From: schmit@hooked.net
Subject: TECH: Mechanical head trackers
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 20:02:11 -0700
Message-ID: <31CCB3B3.53B@hooked.net>
Organization: Hooked Online Services


I am a high school student with a limited budget, so I have been
limited to garage or homebrew VR.  I thought of a neat idea to create
a partial head tracker for games that dont normally support it.  This
is a very simple idea, so dont expect too much.

	Upon cleaning a mouse, one notices that the ball moves two
rollers, one for horizontal movement, and one for vertical.  Could
these rollers act to measure pan and tilt in a boom type head tracker?

	 /----------vertical tracking roller for tilt.
	V

      |<==>-----------
      |              ^   <----- the roller that traks horizontal        
      |              v	   	movement, for pan
      |              |
      |            /----\
      |            |o  o|
      |            | || |
    THE BASE        Your head

This system could be used for games like Duke Nukem (in mouse aiming
mode) and descent, with both directions, or Doom, with only Pan
enabled.
 
It could also be easily integrated into other VR software.  It
requires little to no programming and can be used with almost any
software


****DISCLAIMER: I have not tested this idea.  It may completely
destroy your computer and/or you.  I have not constructed it and do
not know if it will work.  :þ ********8


Kevin Schmidt
Please send reponses to schmit@hooked.net as well as this newsgroup