Hi everyone, I'm one of the developers on Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad (http://www.heroesofstalingrad.com) and we're looking at putting TrackIR support in the game. I just wanted to see if any of the TrackIR users/fans have any ideas/suggestions on how you'd like to see the TrackIR used in the game.

Thanks,

John Gibson
President
Tripwire Interactive LLC

Hi John / Ramm,

Personally I would love leaning and peeking over objects - especially peeking over objects, and ducking. Whether or not it would be too difficult to implement incremental leaning or peeking for non-TrackIR users I don't know, but it would be nice to run towards an objective ducking under gunfire, then when you get there poke your head above sandbags, or lean around and forward to look around the corner of a wall. Aside from that, just being able to look around as usual with TrackIR games would be appreciated on its own.

I'd love leaning, aswell as peeking over objects.
The best solution in my opinion would be the same as in the ArmA series, which is pure freelook.
I don't know how the game would work with both freelook and freeaim combined, but I do know that TrackIR support is very welcome.

In the past I used to have a TrackIR 3 non-Pro, but I kind of broke it by tripping over it's wire while it was stuck between my desk and the wall.
With the addition of TrackIR support I'd definately consider buying the new TrackIR 5.

The other thing that would be cool would be to lift your eyes above the sight when in iron sight mode, to give youa bit more visibility, and then when you sight your target, just drop your view back down to align your eyes back with the iron sights.

Welcome, John, and thanks for stopping by to field suggestions. Very cool! We've seen some fantastic TrackIR integration in FPS games so far, but I think there's definitely room to take it even further. Hopefully the community will chime in with their thoughts.

The same type of head movement system as seen in the ArmA games would be best IMO, along with Morello's excellent suggestion to look above the weapon's sights when in ironsight mode.

Thanks for the feedback guys, and keep those suggestions coming.

Maybe some better visual cues to indicate where your head is pointing with respect to your body? In Arma, if you can't see your gun it can be a bit disorientating, flight sims usually don't have this problem because they have cockpit and glass reflections. The cues could take the form of faint HUD markers or discoloration applied to the scene for greater head angles.

Well Ii agree with the ARMA rout, pop up like Morg said, would be nice if could be a standard game feature. As long as you are more exposed for raising your head.

As far as visual cues if you could see your arms right and left when free looking, it should be enough to not get visually disoriented, if they are not looking up.

Arma 2 have a very nice implementation of TrackIr imo.

I would love to have the possibility of looking around while being deployed with a mg or other weapon, and also raising my head above the weapon to be able to spot enemies more efficiently.

TrackIR support in RO-HOS is much wanted from this RO mod and RO-O player atleast!

Late to the party...

The thing I find most disorientating in Arma2 with TrackIR is this:

I might be on a slow walk (patrol speed), scan the landscape, then see an enemy to my side (say left). So my eyes (and in-game head) stays locked on the enemy, but now I have to turn my body and weapon towards the left (which is controlled by mouse). Depending on the speed of mouse movement, either I'm unable to counter with TIR and my head turns even further left, or I overcompensate. All the time, without seeing my weapon I might also overturn my body.

Basically a long way to describe the in-game problem for something that in real life is very simple: If my head is off-center spotting an enemy, I can bring up the gun and turn my torso to align the gun with my line of sight, the view stays strictly on the target all the time.

In A2, this simple real-life movement is very hard to master, and for me quite negates the advantage of TrackIR for infantry.

If you guys can get this right...

Doing the same in flight sims is easy and feels natural because the aircraft turns slowly and the cockpit gives good visual feedback as to what direction you're looking.

In FPS games, the player's body is effectively the 'aircraft', but it turns much faster, almost instantaneously, and the only visual cue is the gun, which is not always visible or not visible enough to easily judge direction. I think strong visual assists are essential for FPS head tracking to make up for the lack of visual cues and the fast turning speed.

There are many things that can be done to improve TrackIR implementation.

Here's a few:

General Application - the head of the player avatar should be controlled by the TrackIR input. If the body moves (by the use of the mouse), the head is of course pulled along. Leaning (roll axis) should make the player torso lean a bit as well. But not necessarily to the level of actual 'peek around corner'.

Body awareness and immersion - The issue of being a ghost. Flying a plane in IL-2, there's no one in it. We have only the shape of the cockpit to go by. It's a major immersion killer and makes it more difficult to navigate. This is even worse in infantry games as interaction with environment is very important yet if we are a ghost we understand poorly how we are really situated. Solution: Seeing one's actual body from first person view goes a long way.

Locating something with the head and then trying to move the body and gun there using the mouse, difficult to coordinate. This was mentioned above. It has very simple solutions. Solution: Two options: 1. A button with this function could move gun aim to head aim. 2. A button when held will freeze the head tracking axis (in essense, holding this button makes the head view temporarily unaffected by the movement of the gun/body, so our view remains fixated on the target while moving the mouse in that general direction soon makes the gun come into view. This makes the effort to sync the views a nonissue. Both button functions can be combined with other already existing buttons in the game. For example, maybe holding the iron sights button would perform the action above.

The potential issues of excessive sensitivity when using natural FOV. When aiming through iron sights, the view of view should go from the unnatural (But necessary) zoomed out fish eye view to the narrower real life field of view (otherwise the experience would be similar to trying to aim and shoot a gun looking through the wrong ends of binoculars - everything is much smaller and further away than they should - and as a result of pixels, terribly pixellated and hard to identify). With TrackIR enabled, that can make the head movements too sensitive. Lowering the sensitivity to head movement in that situation would be useful.

The problem of limited "Y" (up and down) movement. Especially with an iron sight you wish to look a bit above. For most people sitting in chairs when using TrackIR, the ability to position your head higher or lower is very limited, unless sitting in some unhealthy awkward position. This is also the case in real life cockpits for planes and cars when we are strapped into chairs that don't allow us to move up or down. In these real life situations, the way humans raise or lower their sight to 'see above' something for example, is to rotate the head UP (as if to 'look up' into the sky) while keeping the eyes trained level along the horizon. Because the eyes are mounted in the front of the head, and the neck is in the back, aiming our head up brings the eyes up higher, and thus we see things from a few inches higher up. But when doing it with TrackIR in any game I know to date, your aim will hopelessly just aim up or down runing any upward movement. This is unrealistic actually, but trackIR cannot know your intentions unless you tell it.Solution: Copy the human body. In the game when aiming with iron sights for example, the regular Pitch (rotate up down view) axis should no longer aim your view up or down - that would have to be done purely with the mouse. Instead, the pitch axis should now simply perform the "Y" (up down) movement, so you are still looking along the gun at a target, but your eyesight is raised a bit over the sights. The same could be done to some extent with the yaw axis (left right aiming), it could perform "X" axis (moving left to right but not changing your direction of aim) motion instead of changing your direction.

Spatial HUD aids: It can sometimes be hard to understand fully how far off we are actually bending our head compared to the aim of the 'body/gun'. Solution: A grahical representation on the HUD could indicate how far the head is looking from center. Two options: 1. Can be in the same of a rather small semi-transparent box as a HUD component (next to the health/posture indicator for example). It has a small dot in the middle which represents where the guns are aiming. When you move your trackIR head away from center, it is represented in the box by seeing that tiny dot no longer being centered. You will always know how your head is in position to the 'real' aim, and how to move to instantly get back to center. It's a bit like having an on screen gunsight (not allowed usually due to unrealism) but since it's positioned in a small box it can't be used for targetting, only for spatial awareness.