For the flight simulation enthusiast there is nothing more elusive and at the same time more desirable than immersion and situational awareness. This is true of both the civilian and military aircraft, whether you are on final approach to LAX with a heavy cross wind, Landing on the Lexington aircraft carrier in high seas or tracking a bandit at 20,000 feet, keeping track of your aircraft and its surroundings in the three dimensional world of aircraft presents challenges that far exceed those experienced by more conventional simulations that deal primarily in a two dimensional plane.

For decades we have been using the joystick hat switch for looking around our virtual aircraft. When it first became popular on high end joysticks, it was a Godsend. No longer did you have to use awkward keystrokes, removing our attention from the action on the screen. These hat switches became very comfortable, and second nature to those who flew flight simulations frequently, as thumbs replaced the natural act of looking left and right. This however is where the limitation of the hat switch really lays.

While many simulations made allowances for the vertical, it was often an afterthought, and in many respects it became the misbegotten stepchild of the flight sim. Some simulations would have just one 'up' view, so you were either operating in the flat 360º around you, or you were looking straight up. This led to many players developing some strange and bad habits. Because a direct view up was both disorientating and a less than perfect solution, many players would instead look left or right and roll their aircraft to get a good look up. This also affected how we flew. Far too many simulation pilots ignored the vertical and so never became good virtual pilots.

As flight sims matured, the 'up' view got more attention from developers and we started to see the 'up modifier'. This was typically a keystroke that on its own gave you the ever present straight up view, but when used in conjunction with other views, gave you a look around 45º as you used your hat switch to slew your view in all directions. With the advent of more complex joystick setups this modifier soon became common, and once again enthusiast became very comfortable with this way of looking around their virtual aircraft.

The History of Views

Still there was something missing. The down view was still almost completely forgotten. This wasnt nearly as big of an issue as the up view because the aircraft itself typically obscured most views below, but it was still missing. There was also the more vexing issue of tracking a fast moving target in a combat simulation. We could now see pretty much all around and above ourselves, but the views were not perfect. There was a problem keeping a target tracked as it moved from one hat switch position to the next. Even for those with years of experience, it was easy to lose a target that was near the edge of two different views. Even when you could keep track of the target, because you views were so unnatural, it was hard to keep track of the target and your own position relative to the ground.

Several attempts were made at overcoming this limitation. Some developers incorporated a view system that allowed you to pan your view around smoothly using the hat switch. This worked great in civilian simulations where you rarely had any need to turn your head quickly, but rather would be more interested in 'eye candy'. With the combat simulation this system was nearly useless. The speed at which the view would pan around had to be set to a speed that was slow enough to be controllable, and this means that it was far too slow to be of much use in combat. In most simulations it took between three and five seconds to pan from left to right, and thats about three to five seconds too long. There was no real solution however, since any faster and you wouldnt be able to control the view well enough. So we were back at using the hat switch, and this is how it was for a very, very long time.

Something was on the horizon that would change the virtual view system forever. It started out very slowly but soon, it became apparent there was something wonderful coming our way.

It was around 2002 a new way of keeping your virtual eyes on target began to make a buzz. The Track IR. Initially the TIR would convert your head movements up down and left right, into mouse movement. This allowed you to pan around your views in games that supported using your mouse to look around. In the past this was pretty useless for the sim pilot and you have to take you hand off the stick to move the mouse, but now things were getting interesting. At first while very nice it was far from perfect. The TIR system tracked a single point in the form of a reflective dot, typically on the users head or hat.

The first hurtle was that the unit converted head movement into RELATIVE mouse movement. Relative being that there was no set center point and as lag between the game and the TIR software combined with variation in how the input was processed meant that the center would wander around and you needed to keep re-centering your view. It also had the limitation of having no was to differentiate where you were looking so in order to have good head movement all the way to the six position, your forward view tended to be a bit jumpy, as even small movement was converted into view changes.

With TIR 2.0 a major upgrade was made, now games could incorporate 'enhanced' or 'absolute' mode. This let the game set you view based on an absolution position of your head, and at the same time allowed for a null zone or dead band in the forward view to keep your forward view stable. With this new update, it became possible to use the TIR2 in combat situations, something that just wasnt practical before the TIR2. For the first time in 20 years, a flight simulation could allow the players to look around in a fairly natural fashion. There was one remaining issue however.

The nature of the TIR and TIR2 was that they track a single point in 2d space. This meant that to the TIR unit, there was no difference between turning your head and leaning left or right. Both motion moved the tracking dot in the same way for the CCD camera. This same issue gave the TIR a steep learning curve, as you needed to hold your head steady as you flew in intense combat. If you ever watch yourself play a game, you would realize just how much 'body english you use. Stoping all this is not a natural thing for sure, and this one issue caused many to give up on the TIR.

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