So do you think head tracking is a good thing for driving games or not? You say its good for checking mirrors but not at looking at apexs? ok, so you are trying to tell me not to use it for driving purposes and just to check their mirrors with it. ok, advice taken but I'll try whatever I want with it and come to my own conclusions. I encourage everyone else to do the same.
It's both
I think driving games are one of the least appropriate applications for head tracking.
Overall I think head tracking is not suited to racing game becuase driving a car involves a lot of sensory input that you don't get in a game, mainly momentum. That means that you must suppliment this lost sensory input with another that you have: site.
So in order to make up for this lacking information, your eyes are forced to do more work comparing what you do to what happens on screen. Rather than feel how much the cars direction is changing, you must visually inspect the results to know whether you have to change your input or not. In real life this would be a split between eyes and body detecting momentum, in games, it's all eyes.
Generally your eyes do a good job but when you start tossing things at it such a unrealistic pov changes (ie you turn your head and the world turns the opposite way around you) it gets in the way of that. If you have ever played one of those games where your mouse controls get reversed or flipped, using head tracking feels a lot like that right off... you do something, your eyes report back what they see and then your brain just goes "WTF that's not right".
You are constantly using what you see to judge where you are going and the static viewpoint goes a long way to giving you some anchor.
Head tracking doesn't replicate what happens in the real world and it doesn't add back the missing momentum input. It offers a new feature which doesn't lend itself well to tracking what's going on visually as the anchor keeps changing.
There result is that head tracking adds a dissorienting and unreaslitic way to look around you.
Now in terms of replacing a button or switch (ie you go 100% or nothing) head tracking is not as bad. This is because there is no analog compromise to deal with.
When looking into an apex, the amount you turn your head effect how much the view changes on screen. Since it's not 1:1 you have to do some compensation for how much your view has changed. This involves a lot of finagling and careful twisting of the head, seconds of reorientation during which you are not driving your best as you are trying to get reasociated with your view.
Think of it like when someone walk in front of you while you are driving. Despite the fact they are only disrupting your view for a split second, it takes a bit to get back on track and sometimes you crash because of this small, temporary interuption. Adjusting to figure out just how far the head tracking has turned your view does something similar. It's disruptive. It's not adding back something that was missing as much a it's disrupting what you are doing in large part becuase you have to worry about how far you are turning your head.
Now for a quick snap to look a set angle at your rearview, basically replacing a button press, it's different. It's functional and much less disruptive.
I would relate it to the difference between steering through sweepinng curves on an analog stick where you have to keep going back and forth in the middle of the sticks travel vs playing street fighter with analog sticks where you just snap the sticks full left or right or you don't.
In the latter case, head tracking takes a lot less concentration and adjusting to use, and if you are the kind of person who has no fingers left becuase you run the gas and brake on the face buttons, it can be a good option.
However if you run gas and brake on the shoulder buttons, I think the face buttons or stick are a better option to look at the rearviews. If you have a wheel then I would think head tracking would be pretty much your only option. But not because it's head tracking, it's just using another appendage. You could get about the same results if you just put a big push button on either side of your head and hit it with your head to look at your left or right rear view.
So is head tracking good for racing games? Yes and no... yes if it gives you use of one more appendage to do something that you couldn't before, no if you are trying to make it more realistic by looking into apexs like you do while really driving.
I agree, everyone should try for themselves... I already suggested having a friend work the right stick to track your head or even doing it yourself.
Some people DO like it, although I have yet to see anyone really use it to any value. It seems some people can get accustomed to it reasonably, but unlike pedals and a wheel I have yet to see anyone really get value out of using it.
As I said, nothing wrong with putting this in GT5, worst case is you just turn it off! But as long as people want to offer up reasons why the issues with head tracking aren't issues, I will be happy to explain why my experience says not.
BTW I think we can all agree $35 for a PSeye isn't much to spend if you don't like it, but really $35 isn't chump change, it's half the cost of a new full retail game. And when you can test it easily yourself, I would hate to see people throw that money away on something I have tried and experienced.
Feel free to ask another question, my fingers are all warmed up!
