Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED headtracker review pt VIII: Enabling Cinemizer OLED headtracking in all Xbox 360 games

What if the sight in Rez danced to your head movements ...you could paint the lock ons not with a crude thumbstick ..but simply by looking at them? Or look around beautiful Gracemeria from the cockpit of an Ace Combat plane..hunting for bogeys just like Maverick and Goose? Or in 3D not only look through but move Masterchief's helmet/visor aiming where you look in Halo , in fact in every Halo game...How about using precise head aiming to have Marcus Fenix and crew zoom in using the One Shot or sniper weapons of Gears of War 3 ...again in 3D ? 

Aim : To play Xbox 360 games with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker ..any and all Xbox 360 games

Solution: Actually there are several methods we can use : but I want to focus on the Cronus device and Bullseye software today..

Xbox 360 + Cronus + Wired Xbox 360 official pad for authentication + Windows 8 Laptop

With the headtracker plugged into a Laptop USB port, Bullseye software is used on the PC to create profiles for each game and tweak mouse ergo headtracker function. The beauty of this solution is you can carry on using the Xbox 360 pad and or even the Kinect ...  

The crucial step in getting headtracking working is the authentication procedure , this must be with an official wired  Xbox 360 joypad. I tried with an Afterglow but the Cronus did not complete it's authentication. So let's be clear on this you must have a wired official Xbox 360 controller ! Whether you are going to use the Cronus with Bullseye software or go the GIMX route.


It's Plugging in time:

So with your Xbox 360 turned on , plug in the Cronus , plug in the wired official Xbox 360 controller and wait for the flashing AU to change to an O or 0 depending on your LED font interpretation ..Once it does so you can leave the wired controller plugged in as we are going to use it with the headtracker to control games..Plug in your Kinect if you want to the back of the Xbox 360 ..if you want!  Plug in ( lots of plugging) the micro USB cable to the Cronus and connect to a USB port on your laptop. On which of course you have downloaded and installed all the software from the Cronus site . Launch the Bullseye software and you are ready to go almost ... Plug in the Cinemizer OLED headtracker and leave it still for now 

The Bullseye/Cronus combination is an excellent solution to getting headtracking working as it has the easiest control config setup for mapping headtracker functionality to either left or right stick movement and also a very detailed yet simple way of messing with mouse acceleration, dead zones and sensitivity. 

Now we can tailor a cfg file for any Xbox 360 game and tweak how the headtracker creates in game movement.. 

I started off with chasing a setting for F12012 ...  Codemaster's in their great wisdom left out headtracking in the PC and console versions ..though they did leave in a look left and right option with the right thumbstick ..and this is what we map to the mouse and therefore the headtracker ... and now we can look around the car , or around in the car or pit lane ...

I prefer the headtracker to have over sensitive action at this time because one thing you should realise when gaming with headtracking is you are not VR modelling , you do not want 1:1 movement ie  1 degree of headtracking = 1 degree of in game movement because it would take for ever and a neck that rotated 360 (or 720 in the case of some games) and you would be doing so in a game like F1 2012 whilst hurtling forwards and in all directions at a couple of hundred mph...  What you want is minimum effort or exertion producing maximum effect. I want to look over to my wing mirror in F12012 but I also want to look up quickly at the track and opposition ..it is no use having highly accurate head tracking modelling every axis , gravitational forces and reproducing movement 1:1 when that eats up CPU time and more importantly takes your attention off driving and impedes your performance... 

It is far more effective in terms of playing a game to have an approximation ..in this case I only use the right stick left/right axis mapped to left right mouse movement and it gives me left right headtracking ...the speed and acceleration of which I can tweak ..but the use of which approximates a real action WITHOUT impeding a game playing action or experience... 

Of course if you are Seb Vettel then you may wish to have all those gravitational forces and axes impeding your performance to make a more acccurate simulation of real driving...

Using Bullyseye I was getting a snap back action after I moved the view with the headtracker ..but this is just a setting that needs to be tweaked in the software..

Setting up F12012 gave me a rough setting to test other game formats .. so on with the proof videos with a description of what it is actually like to play Xbox 360 games with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker and hmd after the videos ! 

FPS games 

Halo Anniversary Edition ... 3D .. with headtracking : Starting this game up ( I am still on the Pillar of Autumn level ..on this new edition..) your jaw will drop .. not just because of the wonderful OLED colours or the ghost free 3D ..but with the headtracker setup as above you are looking through Masterchief's visor and those sights move to where you move your head... Wow is about the first thing you will say ..out loud... go on try it I dare you ..

You may think that console games with their twin stick dead zones would not translate well to mouse emulation control ..well that may be so for mouse control. But we are using a head tracker ...and what are problems for mouse gamers, are boons for headtracking types... the Bullseye software for instance let's us tweak how much of a head tracker movement translates into how much of an in game action. Mouse emulation means we already have a control system coded for decades by games designers...

Take the FPS genre .. to play a FPS game apart from being able to see your entire FOV another essential ability is that of being to aim steady and true . To my surprise aiming and holding an aim steady .. the sights of a scoped rifle in Gears , or Halo (all the Halos!) is far easier with the headtracker on console  than using the old right thumbstick twiddling routine ..where you tend to over shoot and the stick snaps back and you overshoot the target in the opposite direction..and repeat ...There is no cursor wobble, none wearing the hmd+ headtracker .. in the videos above I manage to find targets whilst holding the headtracker in hand , or attached to various ridiculous devices in order to manage to film proof that you can use the Zeiss headtracker in Xbox 360 gaming .. in actual use i.e. when you wear it is amazingly accurate compared to other methods you have used in the past.

Halo ODST ..when last I played this with the Cinemizer OLED I was flying around taking on a giant insectoid modelled boss ... ODST is about my favourite HALO because it's neon and mostly vector graphics world with the ODST HUD really shines on hmds ..

Now throw in head tracking control and I am in control of areal craft target sights with head movements ...I can look at a target with the headtracker , keep it in sights whilst strafing around it with the left thumbstick ..fly under the boss and look up at and target it's underside ... even when you are using a bbq skewer to operate the headtracker ! 

Perfect Dark ..well it should be Goldeneye ..but Joanna will do .. the fact that I am playing an update of the N64 RARE classic on an Xbox 360 with the Carl Zeiss Cinemizer OLED head tracker controlling the fov ..including  pesky cross hair zoomed precision aiming ..just made my day ..cannot wait to kick around the office furniture again 

Third Person Games

Rez HD : I need to play Child of Eden with Kinect and Cinemizer OLED head tracking ..but first let's try Rez... Here I mapped the left analogue stick to mouse movement ...and therefore headtracking...

Now instead of moving a crude thumbstick to paint the lock ons in game I could look round the screen to target them ... This can obviously be tiring ! So this is one where you can up the acceleration and adjust sensitivity so you move your head less to achieve those locks ons... 

Gears of War 3 3D sbs 720p : Wow ...headtracking feels so natural ..what's more I can aim with the Single Shot or sniper weapons by looking at a target far easier than trying to hold the right thumbstick cross hair over a target. Looking round Marcus Fenix's world is a joy with the headtracker and with the Bullseye/Cronus solution I can perceive no lag . More importantly I can stop and hold that view rotation any time any where.

Resident Evil 6 

Aiming and movement are enhanced over other control methods so different to using the thumbstick ,mouse ,Wii mote or Move .. That aiming cursor can be placed and held still over any target , when moving the fov with the headtracker it's like you are finally playing the game with you in it , you will feel that something has been denied you all those years of TPS gaming without headtracking to look around.


All the FPS games and TPS games worked like a charm with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker ...this may be because the Bullseye software is set up to deal with these types of games. However with a little personal tweaking you can have excellent headtracking in other genres too


Ace Combat 6 : ahhh Gracemeria ... I have the headtracker on an oversensitive setting but right away I can look round the cockpit and around the exterior of the planes or up and around for bogeys like Goose before the accident... 

Combining Cronus, Bullseye, Cinemizer OLED headtracker , Xbox 360 pad and Kinect control... 

In HALO Anniversary ... we can look around using the Cinemizer OLED headtracker and use the Kinect voice commands ...say to SCAN your environment for instance ...

Mass Effect 3 ... you can look around and target with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker and shout commands through the Kinect... 

Steel Battalion Heavy Armor ..ok I know it is bad but somethings gotta make it good , just so I can keep the box next to my two Steel Battalion LOC+ linked  xboxes that I keep around incase I can find another human being who can start a VT... and perhaps that will be headtracking... 

Wow  and I have not even touched on what happens when we combine LEAP Motion with the Cinemizer OLED headtracker to play PS3 and Xbox 360 games using the Cronus and or GIMX ... 

All this on the day I got news my Oculus Rift is ready to go out ...unless it's  Palmer and co  teasing me again for playing with all these other hmds ... 

For gamers everywhere, you now have a viable hmd and headtracker solution in the Cinemizer OLED , one that I have now been using on a daily basis as a hmd for nearly half a year and with around 3 months of headtracker experience. 

The emphasis is on the now , if you want to play Halo 4 with headtracking, or Gears 3 in 3D with headtracking, if you dream of playing Rez or Child of Eden with headtracking on a portable display whose optics ,ergonomics and portability are second to none you can do that right now .

There are other options for you, but none that will let you play with the greatest of ease every PC game, Mac Game , every Onlive game , cloud game and as I discovered how to do EVERY PlayStation and Xbox 360 game and that is where  Cinemizer OLED headtracker starts to occupy too much of your time ! 


More to follow .. 

if you need a Cronus :

 Purchase  in the UK/EU the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED 3D iPack including iPhone adapter and in the USA the Cinemizer OLED , 

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