
While the FSR teams are moving to their new championship destination in Hungary, with new car models from ISI’s latest 1.150 patch for rFactor, featuring the BMW Sauber F1.06, the Twister-Racing team has agreed a partnership with NaturalPoint that will extend this season and beyond in 2007.
NaturalPoint is an innovative and leading company for specific gaming hardware that simulates physical movements ingame, using infrared/dot tracking technology. In the past two years, NaturalPoint has grown to become a well established company composed by high school graduates programmers. Taking the opportunity to use technology previously only available to military and large corporations, Jim Richardson started the american company in 1997 with the aim of bringing to market a high quality image tracking system. Jim’s cousin had been involved in a severe accident and could no longer communicate in any manner but eye movement. Together with Birch Zimmer, lead programmer, they worked towards making alternative input devices for people with disabilities.
The latest development for simracing is the TrackIR4:Pro, which enables 6 Directions of Freedom (DOF) both in leaning and rotation of the head. Twister-Racing will be promoting this revolutionnary optical headtracking system with discounts of US$25. The new BMW V8 powered TR006B car of Twister-Racing will unveil a brand new livery featuring NaturalPoint and TrackIR logos, which will also appear on the track advertising spaces of the FSR World Championship.
Welcoming NaturalPoint to the team, Twister-Racing Administrator and rFactor team director Joël Roux commented: “We are delighted to announce this partnership with NaturalPoint. Our relationship in the negociation and preparation of this deal has been very good. We have been impressed with the technical quality of the TrackIR4:Pro and we would like to be associated with NaturalPoint for its promotion. This partnership is aiming for the long term and our expectations are big. We have a full confidence in the future. With the support of NaturalPoint, we will establish Twister-Racing as an increasingly professional simracing team.”
Looking forward to a productive collaboration, Kevin Fox from NaturalPoint Inc. said: “NaturalPoint is proud to be sponsoring the professional sim racing team Twister-Racing for the 2006 and 2007 FSR season. We only recently ventured in to sponsoring sim racing teams and Twister-Racing with their great reputation and background were ideal candidates. We see our partnership with Twister-Racing as an excellent opportunity to cultivate a new customer base in the FSR sim racing community. NaturalPoint hopes for this sponsorship to be a way to promote our TrackIR4:Pro line of products and accessories, provide exposure for the TrackIR brand name and benefit Twister-Racing and the entire FSR league.”
The release of a joint official press announcement from both parties is planned for September 9th.
Visit http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir http://www.twister-racing.com and http://www.formula-simracing.net