- 349
- Russian Federation
A few years ago I was experimenting with the trackir settings to achieve a parallax effect on my three-monitor system. The settings available in the simulators and in the trackir software itself were not enough. I asked some programmer friends for help, but the problem was explaining the essence of the task to them. Absolutely no one could understand it 
Then I created a video in a 3D editor to clearly show what I was talking about. But this did not add any understanding.
Today I accidentally came across this video of mine, saw comments there (to which I did not respond..). I decided to respond to them, although three years have passed.
I want to show this to those guys who are building a home cockpit using three monitors, and possibly using a trackir...
Maybe someone will understand the idea, I am interested in hearing opinions.
The idea is to use the tracker not for its intended purpose, but to create a parallax effect and a sense of 3D space outside the cabin of a car or plane.
The video demonstrates three options for settings
1. The trackir does not work. We see a flat image rigidly "glued" to the monitors, as if these were three paintings.
2. Traditional use of the trackir. The cockpit "floats" on the screen, turning to the pilot at the desired angle. At the same time, the picture on the screen is completely untied from the "home cockpit". From the outside, this looks strange, and the pilot needs to cross-eyed.
3. Actually, the idea: Is that the trackir does not move the car cockpit, but the world around it, creating the illusion of parallax.
Most people do not see the difference at all and do not understand what is shown on the screen
To understand what this is, imagine the effect of the Moon in the sky - it seems to be tied to us when we move.
Or stand right now by the window, look at some distant object (a house, a tree, a lamppost...), and move left/right.
You will see how this distant object moves with you, while the window moves relative to you.
This is the parallax effect, which in real life gives us a sense of the volume of space, helps us better determine the distance to objects, etc. In simulators, we can feel this effect in only one case - in VR.
It is absent on monitors even if we use a trackir.
Look at the video again, to the ambulance standing on the road (I specially placed it there as a landmark). Pay attention to its position relative to the monitor, and relative to the cockpit of the car, how it differs in the three examples. In the third version, due to the parallax effect, there is a feeling that the monitors are windows, and the world on the other side is three-dimensional. We can look behind the window pillar, and the car cockpit will not float away somewhere to the third monitor, will not stand at strange angles... it will remain in its place, creating a feeling of a holistic space of the home cockpit and the 3D space of the simulator.
I tried to make similar settings for the tracker by swapping the axes, something similar works, but there are not enough settings, so it works in a narrow range, for example, only when strafes the head left/right and up/down. This is not enough. The only way to implement this fully is if the developers of the simulator, or the developers of Trackir implement such a mode.
In my opinion, such a solution could turn the perception of the simulator through the monitor, creating a volume of 3D space.
Then I created a video in a 3D editor to clearly show what I was talking about. But this did not add any understanding.
Today I accidentally came across this video of mine, saw comments there (to which I did not respond..). I decided to respond to them, although three years have passed.
I want to show this to those guys who are building a home cockpit using three monitors, and possibly using a trackir...
Maybe someone will understand the idea, I am interested in hearing opinions.
The idea is to use the tracker not for its intended purpose, but to create a parallax effect and a sense of 3D space outside the cabin of a car or plane.
The video demonstrates three options for settings
1. The trackir does not work. We see a flat image rigidly "glued" to the monitors, as if these were three paintings.
2. Traditional use of the trackir. The cockpit "floats" on the screen, turning to the pilot at the desired angle. At the same time, the picture on the screen is completely untied from the "home cockpit". From the outside, this looks strange, and the pilot needs to cross-eyed.
3. Actually, the idea: Is that the trackir does not move the car cockpit, but the world around it, creating the illusion of parallax.
Most people do not see the difference at all and do not understand what is shown on the screen
To understand what this is, imagine the effect of the Moon in the sky - it seems to be tied to us when we move.
Or stand right now by the window, look at some distant object (a house, a tree, a lamppost...), and move left/right.
You will see how this distant object moves with you, while the window moves relative to you.
This is the parallax effect, which in real life gives us a sense of the volume of space, helps us better determine the distance to objects, etc. In simulators, we can feel this effect in only one case - in VR.
It is absent on monitors even if we use a trackir.
Look at the video again, to the ambulance standing on the road (I specially placed it there as a landmark). Pay attention to its position relative to the monitor, and relative to the cockpit of the car, how it differs in the three examples. In the third version, due to the parallax effect, there is a feeling that the monitors are windows, and the world on the other side is three-dimensional. We can look behind the window pillar, and the car cockpit will not float away somewhere to the third monitor, will not stand at strange angles... it will remain in its place, creating a feeling of a holistic space of the home cockpit and the 3D space of the simulator.
I tried to make similar settings for the tracker by swapping the axes, something similar works, but there are not enough settings, so it works in a narrow range, for example, only when strafes the head left/right and up/down. This is not enough. The only way to implement this fully is if the developers of the simulator, or the developers of Trackir implement such a mode.
In my opinion, such a solution could turn the perception of the simulator through the monitor, creating a volume of 3D space.
