Use the Nx Head Tracker along with the forthcoming Nx application to experience the music, movies and games you love in 3D audio – on your computer, tablet or mobile device, using any set of headphones. Use the Nx Head Tracker along with the Nx Virtual Mix Room plugin in order to recreate on headphones the ideal spatial acoustics of a high-end room, improving your headphone mixing and recording experience. This small Bluetooth device latches on to your headphones and tracks your head movements in order to augment the immersive 3D audio experience created by Nx technology. Everyone can use Nx to play music, movies and games in immersive 3D audio, using any pair of headphones. Audio professionals use Nx to improve headphone mixing and recording.

TrackIR is considered the gold standard, but I have friends who have TrackHat and DelanClip (two cheaper alternatives) and love them.Waves Nx technology uses advanced psychoacoustic algorithms to recreate on headphones the three-dimensional experience of listening to sound in the real world. I know some excellent dogfighters who don't use head tracking or VR, but they're far and few between.

You can naturally fixate on something outside the cockpit (the runway, a hill, your wingman, a bandit!) as you maneuver. The cockpit feels like a real space, and switches are easier to find and click. Not only does the ability to look around make the game that much more immersive, but it vastly improves your ability to fly a plane. You want a joystick, but I think you're going to have a much better time with a cheap stick and head tracking than you would with just a HOTAS. I'm going to push back against some of that advice and suggest that and suggest that head tracking is a more important first step than a good joystick. After all, this is a study-level flight sim you want a joystick with as many buttons as you can cram on the damn thing. Many long-time players recommend that newbs get theselves a decent joystick, or even one of the cheaper HOTAS setups first. After all, you don't want to make a massive upfront investment while you're figuring out if the game (or genre) is your cup of tea. With our new friends come a lot of questions about what controls and peripherals they should buy, often on a limited budget. Between the holidays, the holiday sales, and the Tomcat free weekend, there's a lot of new folks coming to DCS.

Waves headtracker