output resolution. All in all having a Head Mounted Display (HMD) system that sounds unbelievable is not going to immerse you more into games than using your normal monitor screen. The alleged �Big screen� experience is no more than looking at a 17� screen at 3 feet�s away and at a much lower resolution as well. I only tried the low-resolution I-O glasses and from what I experienced, I would not recommend them. If using the very early HMD�s, you�ll notice a line in the manual saying; �you are not able to read DOS letters�. That says it all I think.
There are a few head tracker companies around that offer products to an �affordable� price as they say. One is VirtuaTrack that has a customer support system that totally disregards second hand consumers. I have written to them numerous times, and have yet to see a response. (5 weeks pending) They say they are the only ones selling it, but after doing a quick search, I found another company. The unit sells for between 300 to 499 dollars depending on the marketer. I was unable to adequately test VirtuaTrack tracker because of the lack of post-sale support.TrackIR & eDimensional Glasses Combined
Now, let�s look at TrackIR and the eDimentional glasses combined. Let�s say you are afraid of flying for example. Load up your favorite flight sim. Take to the skies, climb as high as you dare, look down and suddenly become overwhelmed with fear. Then you get close to the sensation of these two pieces of hardware working together! Being afraid of heights myself and being able to do this in the comfort of my computer room is awesome. My heart rate went bananas. When it comes to speed, I am not afraid being on the ground and all, but the experience is just as exhilarating.
The eDimentional glasses and racing Sims is a match made in heaven. When combined with the TrackIR device you ARE there. Driving the fastest and most exotic cars, and almost for real. You see a corner approach, and you see the distance. You shift the focus to the nearest contender. You shift your focus again to look into the corner. You ARE there. You are not driving on a computer. You are experiencing it first hand!
On the starting line as you settle down into your �67 Lotus, or the car of your choice, you look around. You are experiencing your beloved car taking off with a firm push on the throttle. Yeah, it really feels like you are doing just that. Looking into the turn, as I take Zandvorts� first corner, it feels as natural as Mother Nature herself. Shifting focus: I�m looking around at the awesome modelled wheels by the GPLEA team as well as all the wonderful details in the cockpit. Shifting focus again and looking at that second tight corner approaching. All of a sudden, you are there; 1967. You just don�t see it you are experiencing it. I might sound a little religious when talking about this but this is what I truly felt. This little simulator born in someone�s mind years ago finally made justice. Hallelujah!
By using the TrackIR device, and the eDimentional glasses, it has all comes together. This is what I longed for, and now I have it. I don�t care if the little tiny tire model in GPL is not modelled perfectly. I don�t care if a curb is slightly square. I don�t care if the bolts on the engine are modelled correctly, I love this era and I love being able to experience it this way. The 3D effect is stunning. To be honest with you, I thought I would write most of this article about how good LFS would appear with this hardware. Frankly, after all these years, GPL still hold the crown in all aspects. I am both sorry and pleased at the same time to say that I didn�t really expect GPL to handle the newer equipment that well.
If taking just the 3D experience into account, sure NASCAR 2003 beats it. It has a more involving experience due to the advanced graphics engine that provides more detail and higher frame rates. On the other hand it lacks in the ability to look left and right because Mouse-look is un-supported. Just feels so frustrating, driving around not being able to use the hardware I had for testing. Especially when it feels that much more real using the 3D option. Please, sneak out a TrackIR support feature Papy! That sim deserves it! Or at least make the left/right look activated by a mouse device. The same goes for F1-2002. It works great with 3D glasses. If you do have an expensive tracker that supports direct input axis view, it can be used with F1 2002. Dirt Track Racing also has good 3D glasses support out of the box but no native support for the tracker.
While all this sounds very good, it does come at a cost to performance because each device takes some processing power. The TrackIR device isn�t taking as much power as it takes to run the eD glasses. Here is a chart I made driving a lap using free practise, no AI. I drove one lap with no devices. Then one lap with TrackIR only and one lap with them both combined.
Review system: Athlon 2000+ | 512 Meg ram | GeForce ti4600 128 Meg ram |Windows XP Professional
CONCLUSION
One can only say that Virtual Reality is here, and very affordable. Maybe not all racing-sim developers have picked up on it yet, but if you like flight Sims, or FPS games, you cannot loose. With additional users demanding support for racing simulators, TrackIR implementations may not be too far in the distant future. These are relatively inexpensive upgrades that will enhance your immersion factor immensely. Forget that NASA simulator. A few hundred bucks and you are halfway there.
You can get TrackIR for $129 and the eDimentional glasses from $69.95 and up, depending on the configuration. If you are looking to save some money, keep your eyes open for special offers where you get TrackIR and eDimentional glasses combined.
Refference links: GPLShift+ | Virtua Track | I-Glasses & Virtua Track | TrackIR | eDimensional 3D Glasses | GeForce 3D Software