This technology looks like it works very well. I have seen lots of 2 LED motion sense units but the third LED seems to add lots to the capability. Now if only someone came up with an open source version of it since the prices seem a bit high.
"As you move in your chair and rotate your head small amounts : your game-view will precisely correspond. You never have to look away from the monitor because all aspects of your motion are amplified and adjustable. There are only 6 ways you can move around in 3D space. There are 3 ways to lean, and 3 ways to rotate. The technical term for all of these movements is "6 Degrees of Freedom" (or "6DOF"). True 6DOF support is one of the main things that puts TrackIR well ahead of any other input device."
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They do have a free / open source version called FreeTrack. It uses 2+ LED’s for up to 6 DOF. It just requires a web cam and your IR LED’s.
http://www.free-track.net/english/
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Cool. Love the idea. I hate to deride a good product with this side-note, but I have no choice. 😉 Did anyone catch that “we have patented math” part? It is infuriating that the whole reason that patenting software was not possible until recently was because you explicitly cannot patent absolute facts like math. And that software is simply applied math. Of course the patent lawyers got involved and made it possible to patent the application of the math and thus patent software. But this man gives us the perfect reason as to why software patents are a bad idea. You cannot get a patent for a math problem. You can as always copyright it. Sorry for the sidetrack. Good product. Would love one for myself. I think I’ll try the non-patented math open source version.
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i have 5x better idea i just need help
who lives in new york cite and has good knowledge building gadgets for computers plese contact me
yahoo
m_ghv_geo@yahoo.com
skype
m_ghv_geo
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@ GeneralFault:
NaturalPoint themselves are offering a SDK (OptiTrack) for developing tracking software. Second baffling move to me, besides the “math patenting” one.
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A free SDK is a good thing, it isn’t baffling at all. Companies opening up products for users to experiment and develop their own projects around is a positive trend, it lets people get more value out of things they already own.
Check out this person that made a virtual guitar using the SDK and a TrackIR.
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Oh, here is the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCPFYKq5zTk
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i heard freetrack thing stole trackir software in order to work in any games. wtf
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Freetrack used the TrackIR interface, which was latter removed on request of Natural Point.
Atleast as far as I know that is all they used.
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Sorry they used the TrackIR camera which support for was removed.