TrackIR 4 Pro Ultra by NaturalPoint

The TrackIR is an awesome toy, a must have for any serious gamer who even occasionally plays flight games, racing games, or first-person shooters. The immersion level that TrackIR provides simply has to be seen to be believed.$180 to $200 for a setup is way too expensive though, especially once you see the unit. Cheap plastic, limited view, and a chinzy metal bracket you have to pin onto your own hat don't add up to $180 worth. The first time I ordered my TrackIR it came with a broken tracking clip (the TrackIR Pro Clip has IR leds and attaches to your headset to track your motion, instead of requiring you to wear a hat). A close look revealed why: super thin plastic and a poor mating design guarantees that even a mild jostle or jolt will result in catastrophic and irreparable damage. For $180, one would expect a much more robust design. Imagine a joystick that snaps in half if you lay it on it's side. Now imagine paying $180 for that joystick. Feel the pain? Luckily, Amazon is awesome about returns and I had my new (and complete!) TrackIR in about a week. Way to go, Amazon!There's no real documentation, just a quick-start guide, but you don't need any. TrackIR works great literally right out of the box with a number of games. Once you get pro you can tweak all you want, but you'll be going to forums for that info anyways, not a user's manual.All that said, the enhancement to gameplay that TrackIR brings is unique and will change the way you play these genre of games. Maybe it makes up for the extremely poor quality parts, I dunno. I can't live without mine now, but I am terrified that I'll breathe wrong and break the thing again.

OK, if you had this thing working from the beginning, it would easily be 4 stars. But because there's a critical piece of information required to ever work, it gets 2 stars!If you connect this device into your PC, *once*, before installing the drivers (think plug-and-play), it will *not* work, possibly ever. Despite help from their tech support, and more reboots than you can imagine, I finally got this working by going to another PC, installing the software there, and then checking all the registery changes. Then manually redoing the ones in my gaming PC. After that, it is really cool. Flight Sim X and Combat Flight Sim are mega cool - I thought they would be and hence my extraordinary effort to get it working.You can check the forums and see there's a bunch of dummies stuck in the penalty box for the same reason.Do yourself a favor and install the SW before getting that cable anywhere near your USB hub. Hopefully they'll make a robust software installer someday.Here's what it's like - turn your head a little, the view (on Flight Sim X which has builtin support) turns a little. Turn a lot, but not so much that you're looking out the corners of your eyes, and get the view behind you! Way cool. In fact, I can tilt my head, move my head in close to the instrument gauge, or lift my head to see over the plane cowling and it's just like being in the there. No more fumbling with a "hat" switch to pan around. It took me no time to get coordinated with the controller (ha - I already know how to move my head to look around!).I have not tried this in any shooting games. I think it would require a bit more effort to sync up the direction you're looking with the one you're moving.

The product is cheaply packaged, I suspect it was opened at one point, but the device works so I didn't follow it up with amazon.It works as described but it didn't increase my immersion. Probably because I have trained myself to use the fixed pov.It could have included a video instruction regarding setting up the tracking LED (the thing costs 200 bucks). Through trial and error I figured out that the LED should match the contours of your face. In the manual it looks as if it should contour your headphones.It does not work in natural lit rooms, I have a skylight and I can't play in the day because the room is flooded by UV and it make the tracker go nuts.All in all pretty pricy add on. The immersion requires a little bit of getting used to. The hot keys should have been better chosen, it replaced my F12 external camera in FSX, so when I pressed F12 expecting the camera to switch, it actually disabled the irtracker. Took me a good while to figure out that the product was not going crazy, just that it replaced a functionality that I was used to.

I am using a DELL XPS-710 Desk top with Nvidia 8800GTX. I was advised by NaturalPoint support to move from the front USB to a rear USB port. When I did this, The tracker will not run on my system any longer. I even had help from Dell but no use. NaturalPoint Tech support advised that I might be able to continue to use the tracker if I did a new complete re-install of system/windows on my new Dell. I declined to go through all that due to the fact that everything was tweaked perfectly for all my other itmes. I enjoyed it while it worked, but had to spend time tweaking it every time I used it. I liked the headset clip best, but did not like having to use the headset to use the clip. Hat is worse, too hot while in doors. This item needs more work by inventors. It needs Better support/fixes for problems like mine. Great idea, but very expensive for what you actually get as far as quality goes. Software needs a lot of work to make it more stable. Do not move USB plug once installed! I will buy the next item I find like it. Being able to look back and around left or right while in a flight sim, with a single screen, is absolutly the best! Can't wait for the future and new ideas for flight simulators!