I just made my first flight with my new ivibe unit and my new trackIR.Virtual reality is near. This was my first landing without ever taking my eyes off the runway on short final. I came in a little too flat and had to apply throttle once again. My seat rumbled under the power of the engine just to become calm again when I flared. I moved my head slightly to the left to watch another plane taxiing. Flaps up on my GoFlight unit without even looking.This is great fun!!!The trackIR needs a little getting used to. But it sure is great.Alex

Hi Alex,If you have the time,can you please tell me just what is " trackIR " ? I have never heard of it. and just what does it do with FS2002? and does it only work with " GoFlight " units?Thanks for the infomation.This Hobby Just Keeps Getting Better... :-yellow1Kind RegardsRobert

Hi Robert,you will find lots of stuff on this forum about it. There is also a review here on AVsim. But let me give you a brief description.TrackIR is basically an infrared device that allows mouse manouevering with head motions. Originally it was invented I guess to allow disabled people to move a mouse with their head.Having said it also enables you to adjust your viewpoint in every game where you can change your viewpoint with the mouse, with head motions. For FS2002 there is a special driver included that allows moving your viewpoint in the VC. Simply by head motions. No POV hat needed anymore. It takes a little gettin used to of course, but having used it for something like 30 minutes I can tell u the learning curve is pretty steep. In the beginning in some situations I was touching the POV hat by instinct. Your are condition in one direction, you have to relearn some stuff. Setup is very easy, a matter of minutes. Go check out the review here on avsim.Hope that gives you an idea.Alex

Alex,Like your signature, mine has been there for some time now, and not many take any notice!!Chris Ehttp://website.lineone.net/~flightsimukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)

Please tell us more about your experience so far with the ivibe seat.That interests me the most.gwillmot

Well Chris,I told you I would copy yours. Was in one of those posts in the thread that disappeared. Concerning the non-believers: It is hard to believe unless you have seen it, especially after the hype that was made around AGP ove the last years. I had to find out myself. Had someone told me guess I would have not believed it too. Also I was astounded how many people do not even know how to set the aperture size.Cheers buddy,Alex

Aah... I never saw any of those mysterious dissappearing posts....Chris Ehttp://website.lineone.net/~flightsimukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)

Hi Gwillmot,1.Early stageYou have to understand that this thing is still in its early stages, means if you buy it now you will not have the full functionality of it and you will be kind of a paying beta tester. Having said that I simply wanted to have this thing. It comes with an extended return option for early adopters which means your 30 day money back guarantee only starts counting after the full funcionality is there. I hope I made this understandable. If not, ask again.2. SeatThe seat is of very high quality and quite comfortable. It is equipped with heavy duty electro motors that throw weights around thus creating very powerful vibrations without creating a lot of noise themselves.3. Control unitNice looking unit to adjust the basic functions. Can be hooked up to the PC either via USB or the printer port.4. SoftwareThis is the key here. You can adjust many many different parameters to get the wanted effects, and maybe even more important supress the unwanted effects. E.g. you would not like your seat to vibrate lik hell if ATC adresses you. Hmm. at least you would wake up and listen then.Basically there are two ways the seat can be triggered.Audiosense:Very simplified the seat reacts to audio levels in different frequency bands like treble, midrange and bass. But do not think that this is very simply made. You can adjust many, many parameters to modify level, rise time decay, and texturing in order to get the effect you want. The DSP really is kind of a synthesizer for that matter. This is not at all comparable to the ridiculous subwoofers you can put under your #####. It took me only 10 secs e.g. to supress ATC vibrating almost completely. For people who know a little abut modifying sounds (especially musicians) it is easy to achieve good results. Later there will be special files for certain games so you do not have to go through the adjusting phase yourself. Having said that think that at this stage it makes only sense to buy the unit if you have a basic understanding of sound.Ivibe:That is the really interesting stuff and I have to say that it is not available yet but will be shortly, also for FS2002. To make it simple ivibe is comparable to force feedback. That means you can achieve certain effects that are not dirctly related to sounds too. It is a direct control mode that only works with games that support it.For those of you, and Chris I have teh feeling you belong to this group that are a little adventurous and like to play around in early stages and like to have things right now rather than later, it is a great thing.Craig the owner, is a very nice guy who is really dedicated to support all those people that buy it. I am 100% postive that he will stick to his money back guarantee. I had a defective unit first and he did all he could to solve the problem. I had my new unit 3 days later.I will write a review for you guys if the stuff is availavble in its full functionality.Alex

Hey thanks! I really appreciate the time/effort you put into the reply.I went to the ivibe site a obtained some more info. I really appreciate your perspective on things...being an owner and all.Glad to see this really adds to the flightsim experience.gwillmot

Greetings Alex!On the site I couldn't find info about the dimensions. I wonder if the thing will fit into the small seat of my equally small homebuilt cockpit. Could you give us the basic measurements please?Jaap Verduijn.

Jaap,hmm, it fits in a normal office chair. I mean the normal ones, not the executive version. If your seat is smaller than that you could run into probs.Alex

I am probably asking for the obvious again here...... but where is that site you talk about ??? :-outta Francois :-wave________________________Francois A. "Navman" DumasAssociate Editor &Forums AdministratorAVSIM Online!email: [email protected]________________________

www.ivibe.comAlex

Thanks mate!Jaap.