They are not serious

Ooh, awesome. I was literally just thinking the other day that it was a shame on-foot head tracking games pretty much started and ended with ArmA 3, because it's great both for situational awareness, and for just plain gawping at stuff.

Will definitely be trying out some of those :)

Typically people don’t use 1:1 movement when using something like this. It’s a much higher ratio so you only have to slightly move your head to look around. It allows you to do it quicker but also avoids exactly what you’re describing.

It's not a 1:1 link with these, turning your head only slightly is enough to look behind in game.

Not necessarily if you've got a curved ultra-wide display. Combine this with some rotation factor and you can look around while still looking at the screen.

If you use eye tracking to control head movement then the head will move past where the eyes were looking.

Yes indeed - ARCore on Android, ARKit on iPhone - AR optimizations are crazy good.

Why? I'm supposed to avoid projects just because someone else did a similar thing unless I want to delve into their research or something?

I can do whatever you want with my own projects, if I want to make an app to do X thing I can.

I tried to play Elite Dangerous in VR. It is a very nice game to do that with but personally I found the heavy HMD got uncomfortable inside of a half hour, and I had difficulty reading text. It's fine for combat missions but if I want to design a trade route I'd rather just use my normal monitor.

The other problem is that I have a fancy throttle and stick with lots of extra buttons and switches. I know common functions by touch but if I wanna toggle exterior lights or something I have to look down and find a label.

For me choosing a screen + head tracking vs VR is like choosing to use speakers instead of headphones. The headphones sound way nicer and give much more immersive soundscapes but sometimes you want to have some tunes going and not have your ears get sweaty.

VR headsets that are any good are quite expensive so price is definitely a factor I think. Plus they introduce a lot of eye fatigue and you have to wear something on your head which gets tiring.

I have a VR headset and still prefer head tracking. It's more comfortable, and becomes second nature after an hour or two of use.

I have had a TrackIR 5 since pretty much release which I used religiously for flight siming. I also have a tobii eye tracker. I have pretty much stopped using the trackir entirely now in favour of the eye tracker + opentrack. It is incredible, works flawlessly. You have a very small amount less horizontal turn tracking, but honestly your head has to be comically side on for you to notice the difference. Perfectly smooth and predictable. Lately been using it in Nuclear Option and it’s changed the game. TrackIR also works great, and is also flawless, but the key difference is the eye tracker requires zero hardware on your head to work. Even works through glasses.

I guess so, given I have my TrackIR in a box!

That said, I have had issues with opentrack that involved some mildly irritating troubleshooting. Namely X4: Foundations didn't work properly with the standard freetrack output regardless of how I configured it, and I ended up needing to use "UDP over network".

I've never had a comparable problem with TrackIR, in spite of using it with a wider variety of titles over a longer period. I do kinda like having it as a backup in case more intractable problems crop up.