TrackIR head position drops really low.

[AstrixAU]

I have been getting a bug over the last month or so with trackIR and I think it's caused by the true view feature that you can turn off. Often when looking out the side window and moving your head closer then looking up and down and then you go back to the centre it goes weird and all of a sudden your head position drops really low, moving your head back usually snaps it back to normal it or pressing number 5 can fix it.

 

A few times it was so bad that the the cockpit looked like it was an extra metre higher and the cockpit roof stretched high, but lately it's not so bad but the head position still drops really low and loose the cross hairs. I didn't have this issue when I first got the game a six months ago.

 

A friend just bought trackir for BOS and instantly noticed the issue, it's been happening very frequently lately almost all the time.

 

I did try previous versions of TrackIR software when the issue first came up but it kept happening so I assume it's a game bug.

 

Please fix this as it's annoying as hell and snaps you out of the immersion and usually happens at the worst time while in a dogfight which makes you loose track of the target.

 

Love the game!

 

Thanks

Astrix_au

Edited July 11, 2016 by astrix_au

[AstrixAU]

No word weather it's TrackIR or the game having the issue?

[KG200_Volker]

There's a "camera view" in TrIr panel that you check ambient light distortion. You ll see red areas in case you have this kind of problem, you should reduce the sensitivity of TrIr camera to the point your dots or reflective areas it's the only thing that it tracks (NOT recommended), or, reduce/eliminate the light that creates the problem.

 

In the same panel you can check if you have in a bad position your head trackers, move your head around the area that you usually use in space and if you see even one of the dots desipear correct it by placing receiver/trackers in position that this never happens.

 

The centering button is something that you ll use a lot even if all of the above are correct, especially if you use all 6 axis, have a handy button for this.

 

Check this first and we ll see what happens next.

[AstrixAU]

The bug doesn't occur much at all and if it does it's only a little low which nodding your head will fix. It used to be quite bad and and really exaggerated but for the most part it's ok now.

[Voidhunger]

Hi,

 

I will use your thread if you dont mind.

 

After the new update when I start the game my trackir view is always leaned to one side.

And its sometimes hard to adjust it. Any tips? Thanks

[Bando]

In game; disable the TIR, adjust your view with mouse, ins-home-pgup-del-end-pgdn buttons, press F10 to save the view and enable TIR again.

[I./ZG1_Radick]

i have the same problem

[Tipskin]

I have the same issue.
For me it feels like it is some sort of a G effect reaction since it is happening when I dive or pull the stick; Track IR react as if I sit lower on the chair.
A quick nod of the head or pull myself back snaps it back to the normal position. But it is frustrating to make an unnecessary head movement when you are diving and aligning on your target or pulling the stick to stay behind it.

[[CPT]CptJackSparrow]

I get the same thing too.

[AstrixAU]

Yeah Tipskin is correct It happens when diving for me too, it makes it unnecessarily difficult to dive on people. This bug has been plaguing me for a long time.  

[Hoss]

I get the same bug where I'm a wee lad who can't see over the top of the cockpit............  have to hit either F1 or "5" to get it back to center... usually happens when I'm knee deep in a dogfight and looking all over the place lose situational awareness and can't find the target after I get "normal" view back..

 

edit:  Not a bug................. cranial rectimitus..............  checked out my TIR camera view and could see my IR dissappear below the screen............ I moved it up some so they don't go out of frame while I'm looking around, it's usually when I'm looking out the front (109) and peering below the front canopy frame, guess it drops out of screen and when I move my head I'm stuck like I'm a Liliputian needing a book to sit on to see over the cowling.

 

Cheers

 

Hoss

Edited August 9, 2017 by 1./JG54_Hoss

[JG27*PapaFly]

I have the same issue. As described by several of you guys I can realign the view to the gunsight by nodding my head. However, having to nod just before opening fire is very annoying. That's the moment I normally keep my head very still and aligned to the gunsight in order to aim. My go-around is that i simply deactivated the y axis of my trackIR profile. Now my head is always aligned to the gunsight. Is there a chance developers will correct this issue?

[223Wylde]

I have the same problem, and I've noticed that when playing campaigns, my gunsight will steadily drift to a lower position (more noticeable in time accelerate mode) until I reach the exit point, then it no longer drifts downward.   This issue has been present in the game ever since I've played it with TrakIR 5, I have to hit F12 every so often to reset my gunsight, othwerwise, my gunsight continuously drifts too low, curious how this problem seems to be related to combat related waypoints, and not simply nav related waypoints.  

 

Please fix this bug, I will not purchase any updates/addons to this game until this problem is fixed, its extremely annoying!

[Eclipse4349]

... checked out my TIR camera view and could see my IR dissappear below the screen..

I have a feeling this is what is doing it. I almost always have to recenter TrackIR after looking behind me or tracking a target inverted. It only happens after I have looked to an extreme and then come back to center. I'll try making the v-curve I have set up for pitch and yaw steeper, ie, make it more sensitive sooner. This should lessen the amount I need to turn my head to look up 90 degrees or behind me, which should keep all 3 reflectors in view of the camera, so it should lose its center and come back off-kilter. I'll let you all know my results.

[Eclipse4349]

I verified that the camera never "list" any of the reflectors. I was able to turn my head in both the yaw and pitch axes well past where I do in game and they still were within the limits. The problem was a little better when using the LED Track Clip Pro or whatever they call it, rather than the regular reflective track clip. But it was still there.

 

I think I was able to fix it by disabling the roll axis. I have only tested it while parked on the runway, but it seems to be OK. Hopefully it won't be disorienting while flying to not have the roll axis. We will see...

[71st_AH_Gamecock]

I have an issue like that that usually occurs when looking back checking six in a dogfight. Its like the TIR gets lost and when I re-center it the view is low. I think I found a remedy for this when flying last night. Look all the way down and hit the recenter key. When I did it it restored my view looking up. I need to test this further. But give it a try and post feedback pls. 

[Eclipse4349]

After tightening things up a bit (requiring less head movement to get to the outer extremes of in-game view), it helped some. The issue still happens when I turn the view and then lean in to the canopy, as if to get a better view around the pilot's seat back. When I turn back around and sit normally (not leaning) again, the view is often not centered as it should be. As others have said, nodding my head down then back up brings it back where it should be.

 

Adjusting the TrackIR profile to require less head movement did seem to help, but there are still issues when you turn off center and then "zoom" with the TrackIR z-axis.

[SJ_Butcher]

same problem here, I thought I was the only one noticing this, every time I have to recenter the revi because when I turn my head a lot the track ir reduce the position of my revi

[Eclipse4349]

Since I tweaked my TrackIR profile to tighten things up so they require less physical head movement, and dropped the response steeply to zero as the view in-game approaches the edge of its range, TrackIR seems to keep its center much better. It also feels very natural the way the outer extremes of the range of motion drop off - you really feel where you can stop moving your head, without it snapping abruptly and having extra head movement with no response on the screen. It makes turning back to center feel more consistent, too.

 

Sometimes it comes back to the center a bit off, but a quick nod or sideways adjustment and it comes right back. I haven't had to touch the recenter key in a while. I'll post an update if I find differently with some more flight time.

 

Hope this helps someone!

[[GDG]Andreher]

Guys I have this same issue in this game.

 

No one was able to fix? 

 

it's really annoying specially in scissor dog fight, I always miss my shots because you only have one second to look to your aim and the view is all messed up because you were looking at the enemy.

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Where is your sensor placed? It should be as close to eye level as possible.

 

Are you using Track Clip Pro or the hat reflectors. If you have the clip you need to put the sensor slightly to the left or it will lose the signal when you turn to the extreme left because your face gets in the line of sight between the devices.

 

Also, adjust your TIR before you fly as above;

On 11/20/2016 at 1:55 AM, Bando said:

In game; disable the TIR, adjust your view with mouse, ins-home-pgup-del-end-pgdn buttons, press F10 to save the view and enable TIR again.

*The six keys are for position. Mouse wheel is for zoom. AAANNDDDD, you have to repeat this process for every AC you fly. It's not universal between AC but it is permanent once you hit F10.

 

Lastly, I have a dot on the bottom edge of my monitor which is my "true" center. If I slew the TiR off center in a heavy maneuvering fight - I look back at my centering dot, click the programmed recenter on my hotas, and I'm back in business.

[[GDG]Andreher]

This is not a problem with my trackir position, I use it on other games.

 

I have the reflectors and they are on top of my headphone.

 

The problem is not a lost of signal, its something with the gforce in the game. The pilot never recover from the G turn unless you nod your head or recenter the trackir.

 

The problem is when you are doing heavy turns and looking away from the center, when you look back to the center the pilot head is really low, like he was a kid trying to look over the window, and it wont come back to the correct position unless I nod my head or press the recenter key. 

 

I even had to rebind the center key on my joystick because I have to press it constantly.

 

The problem is some fights you simple dont have the time to press that button and you miss the shot.

Another post about it:

 

 

[II/JG17_HerrMurf]

Every game I've ever owned has had this problem with TiR. I was even one of the first to suggest to them to allow the centering key to be placed on the stick. For the record, at the time, they told me it wasn't practical and they weren't interested in researching dozens of different joystick manufacturers . I probably still have that email somewhere.

 

I just set it up now and re-centering is part of my regular routine. I re-center often during any given flight, especially if there is combat involved. It's almost subconscious at this point.

[[GDG]Andreher]

6 hours ago, II/JG17_HerrMurf said:

Every game I've ever owned has had this problem with TiR. I was even one of the first to suggest to them to allow the centering key to be placed on the stick. For the record, at the time, they told me it wasn't practical and they weren't interested in researching dozens of different joystick manufacturers . I probably still have that email somewhere.

 

I just set it up now and re-centering is part of my regular routine. I re-center often during any given flight, especially if there is combat involved. It's almost subconscious at this point.

 

The strange thing is there are people with trackir saying they dont have this problem.

[6./ZG26_Loke]

My problem is limited to only two planes now. The FW-190 F8 and the Il-2 mod 42.

[-=PHX=-Satch]

I have the same issue, no fix yet?

[jokerBR]

Reviving this thread, but still no solution after so many years, and yes, this seems to be "code related" - the game should take care of it. If I recall correctly, I *think* that if you disable TrueView the problem is less prominent, but then you loose TrueView, which of course is paramount if you do maneuvers looking back. Only thing that cures it for good is to disable Y axis, but then you loose the feature of being able to "duck" inside cockpit to look under your upper wing (useful if you're flying some WWI crate) or to look a little bit over your plane's nose. I usually do a quick nod (look down and back to center really quickly) to recover after a pull up... but often this microsecond is enough to make you miss a shot.

[JG27*PapaFly]

On 5/21/2020 at 4:12 AM, jokerBR said:

Reviving this thread, but still no solution after so many years, and yes, this seems to be "code related" - the game should take care of it. If I recall correctly, I *think* that if you disable TrueView the problem is less prominent, but then you loose TrueView, which of course is paramount if you do maneuvers looking back. Only thing that cures it for good is to disable Y axis, but then you loose the feature of being able to "duck" inside cockpit to look under your upper wing (useful if you're flying some WWI crate) or to look a little bit over your plane's nose. I usually do a quick nod (look down and back to center really quickly) to recover after a pull up... but often this microsecond is enough to make you miss a shot.

I hear you. Sad that the issue still persists. I've disabled the trackIR y axis long ago. What you could do in addition to that, is to save 1-2 quick views to duck in the cockpit or take a peek above the cowling.

[Remontti]

You could also make copy of you tir profile. Disable negative y-axis movement in othter. Then assign a key in tir to momenteraly activate the profile with negative y-axis enabled. Then you just press that key when you want to enable negative y-axis movement.

[jokerBR]

Yeah, the tricks with multiple views in game or profiles in TIR are the way to go. I've tried some views but I already acquired Pavlov reflexes after a pull up and I nod almost instantly now. ?
May try with the idea of clipping the negative part of the axis though, as it seems to be the most affected, and it is rarely used.

[Eclipse4349]

The best solution is likely still to be mapping the recentering function to a  button that is easy to hit any time it's needed.  It worked for me (a button on my throttle), and I didn't have to disable any TrackIR features. 

[jokerBR]

Yeah, I have a button for this as well, but the problem is that when you use it, you must be looking straight ahead, otherwise your view start to get more and more off center. 
So far I think I've found a middle ground - restricted the Y axis to -15 degrees max on negative side. This allows me to move down inside the cockpit to check gauges and such, but not much to mess with the view when maneuvering. Still experimenting.

[III/JG52_Al-Azraq]

On 5/21/2020 at 4:12 AM, jokerBR said:

Reviving this thread, but still no solution after so many years, and yes, this seems to be "code related" - the game should take care of it. If I recall correctly, I *think* that if you disable TrueView the problem is less prominent, but then you loose TrueView, which of course is paramount if you do maneuvers looking back. Only thing that cures it for good is to disable Y axis, but then you loose the feature of being able to "duck" inside cockpit to look under your upper wing (useful if you're flying some WWI crate) or to look a little bit over your plane's nose. I usually do a quick nod (look down and back to center really quickly) to recover after a pull up... but often this microsecond is enough to make you miss a shot.

 

Yeah, if you disable Trueview then the problem is gone. I've even got used to not use Trueview in IL2 due to this. In DCS you don't have this issue as much because there a real neck is simulated and you don't use the Y axis to check your 6 so much as the head naturally leans without the need of Y axis.

 

Anyway, it seems that Natural Point is not interested anymore in fixing this issue as last software update dates back from 2016.

 

I will try to open a post in their forums asking for an update and see if we can get enough replies to push them and fix this, but I highly doubt it.

[jokerBR]

Hi @III/JG52_Al-Azraq, nowadays I'm using TIR with a "gap" on Y axis around the center, giving some "space" before activating the "duck or compress" movement. This way, the sight doesn't move, and I still can "duck" inside the cockpit - only drawback is that I need to move my head a lot more to activate the down movement, way more than before - but since this is rarely used, I'm fine with this. 
The "up" movement I left as normal, because you will rarely pull negative G's and you will sure use the up movement a lot more to spy over the plane's nose (specially on WWII planes). 

 

As for posting on Natural Point's forum, I wish you luck. It's strange that they haven't update their software in so many years, despite lots of areas for enhancement (smooth sensitivity could be tied to profiles, instead of whole unit, for instance). 

[III/JG52_Al-Azraq]

On 8/12/2020 at 1:13 AM, jokerBR said:

Hi @III/JG52_Al-Azraq, nowadays I'm using TIR with a "gap" on Y axis around the center, giving some "space" before activating the "duck or compress" movement. This way, the sight doesn't move, and I still can "duck" inside the cockpit - only drawback is that I need to move my head a lot more to activate the down movement, way more than before - but since this is rarely used, I'm fine with this. 
The "up" movement I left as normal, because you will rarely pull negative G's and you will sure use the up movement a lot more to spy over the plane's nose (specially on WWII planes). 

 

As for posting on Natural Point's forum, I wish you luck. It's strange that they haven't update their software in so many years, despite lots of areas for enhancement (smooth sensitivity could be tied to profiles, instead of whole unit, for instance). 

 

Thanks buddy! Actually you have a good and more elegant solution rather than just disabling the Y axis.

 

However, knowing that the Y axis is the issue (I didn't know that before), I have been tweaking it and using less aggressive curves in all my axis but especially in the Y. Well I can now say that the issue is fixed and I have no drift now. My curves are more flat now with almost no dead zone at the centre and I found out that this helped a lot. I didn't like the dead zones at the centre anyway.

 

So I just not fixed the drift, I am way more happy with all my curves now. I used too steep profiles and I think that the software was going a bit crazy due to that and not having too much of a dead zone makes coming back to centre less forced. Finally, that sticking effect you have when you set dead zones and come back to centre, is gone.

 

Finally, some argue that this issue is caused by the games and not the TrackIR software but I also stumbled across some people saying that they e-mailed Natural Point and they acknowledge the issue so who knows. What is true, is that Natural Point has no competition right now and they are very comfortable not updating software. And no, TrackHat and similars don't have 6 DOF so they are not a real competition I'm afraid.

 

Anyway, I will upload my curves later as I get home.

[jokerBR]

Sure, I think that the main TiR competitor is VR (although being a complete different animal). 
All my profiles nowadays are fully horizontal lines, with no dead zone at all in the center (that sticky behavior is awful), except, of course, the Y axis which is like I've shown for flight sims only. And even on these, the "gap" is highly dependent on the game, because the sensitivity varies between them. The one shown is for my BoX profile.

I tend to think that it is the game (not the TiR software) the main "culprit" for what we see, because you're not moving your head IRL, so the camera/TiR doesn't have the input to "know" that you should be compressing your spine due G forces, etc. My bet is, for some reason, the game is "slow" to return our virtual heads/spines to normal position after being crushed by G forces, like, it waits for some movement to be able to "reset" the position (which is exactly what happens when you nod your head rapidly). You can also prove this by forcing a negative G after pulling some positive G's... you'll see that you "speed up" the correction this way. 

Cheers,

JoKeR

[chuckinator]

Found the fix. Have had this issue for weeks. simply put your head in the back up side of the seat and press "f10" to save that view spot. Next time you press the track ir reset button it will go there and you won't have those problems anymore. I hope this helps. With some testing its done it a couple of times but with much less frequency.

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by chuckinator

[[Warship]MidnightLightnin]

On 8/13/2020 at 9:56 AM, III/JG52_Al-Azraq said:

 

Thanks buddy! Actually you have a good and more elegant solution rather than just disabling the Y axis.

 

However, knowing that the Y axis is the issue (I didn't know that before), I have been tweaking it and using less aggressive curves in all my axis but especially in the Y. Well I can now say that the issue is fixed and I have no drift now. My curves are more flat now with almost no dead zone at the centre and I found out that this helped a lot. I didn't like the dead zones at the centre anyway.

 

So I just not fixed the drift, I am way more happy with all my curves now. I used too steep profiles and I think that the software was going a bit crazy due to that and not having too much of a dead zone makes coming back to centre less forced. Finally, that sticking effect you have when you set dead zones and come back to centre, is gone.

 

Finally, some argue that this issue is caused by the games and not the TrackIR software but I also stumbled across some people saying that they e-mailed Natural Point and they acknowledge the issue so who knows. What is true, is that Natural Point has no competition right now and they are very comfortable not updating software. And no, TrackHat and similars don't have 6 DOF so they are not a real competition I'm afraid.

 

Anyway, I will upload my curves later as I get home.

Did you upload your curves, I would be very interested in seeing them as I have the issue and it is driving me mad?

[III/JG52_Al-Azraq]

On 10/22/2022 at 12:42 PM, [THORN]MidnightLightnin said:

Did you upload your curves, I would be very interested in seeing them as I have the issue and it is driving me mad?

Hey buddy, I switched to VR and mistakenly removed my TrackIR settings. Sorry!