Head Tracker for PS:N

BorisBlade · 2011-02-14, 08:49 PM

Saw this the other day when i was parusing tomshardware, seems pretty cool. The guy is usin it on ARMA2. I have a friend who does a ton of flight sim/combat games and he loves the tracker he has (i think its the previous model to this one).

Looks killer imo, if it were supported in in the new PS i would get one in a heartbeat. Havent seen how or if its supported in any more mainstream games yet. But if its as cool as it looks in teh vid i dont see why any developer wouldnt love to support it. It definately would add to the immersion.

Anyone else tried this in an fps? AT 120-150 bux dependin on which model ya get, i wouldnt wanna snag one and find that "oh hey it doesnt work except on the 3rd tuesday of every month and only between august and december".

Bags · 2011-02-14, 08:53 PM

Sorry, while cool that's a complete waste of development time. I can't imagine more than 1% of people who play planetside would buy this for $150. Not to mention if you turn your head you have to look out of the corner of your eyes.. which is annoying after long periods of time.

Raymac · 2011-02-14, 09:50 PM

oh, c'mon Bags. You don't have to be Captain Buzzkill all the time, right? That shit looks sick.

I freakin love living in the future.

Bags · 2011-02-14, 10:01 PM

Originally Posted by Raymac

oh, c'mon Bags. You don't have to be Captain Buzzkill all the time, right? That shit looks sick.

I freakin love living in the future.

How am I being a buzzkill? It looks cool, but ultimately it's a waste of developer time in the current day. Should I lie and say it should be their number one priority? The forums are for discussing ideas to make PSN better. If they could put it in without sacrificing dev time for something else or pushing the release date back, I'd be all for it.

Raymac · 2011-02-14, 10:08 PM

I just mean you trashed it pretty quickly. I never said it's the 1 feature that must be in the game unless PS:N is fail.

If it's cool, see if you can make it work. If it becomes too much trouble than it's worth (remember in-game voice chat?) then you ditch it. Planetside's scale is a great platform for this technology, so I wouldn't call it "a complete waste of development time".

Bags · 2011-02-14, 10:09 PM

I just can't see how it's a efficient usage of dev time. If they could get it in in a few days, why not. But if it's something that would take weeks, no no no.

Raymac · 2011-02-14, 10:24 PM

I'm sure the devs know how to prioritize. If it's not something that is supported at launch, then it would be cool to see it in the patch notes sometime. Hell, I'm so broke I couldn't afford one now anyways, might as well wait for patch 2.4

BorisBlade · 2011-02-14, 10:47 PM

I figure if all these totally obscure no name games can fully support it. It cant be that difficult. Not like we are askin either do this or make a ton of content. This is a rather small thing. Not askin for it at launch either tho, the game obviously has a tiny budget/resources. But down the road would be killer.

Sifer2 · 2011-02-15, 12:30 AM

Well its a nice idea but it doesn't seem to work like it should. That is since your monitor doesn't move with head it doesn't really simulate looking around.

An yeah probably would be used by very few players so time could be spent better elsewhere.

Aractain · 2011-02-15, 12:49 AM

I use this with Arma 2 myself. Its pretty cool but its only really useful for serious flying. A hat switch acomplishes 90% of what it can do and I doubt you need to 'land' a delicate chopper to drop off troops quickly in Planetside.

You can use it with infantry as well but it took me hours to set it up so it felt right (it would cosntantly lean so I had to put large dead zones and sensitivity changes in).

Gogita · 2011-02-15, 02:08 AM

I have to agree with Bags
If something is cool, it does not immediately mean that it is good to have in the game. It's like saying it would be cool if PsN has Kinect support so you can use your whole body to control your character and that it should be implemented.

Sorry, this would, as bags said, be a waste of development time

Hamma · 2011-02-15, 09:58 AM

This thing is pretty awesome, I've seen it used in a variety of games but I'm not so sure I would buy it myself. I think it would be pretty neat in PlanetSide as well but I'm not 100% sure it would fit the game.

And Bags, please don't use the "I want the devs to spend time on something else" argument. It's one of the silliest arguments in all gaming communities. It's as if there is one person working on game development? You realize it's entire teams right? People make the same arguments about World of Warcraft and they probably have a thousand devs on their team at this point.

If you don't want it in the game fine, but don't use the whole I want devs spending time on other things argument, it always sounds silly.

Valverde · 2011-02-15, 10:05 AM

Yeah the head tracker is pretty sick. Plus it doesn't take to long to add support for something like that, and usually could just be patched in. I bet you they will add support for it later on, but most likely not at release. Then again you never know. They did say the flight is going to be a lot more hardcore. Nonetheless I give you +1 for giving me something to think about day to day lol.

Bags · 2011-02-15, 11:27 AM

Originally Posted by Hamma

This thing is pretty awesome, I've seen it used in a variety of games but I'm not so sure I would buy it myself. I think it would be pretty neat in PlanetSide as well but I'm not 100% sure it would fit the game.

And Bags, please don't use the "I want the devs to spend time on something else" argument. It's one of the silliest arguments in all gaming communities. It's as if there is one person working on game development? You realize it's entire teams right? People make the same arguments about World of Warcraft and they probably have a thousand devs on their team at this point.

If you don't want it in the game fine, but don't use the whole I want devs spending time on other things argument, it always sounds silly.

Sorry, how does there being different teams (which I knew already, but you assume so it's all cool. You know what they say about assumptions.), change whether or not it's a waste of dev time? Nowhere in my post did I indicate I do not know there are different dev teams. I mean, did you even think before you posted?

Whichever team gets stuck doing it would probably be better off doing something else instead of adding support for an expensive, gimmicky product. Unless they have a development team specifically for implementing gimmicky, likely to be unused features it will most likely be a very poor usage of developer time.

Now if your monitor would swivel around and stay in front of your eyes on the other hand...

Firefly · 2011-02-15, 11:55 AM

I wonder how this (or just Planetside in general) would work if you had three-four monitors linked up. A buddy of mine has three monitors all linked together so that his normal field of view is spread quasi-fisheyed across all three monitors. Basically, your field of view is expanded to extreme left and right, instead of what's just in front of you. He has an ATI 5970 video card, and a trio of 24" monitors at 1080p. Actually, now that I think about it... I don't think it can currently be done with Planetside though, as it would need to support odd resolutions (like 3875x1012 or whatever it is).