TrackIR 4 Pro Review in “Flight Simulator Geek” Week

By: Chief Gizmateer, Gizmos for Geeks
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

As part of our week long feature on “Flight Simulator Geek” Week, we reviewed several products that aid in the game play of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X game. Starting with the TrackIR 4 Pro by NaturalPoint. The TrackIR product line has been lauded as one of the “must have” accessories for Flight Simulator addicts and today the geeks try out this newest version that has built upon their award winning line of head tracking systems.

What is the TrackIR? The TrackIR consists of an IR sensor and a set of IR reflective targets. The IR sensor tracks the relative position and movement of the target and determines how to set the view in your favorite game automatically. allowing you to simply turn your head slightly to pan the view.

So, what was our verdict? After two weeks with this unit, we can’t imagine flying Flight Sim without it and it has totally sold us on the 3D Virtual Cockpit mode. We do caution however, that we did our testing using a 24” Dell LCD, and we suspect users with smaller displays might find the “my head it turned to the left, but the monitor is still straight ahead” issue more irritating than we did. If you’re a Flight Simulator (or for that matter a player of any sort of First Person perspective game that allows panning around the viewpoint) we have to say that the TrackIR 4 Pro is a must have accessory. While the price might seem a bit high at $170 MSRP (the Geeks have seen these units for sale for as low as $140) you’ll never want to play without it as it totally revolutionizes the way you play.

This was the best rated gadget of the week, check out Gizmos for Geeks for more reviews of Flight Simulator X gadgets.