DelanClip Fusion Pro review – Head tracking is one of the best upgrades you can make to a serious sim setup

There are certain PC gaming peripherals that are quite difficult to explain to somebody who has never used one. Head tracking is definitely up there among them.

On paper, attaching three glowing infrared dots to the side of your headphones so a camera can work out where you are looking sounds like something we should probably have left behind in about 2009. Then you use it in DCS World, glance naturally over your shoulder to follow an enemy aircraft, and suddenly using a little joystick hat to move the camera feels absolutely Jurassic.

The DelanClip Fusion Pro (opens in a new tab) is essentially an alternative to the better-known TrackIR system. It gives you six degrees of freedom head tracking without requiring a VR headset, and after spending time with it, I think it is one of the best upgrades you can make to a serious sim setup. And not just for flight sims.

What is the DelanClip Fusion Pro?

The Fusion Pro package consists of two main parts. There is the wireless DelanClip itself, which attaches to the side of your headset and contains three infrared LEDs, and the DelanCam1 infrared camera, which sits on your monitor and tracks them.

The clip weighs around 60g, charges over USB-C and DelanClip rates it for approximately 16 hours of battery life. The camera runs at 60fps and doesn’t require a dedicated driver. At the time of writing, the complete Fusion Pro kit is listed at £89.99 directly from DelanClip.

The clever bit happens in OpenTrack, the free software sitting between the camera and your game.

Turn your head, lean forward, move sideways, look up or down and OpenTrack converts those movements into something the game understands. You can then customise response curves so that relatively small real-world movements produce much larger movements in-game.

This is important because obviously you can’t physically turn your head 180 degrees while continuing to look at your monitor. Well, you can, but it rather defeats the point.

Setting it up takes a little tinkering

The hardware side is refreshingly straightforward. Camera on the monitor, DelanClip on the headset, USB cable into the PC and you’re most of the way there.

OpenTrack is where you’ll spend a little more time. It lets you alter sensitivity, dead zones and response curves for each axis independently. Initially, I found myself moving my head around far too much, but once the curves were dialled in it became almost instinctive.

That’s really the key to the whole thing.

You don’t want to be thinking about head tracking. You don’t want to consciously move your head 13 degrees left because you know that equals 70 degrees inside DCS. You simply want to look somewhere and once properly configured, that’s exactly what happens.

OpenTrack itself supports a range of output methods including FreeTrack, SimConnect and X-Plane, which is why the DelanClip isn’t tied to one particular game.

DCS World is where it really comes alive

DCS World (opens in a new tab) is perhaps the most obvious showcase. Dogfighting without head tracking means constantly manipulating the view while simultaneously flying the aircraft. With the Fusion Pro, you simply keep watching the target.

Looking down at cockpit controls is easier. Looking towards the runway while turning onto final feels natural. In helicopters it is arguably even more useful because you’re constantly looking through different parts of the canopy.

It isn’t VR. You don’t get the stereoscopic depth or feeling of physically sitting inside the cockpit.

What you do get is much of VR’s freedom of movement without having to strap a headset to your face or ask your GPU to render DCS at VR resolutions.

For anybody playing DCS on a monitor, I would genuinely put head tracking above rudder pedals on the upgrade list.

It isn’t just for flight sims

Microsoft Flight Simulator and X-Plane are obvious candidates, and OpenTrack supports both. IL-2 Sturmovik is another natural fit if your tastes are more Spitfires and Messerschmitts than F-16s.

Then there are space sims. Elite Dangerous works superbly because you’re sitting in a cockpit surrounded by displays, while Star Citizen similarly benefits from being able to naturally look around rather than constantly dragging the camera. Both are among the titles DelanClip specifically lists as compatible. I spent years playing ED in VR and I’m not sure I could ever play it “flat” again, but if I had to, I would use this.

Driving games are another good use.

Assetto Corsa supports TrackIR-style input through OpenTrack, which means you can look towards the apex of a corner or glance sideways at another car without touching a camera control. BeamNG.drive is also supported, and the effect is especially good from an interior view.

It even works with Euro Truck Simulator, American Truck Simulator and Farming Simulator. Being able to physically look left and right when pulling a massive lorry out of a junction is considerably more useful than it sounds. DelanClip also lists games such as ARMA among its supported uses.

Basically, if you’re spending a lot of time looking out of a virtual cockpit, cab or driver’s seat, there’s a decent chance head tracking makes it better.

Is it worth £90?

If you mainly play shooters, strategy games and third-person adventures, probably not.

If you regularly play DCS, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Elite Dangerous, racing sims or anything else cockpit-based, absolutely.

There are cheaper options. OpenTrack itself can perform webcam-based tracking, and DelanClip sells its wired Starter emitter separately. You could also assemble your own infrared setup if that’s your sort of thing.

The advantage of the Fusion Pro is that it packages everything together and, crucially, removes the cable running from your head.

That sounds like a minor detail until you’ve got a HOTAS, headphones, pedals and half a dozen USB cables already hanging around your desk.

My biggest criticism, if I must have one, is probably that this still feels like enthusiast PC hardware. You need OpenTrack, you need to understand curves and you may need to spend some time getting everything exactly how you like it.

But once that’s done, it largely disappears. And that’s why I like it.

After a while with the DelanClip Fusion Pro, I stopped thinking about head tracking entirely. Then I accidentally launched DCS without it. It lasted about 30 seconds.

Verdict

The DelanClip Fusion Pro is one of those rare pieces of sim hardware that genuinely changes how you interact with games rather than simply adding another collection of buttons. DCS World shows it at its best, but support across flight sims, racing games, trucking, farming and space sims makes it considerably more versatile than it first appears.

It takes a little tweaking, and £90 isn’t impulse-buy money (opens in a new tab), but if you’re playing cockpit-based PC games on a monitor, it’s difficult to go back once you’ve used it.