FreeTrack Forum

I've just hit upon this software from Wikipedia and it looks awesome!  About a year ago I came down with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and now can hardly use a computer at all, which is quite tragic as computers and video games were my life.  I was (up until the CTS) the Japanese correspondent for joystiq.com and was having the time of my life.

I'm starting to experience some hope however as things like freetrack and TrackIR look very promising.  I really need to operate computers without using my wrists (which basically means my hands). Can Freetrack do this?  Is it similar to the TrackIR stuff? TrackIR looks great, but does seem rather expensive.  The models they sell for the handicapped are much more expensive than the gamer models - I don't understand why.

Any help in any way would be greatly appreciated.  Could I use freetrack as a mouse replacement? Thanks for reading!

Hello,

Yes you can use FT as a mouse replacement. Only, FreeTrack don't do the clik so you'll have to use an other software to left click and right click ( ie Dwell Click ).
Once you've installed FreeTrack and set your LED system up, you just have to select the "mouse interface" in the FreeTrack Output tab.

Rémy

Thanks didja, I am so full of hope!  This is gonna make my life a lot better, I'm sure.  It sounds great for moving the mouse pointer in windows, but I can't help but wonder, is it possible to use this for games as well?  By that, I mean entirely as a replacement for the mouse rather than the supplementary role that you guys use freetrack for.  I realise it must be worse than just using a real mouse, I can accept that, but would it be tolerable? Tolerable would probably be sucky for most, but for me, that would be just fine!

Yeah, I guess it will be suitable for the use you want to do.
If you enable the Mouse output, it'll be seen by your PC as normal mouse so it's gonna work with all classic games .
I really hope you'll enjoy it !

Rémy

Greetings!
While I'm not in such dire circumstances, I also quite interested in a quality of TrackIR mouse emulation in games... before I jump the shark and proceed to buy/make all the needed hardware.

Question is, I've already experimented with a head-mounted Wiimote and a sensor bar (really nerdy, hah) for some head-tracking, using GlovePIE with scripts.

However, as I've found out, while it worked flawlessly (well, good enough at least) for controlling mouse pointer in windows, but when I run a game - all hell broke loose.
After lot's of head-scratching and forum-reading I found out that directinput is to blame - which is, at least as much as I understood, makes it next to impossible to emulate absolute mouse movement - and indeed, all scripts I've tried did a terrible job at that, and I don't have much time to dive into programming wiimote in directinput.
But that was just the preface...

My question is:
Can you really emulate absolute (and precise) mouse movements in directinput-enabled (that would be most of them, I suppose) games with Freetrack?

Using a wiimote camera, 3-led clip and head movements :).

Like, say, in strategy games. Or, in my particular case, I really want to use fly X3 using joystick for steering, and head movement - for cursor movements, which is useful for navigating menus and, most importantly, 'cursor fire' - which impossible when you use joystick, unless you are ambidextrous, and not really handy with mouse, because steering with keyboard is awfully awkward, and it's impossible to fire to the left while, for instance, turning to the right when you use mouse for steering.

I suspect that FreeTrack should be capable of it - after all, it should be infinitely more complex then a bunch of scripts written by amateurs for a device that was never intended to be used with a PC... but who knows, it is supposed to emulate joystick axis mostly, and mouse support can (and perhaps should) be an afterthought?

Hello Balor !

You can use a real mouse emulation with FreeTrack. You can choose between absolute and relative mode. You can also emulate the mouse wheel (with the move on the Z axis for example).

Rémy

Great!

A bit of ontopic:
While quite a hit-and-miss, OCZ NIA might be a rather good compliment to head tracking provided with freetrack.
For instance, you can assign lifting eyebrow for left click, clenching your jaw to right click, and that's to name a few.
The alpha and beta waves are way too unreliable, though - unless you are a zen master.

However, like I mentioned, it might simply not work for you... in this case, it might be possible to buy a full-scale brainfingers apparatus (NIA being very simplefied version of one) - http://www.brainfingers.com/

With this, freetrack, and some sort of speech-to-text application things should be absolutely handsfree and comfortable at that.

Thanks Balor and didja.  I've got some time now, I'm going to make this thing!  I'm starting with almost no knowledge at all, perhaps someone can help me out.  Where do I start?  What's essential reading?  I'm going to make it with a Wiimote.