NaturalPoint TrackIR

TrackIR is existing and mature product using the original idea. Sure it requires extra hardware, but it's amazing in first person games that support it. You get to use your good monitor, don't get dizzy like in VR and it could be quite cheap. I think implementing similar thing with just camera and computer vision is a good idea, let's make this more common thing.

I use XP 11 with my HP Reverb 2. The VR works and works pretty well. The feeling of looking around in the cockpit is a nice improvement even over my old standby of TrackIR, which I used to use more frequently. I will say that I think I might dust the TrackIR off and use it again at some point. VR is a little disorienting and uncomfortable for long time periods and just having head tracking with a monitor does get you part of the way there. I do find it difficult to "touch" the controls in the cockpit, so if you want to actually learn the cockpit layout (rather than mapping a bunch of stuff to your keyboard and/or other input devices) you may want to pause the game while you select things. The graphics in XP 11 can be somewhat improved with "Orthophoto scenery" and there is a lot of payware available too, but this is a deep rabbit hole with lots of sketchy downloads and mucking about. Even after doing this I don't think the visuals ever get close to competing with the MSFS "out of the box" experience.

Have you tried something like a TrackIR? It gives you the ability to do what you describe in a cockpit, as well as using your head to fix your eyes on a point of the horizon/landscape/object during maneuvers. I haven't tried a flight simulator with a VR headset, but TrackIR increases immersion so much that I never felt like I was missing the experience. Admittedly it can take some tweaking to get the response curves calibrated to what feels natural, and it never feels as natural as simply looking around (but I'd argue putting on a headset comes with ergonomic issues of its own).

Head tracking is quite a nice middle ground. TrackIR is the best known commercial product but you can find free alternatives with DIY hardware. With TrackIR (or equiv) you can see your surroundings, including your flight controllers. VR sure can be nice for some sightseeing when you're just flying around, but for longer flight simulation where you need to deal with radios, navigation equipment, aircraft systems, flaps, landing gear, etc it gets difficult. You need to have all of those buttons mapped and memorized so that you can find them without seeing them. I've heard some of the newest headsets have a camera for "seeing through" but I don't know how well they're suited to flight simming. Before you ask: yeah, the picture doesn't move when your head moves. It's kinda like controlling the in-game camera with your nose. The response is non-linear (and configurable). Looking at the instruments in the cockpit is very natural, just glance at the location on the monitor and you meet in the middle. As you look further away from the middle, the response gets more non-linear so when you look at the edge of your screen you should see about +/- 90 degrees (perfect for general aviation). Really extreme angles like looking backwards isn't really needed for general aviation but if you do dogfighting, it's possible too but you might need to compromise a little bit with the non-linearity of the response. I play MSFS with a TrackIR 5 head tracker and a medium-large 16:9 display and I use a…

My setup is usually one very good joystick (VKB Gladiator II) and sometimes an additional throttle control. But the VKB joystick has a little throttle slider on the joystick itself, and if I don't want to make space on my desk that's usually enough. As long as you have a good joystick and a keyboard, you can often reasonably fly pretty much everything from GA to Airliners. Though more out of curiosity I recently got a TrackIR, which tracks your head (usually using reflective surfaces that you can put on a baseball cap) and adjusts the viewing angle, and I must say that is an absolute game changer. No longer having to either guess what's left, right, or even behind the screen, or awkwardly using camera controls is so much easier. And I was surprised how natural it feels: The head tracking has to heavily amplify your head motion, since you still want to keep your eyes on the screen after all, and to my own astonishment there was practically zero time for my brain to adjust. I even added some nonlinear curves and that works well, too.

its so crazy to me how many times i've heard people praise the TrackIR, and I have one as well that really improved ETS2, but the latest version is advertised as a Windows Vista compatible product on Amazon. It works in all the later versions of Windows, but my point is how OLD it is. Has nobody figured out a way to improve on it yet? All the gopro headband hacks, monitor bezels shrinking over the years, wireless tech including bluetooth LE... one would think that there would be room in this world for a TrackIR 6. The VR craze is past the peak thankfully, but man that would've been the opportune moment to sell a product that doesn't have all the weaknesses of early Oculus and Sony VR headsets.

Wow, your post sure got a lot of replies, heh. I've not used a modern VR headset but I have used a TrackIR, and to me it provides such a huge leap in immersion that I can't really see how VR would be worth the extra hassle over that. I'd rather have a CAVE than anything like today's consumer VR. Give me more and bigger screens, not some headwear out of a dystopian sci-fi movie.

With that said, head tracking just on it's own adds a new dimension to the experience of a first person game. Sitting in the cockpit of a spaceship and moving around with the mouse feels like a game, but being able to tilt your head around, move it side to side and experience the parallax of all the different elements moving around eachother is astonishing. Even if you're one of the types that can't quite get into VR or wearing the headset, I'd recommend trying out some TrackIR, or for free you can try Opentrack + AI track and just use your standard webcam.