My 2 cents from using a TrackIR 5 for 13 years:
I'm using a standard TrackIR 5, with the TrackClip on a hat (not the TrackClip Pro)
I've never had problems with latency, at all. It's always been smooth and reactive for me. FPS in game will always be the limiting factor here I think. If it lags, it's the game that's lagging, not TrackIR.
Precision is maybe a bit harder to quantify. First of all, TrackIR tracks your head movement very precisiely. There's no jitter, no drift, no jumping around.
But how that translates to in-game movement depends a on the profile you use. If I use a profile set up for quickly looking all around, I'm going to have some issues with looking precisely at a specific point. The other way around is also true, a profile set up for very fine control will be less suited to quickly looking behind me in game. Luckily creating profiles is easy, there are several default ones included in the software, and there are great ones to be found online.
Poor tracking happens, in my experience, in 2 cases:
- at the very extremes of motion, when the 3 reflective surfaces of the trackclip start to overlap or become hidden or leave the field of view of the camera. This can usually be fixed by aiming the camera better, or by improving your profile. But yes, it can happen when looking down too much.
- when there are reflections of sunlight in view of the camera. The IR light from the sun will always win from the reflections from the trackclip. Can be fixed by closing a curtain.
I have no experience with the TrackClip Pro and whether this fixes this specific issue.
Those are the only cases of poor tracking I have experienced in 13 years of using it.
One possible downside, especially if you're used to face tracking, is that you have to wear a hat or something similar to hold the trackclip.
I have no idea about the current state of open source (face) tracking options. Haven't used those since I got my TrackIR 13 years ago. But that in and of itself also says a lot I think.
