Poor Man's no-trackIR track IR setup with optical mouse

This all started with me wanting to buy TrackIR 5. But because 1)I'm poor and 2) I play fsx sitting far back on a couch with a big screen, I couldn't because track IR5 has a maximum distance of 4 feet. Also it's bloody expensive. I love the idea, look, and functionality of the system, but it can't work with my physical set up and bank account. At first glance, this might seem silly, but holy crap does it work nearly as well as track IR...especially for just casual flying looking left and right, up and down.

If you've ever tried Mouse-look ( shift+ O) , you'll notice that it has the lovely, smooth, 'real' head motions of track IR...only you're using the mouse, which obviously sucks.....BUT using a laser/optical mouse,

1) go into options and go to controls and select "mouse look" from the hardware drop down menu.

2) set sensitivity and null zone for mouse look to near zero...like 2%

3)Go into keyboard/joystick assignments and set "mouse look all directions" (default is shift+O ) so that it's assigned to one of your controller buttons so that you can easily toggle mouse-look on and off. I use the trigger.

4)On a hard surface floor, lay a small bath towel down (not folded). If you have rugs, put a book down or a thin, flat, piece of wood and lay your towel on top of that. On top of the towel, lay down a normal sheet of paper. You'll find that this little 'cushion' set up makes all the difference. Tinker with it . This can work with two mice, one for the trackir thing and the other for general pointing and clicking.

So what's all this for????? You're going to use your FOOT!

5)Now don't laugh until you try it....it's very subtle and you hardly move your foot at all....you stop realizing you're doing it and it links to your visual thinking system after only minutes. I'm able to control my visual panning in virtual cockpit mode with extreme precision and you'll find that the movements are very very slight to get lots of panning motion in a nice, fluid, track IR way. I can swing around and look behind in and back to front in one, little gesture. The trick with this is to plant your heel on the ground and use it like a pivot. The rest of your foot rests on the mouse with varying pressure as you control. The slight cusion stabilizes the view when your foot is fully resting on the mouse. I also tried having both my feet on either side of the mouse, which works also, but not as good. You have to experiment a bit, but after only a minute or so of practice, you'll see how super easy this is....it all happens in a really small way.....a simple slight curling of the toes and you look down, half inch motion to the left and it pans like a head motion, etc. It's really subtle and intuitive. I hardly ever use the jerky hat switch panning anymore, but if I want to, the defaulted toggle for mouse-look on the controller allows me to instantly get back into hat-switch mode so I can click stuff or regain control. It's added a lot of immersion to the experience. I just finished flying out of London and all along the coast, used my foot-view the whole way and it was perfect for gawking, landing, instrument checking etc.

Don't knock it until you try it. I'm impressed with the precision and relatively minuscule motions required to make it work.....it feels like you're 'thinking' the views and they're happening on-screen. Very unconscious. Again, experiment with rug, no rug, magazine, paper on rug etc...bare feet is a must I think. I put a little strip of skateboard grip-tape on the mouse which helps even more.

The foot-mouse could be a usb laser, the control click mouse is your wireless....not sure about all the combinations and permutations that work or don't etc.

Obviously this won't work if you're using foot pedals. Like I said "POOR MAN'S".