I've had my TrackIR 5 for close to 15 years now and it has definitely seen some use.

However, I will freely admit I never really loved it. Head tracking in itself is great, close to essential in some simulators but everything about the TrackIR 5 experience was just lukewarm, to downright annoying. Wearing something on your head or having attachments on your headset, the extra wire with the TrackClip, constantly faffing around with taking that off when you were done, being afraid of ruining that fragile plastic construction and its hinges.

Every time you had to put the headset down, it was with this conscious trepidation that it was done in a way that wouldn't tangle wires and making sure the clip was facing up. Setting up the software, the profiles, dialing in the settings was afternoon projects for some games. I've dealt with jitters and tracking issues, reflections and rogue light sources messing up tracking and overall, the experience is just one of "You know, I'd rather just not use it". The annoyances in using the thing constantly outweighed the benefits, for me.

However, I always eyed (pun intended) the Tobii Eye Tracker. Wasn't really sold, heard both positives and negatives. Heard reports of problems when wearing glasses, overall accuracy, poor support, lots of setting up, everything really.

Had it for some time now and I can happily report; this thing is absolutely amazing. Crisp tracking, extremely easy to set up, native support in MSFS, aesthetically pleasing having a small bar underneath my monitor as opposed to clips, hats, ugly webcam-looking thing and best of all; not wearing anything. No gear attached to a cap making you look silly, no clips on my headphones, I don't even have to wear anything if I just want the audio through my speakers.

Absolutely one of my best sim-related purchases in years, as having head tracking back without the unnecessary faff attached is such a great feeling 👌

Have the same feeling about TIR 5 here local... looking for a long time into Tobii and have the same hesitations.

Thanks for sharing appreciated.

Interesting read, thanks. I went the "cheaper" route using Beam Eye Tracker, Opentrack and a simple webcam. And I am not that happy with it, I already spent quiet some time in configuring all 6 axes of movement but it still does not feel right, while with TIR, I simply set it up and used it, already the default config was pretty neat. But what I already like more is the same as you: the absence of the need to wear anything. 

I hope that I will finally find a good setup, otherwise I might consider Tobii even though I am now ready for head and eye tracking using Beam. You really did not have to play around with all those mappings using Tobii? It was out of the box ok?

2 hours ago, Sethos said:

I've had my TrackIR 5 for close to 15 years now and it has definitely seen some use.

However, I will freely admit I never really loved it. Head tracking in itself is great, close to essential in some simulators but everything about the TrackIR 5 experience was just lukewarm, to downright annoying. Wearing something on your head or having attachments on your headset, the extra wire with the TrackClip, constantly faffing around with taking that off when you were done, being afraid of ruining that fragile plastic construction and its hinges.

Every time you had to put the headset down, it was with this conscious trepidation that it was done in a way that wouldn't tangle wires and making sure the clip was facing up. Setting up the software, the profiles, dialing in the settings was afternoon projects for some games. I've dealt with jitters and tracking issues, reflections and rogue light sources messing up tracking and overall, the experience is just one of "You know, I'd rather just not use it". The annoyances in using the thing constantly outweighed the benefits, for me.

However, I always eyed (pun intended) the Tobii Eye Tracker. Wasn't really sold, heard both positives and negatives. Heard reports of problems when wearing glasses, overall accuracy, poor support, lots of setting up, everything really.

Had it for some time now and I can happily report; this thing is absolutely amazing. Crisp tracking, extremely easy to set up, native support in MSFS, aesthetically pleasing having a small bar underneath my monitor as opposed to clips, hats, ugly webcam-looking thing and best of all; not wearing anything. No gear attached to a cap making you look silly, no clips on my headphones, I don't even have to wear anything if I just want the audio through my speakers.

Absolutely one of my best sim-related purchases in years, as having head tracking back without the unnecessary faff attached is such a great feeling 👌

Do you wear glasses?

4 minutes ago, mrlip said:

Do you wear glasses?

Sorry, I should have mentioned. I do wear glasses, so that was a concern of mine but I haven't had any issues whatsoever.

14 minutes ago, AnkH said:

You really did not have to play around with all those mappings using Tobii? It was out of the box ok?

It worked great out of the box in MSFS and there's no settings available for MSFS within the Tobii software. The only settings you need to deal with is under sensitivity, as the Tobii shows up as a new controller, so to speak.

I just messed around with it a bit, turned up the Eye vs Head tracking ratio, so it stopped tracking my eyes for fine-adjustment movement.

Only thing that was a bit weird was the slider called "Position", which was at 0, i.e disabled, that tracks you moving around. Enabling that caused the view to be behind the seat. However, binding "Eye Tracking Reset" to a key, pressing that solved it.

So two sliders I tweaked and then made a bind to pause it / reset it and I was off. 5 minutes of tweaking tops.

 

 

Edited May 3, 20242 yr by Sethos

29 minutes ago, Sethos said:

Sorry, I should have mentioned. I do wear glasses, so that was a concern of mine but I haven't had any issues whatsoever.

I have the Tobii but much prefer the Trackir.  I wear a headset so the tracklip was permanently connected to it.  I find the Tobii doesn't allow the view to remain stable.  I used FaceTrackNoIR to help with this, but it isn't as stable as TrackIR.

When sliding the view left, the Tobii moves the view left, but when looking over the shoulder and you move your head left, the view slides to the right!  For example, if you look over your left shoulder and want your head nearer the window, you have to move your head left for your simulated head to move right!

Edited May 3, 20242 yr by MrBitstFlyer

OP, this mirrors my experience as well. Switched to Tobii and much preferred it. I only sold it when I switched to VR.

48 minutes ago, mrlip said:

Do you wear glasses?

I have Tobii and I also wear glasses. It's not an issue at all -  Tobii works perfectly, specs or not.

Tobi might be great but I’ll tell you guys… VR is we’re the immersion is bigtime!
Can never go back to 2D now. 

I, too, have been quite happy with the Tobii since I made switch from a TIR device. The Tobii did take some tweaking to get the tracking to match what I was used to with the TIR but once I got it dialed in, I was very happy with it. For me, the magic tweak was to turn eye tracking OFF and just stick with head tracking. 

For those of you who are on the fence but leaning towards purchasing a Tobii, I'll mention that Tobii is having a spring sale until 15 May. You can get a 15% discount (as posted on Tobii's Discord) buying it directly from Tobii's website.

I also use the Tobii and prefer it over the TrackIR (which is really not saying much because I absolutely hated having to wear a hat or headset/clip all the time, so I rarely used it).  My biggest beef with the Tobii is the way it's implemented in MSFS... the settings must all be adjusted within the sim and there is not nearly as much flexibility as there should be.  For example, if you want to pause tracking while focusing on a specific area in the cockpit, the orientation always resets to the forward view... there's no way to set it up any other way.  Fortunately, combining the Tobii with FaceTrackNoIR ($3 - $4 online purchase), provides much more opportunity to fine-tune settings and yields a big improvement over the default tracking imho.

I switched to Tobii from TrackIR.  My only beef is that when look down on gauges and trying to adjust them it is not stable.  I have tried changing settings but can't get it to be completely still.  Very frustrating for such an expesive addon.  TrackIR was always stable.

 

 

1 minute ago, Darcy said:

I switched to Tobii from TrackIR.  My only beef is that when look down on gauges and trying to adjust them it is not stable.  I have tried changing settings but can't get it to be completely still.  Very frustrating for such an expesive addon.  TrackIR was always stable.

 

 

I had exactly the same experience with Tobii so I returned it for refund. I thought it might be due to my curved widescreen monitor.

Instead, I'm using Eye Beam and so far after about three weeks with it I am really pleased.

 

19 minutes ago, Noell said:

 

Instead, I'm using Eye Beam and so far after about three weeks with it I am really pleased.

Do you mind sharing your settings? I know it might not be usable for my setup, but to compare and fine tune mine it might still help.

Tobii is tracking both head and eye movement. For stability, I found to turn off eye tracking and use a small curve on the head tracking so it didn't respond to micro movements.