BoB and Freetrack

[julian265]

I'm a freetrack user, and am also very disappointed with the way Natural Point is treating its customers (encrypted interface prevents TIR 1 and 2 working with new games), and am most annoyed with their methods of exerting influence on forum moderators, in order to control people's discussion, and the flow of information about TrackIR alternatives. From what I've read, for a game to work with TrackIR, Natural Point needs to give it's approval, and they are exerting anti-competitive influence by threatening not to allow a game to communicate with TrackIR, if other trackers are supported.

Initially I used Freetrack because of the cost difference, but due to the way Natural Point has been conducting business, I will not be buying their products on principle, regardless of cost.

My question is this - what's the 1C stance on head tracking?

Obviously, a standardised interface, just like the way current mouse and joystick inputs work, is best way for head tracking software to communicate with games. It will happen, but how soon it happens depends on the game programmers.

Will BoB allow trackers like freetrack to communicate with the sim, using open protocols? (there's a freetrack SDK out)

Or has Natural Point already exerted anti-competitive influence, and pushed 1C to only allow TrackIR use?

[nearmiss]

Eliminating competition through unscrupulous methods generally means a company has probably exhausted all their ideas for improvement, and must resort to hard measures to maintain their business.

I use freetrack along with many other Il2 users. You can read pros and cons for all headtracking on these boards. However, head tracking is not discussed much here.

Building a proper head tracker for use with Freetrack is not as easy as it looks. I had to build several before I go mine right. TrackIR is a go right out of the box, and that is more appealing to most people.

Natualpoint has some influence, since they have been around for so long. I doubt, as you suggest they have the kind of clout you mention with any game application developers. If head movement can be managed for fluid movement within the application with a mouse this can be applied to work with any device that can provide like inputs to the application.

[csThor]

I'm not sure that Natural Point doesn't have a point (no pun intended) in what it says about Freetrack. There's little objective and much subjective stuff available on the net and I do not feel qualified to make a judgement. However I do not believe that you'll get an answer. Natural Point is a business partner for 1C, Freetrack's maker isn't. And I do not believe "good" or "bad" thoughts of players about another company matter anything ... it's business after all.

[fuzzychickens]

Anti-competitive influence? More like plain and naked anti-competitive practices.

Surely crippling any product that licenses trackIR so that the game can't interface with alternative head tracking programs is anticompetitive.

This would violate anti-trust law if someone ever took them to court.

It's one thing for a game company to fail to support a interface, it's another entirely for Natural Point to demand that a product that would work otherwise be crippled so only its product works on a game.

This is sick.

[julian265]

Note that I didn't start this thread to debate the merits of various head trackers. I want to know 1C's stance on the matter of excluding non-Natural Point trackers.

snip... Natural Point is a business partner for 1C, Freetrack's maker isn't. ...snip

Oh I see.

[nearmiss]

I don't think that means a darn thing.

Everyone is somebodys promotional partner in gaming development, that doesn't necessarily mean anyone gets more than some promo.

I doubt seriously, there is a locking out of freetrack in any upcoming releases. Nor do I think there hooks in the software application to only allow one headtracking device.

There is plenty of support from CHproducts and they advertise plenty with all the sim games, but you can still use all kinds of equal products.

I wouldn't worry about this too much.

[brando]

Honestly, this is like like getting snotty at Microsoft because you can't play a game on Linux. And as for competition, what's the competition between priced and free? If a company has been making a successful product for many years, and constantly ploughing profits into improved versions then they deserve the protection that copyright and financial clout brings.

B

[julian265]

Nearmiss, according to an ED representative on the DCS:BS forum, ED are negotiating an agreement with NP, to include TIR support, and allow 3DoF support for freetrack and others. Stated without euphemism, non NP head trackers are being limited to 3DoF.

Discussion of freetrack is also suppressed on that forum.

If you didn't already know, the current head movement communications between TIR and games have become encrypted, which excludes other trackers. It appears that if the game programmers allow the usual open protocols to be used, NP will not allow TIR to be used with the game. If you or 1C can show me otherwise, please do.

Brando, your comparison is incorrect. Each joystick manufacturer doesn't and shouldn't use different communication protocols (that's the beauty of the USB interface). Head tracking should be the same, and we would be closer to this situation if NP wasn't making deals with game makers to exclude other trackers. You know how your joystick communicates each axis's information to a sim? That's how it was* (pre NP encryption), and should be with head tracking, just with 6 axes. So it's not as if it takes extra work to make other trackers compatible, but they're working to keep other trackers out. That's my gripe, and that's why your comparison is wrong.

*The Freetrack programmers were wrong to program their software to communicate with games using NP's protocol. The above is why they did it.

Calculating pose from 3 points is not new, and was not NP's invention, by the way. As far as I know, the freetrack developers used their own math to work out head pose.

[fuzzychickens]

Honestly, this is like like getting snotty at Microsoft because you can't play a game on Linux. And as for competition, what's the competition between priced and free? If a company has been making a successful product for many years, and constantly ploughing profits into improved versions then they deserve the protection that copyright and financial clout brings.

B

Sorry, that comparision doesn't hold.

It's more like Microsoft shipping a browser with windows and making it so that all other browsers will run poorly or not at all on windows.

What they are doing is anti-competitive.

You think the flight sim market would survive if joystick makers were in the business of securing agreements to make certain flight sims only work with their controllers?

Natural point is way out of line. If they are afraid of competition, they should be better than the competition - not by forcing licensees to dump support for other ways of tracking head movement.

[nearmiss]

Nearmiss, according to an ED representative on the DCS:BS forum, ED are negotiating an agreement with NP, to include TIR support, and allow 3DoF support for freetrack and others. Stated without euphemism, non NP head trackers are being limited to 3DoF.

Discussion of freetrack is also suppressed on that forum.

If you didn't already know, the current head movement communications between TIR and games have become encrypted, which excludes other trackers. It appears that if the game programmers allow the usual open protocols to be used, NP will not allow TIR to be used with the game. If you or 1C can show me otherwise, please do.

Brando, your comparison is incorrect. Each joystick manufacturer doesn't and shouldn't use different communication protocols (that's the beauty of the USB interface). Head tracking should be the same, and we would be closer to this situation if NP wasn't making deals with game makers to exclude other trackers. You know how your joystick communicates each axis's information to a sim? That's how it was* (pre NP encryption), and should be with head tracking, just with 6 axes. So it's not as if it takes extra work to make other trackers compatible, but they're working to keep other trackers out. That's my gripe, and that's why your comparison is wrong.

*The Freetrack programmers were wrong to program their software to communicate with games using NP's protocol. The above is why they did it.

Calculating pose from 3 points is not new, and was not NP's invention, by the way. As far as I know, the freetrack developers used their own math to work out head pose.

Sorry, but ED is nothing compared to IL2 and never will be. I gave up on that sim after LockON. I refuse to install their spyware or so-called piracy protected software on my system. No way Jose'.

You may love it, and thats your prerogative. I think you'll find things are less paranoid with the IL2, and it's developer.

Nothing you could say that ED was going to do would surprise me.

[julian265]

snip... You may love it, and thats your prerogative. I think you'll find things are less paranoid with the IL2, and it's developer.
I'm more an IL2 fan than BS fan, but that's another matter. I really hope that you're right.

Nothing you could say that ED was going to do would surprise me.
Hehe, fair enough.

Discussion of freetrack is also suppressed on the Ubi forums, and IIRC there are others too. This happens because Natural Point asks for it. I can only hope that they don't have the same influence on 1C. Should BoB be closed to non-Natural Point head trackers, I doubt I'd buy it.

[csThor]

The reason that NP encrypted the communication between device and program is that Freetrack used NP's interface and "masked" itself as TIR. Wouldn't you be p*ssed if you wrote a specialized API for your product, invested loads of money into it only to see another competitor use it (without asking, if that is the gist of the stuff I found on the Web) for its own product? I mean, really ... NP's tactics may be questionable, but Freetrack isn't without fault here, either. Had they written their own interface/API for their product I'd have agreed with you but right now, with the information I have (and I avoided both FT's site and NP's site - wouldn't get the right answers there anyway) I must say that FT's tactics aren't sacrosanct, either.

[julian265]

I agree. Which is why I'd like to see games accepting generic head position and angle as axis inputs, just like mouses, joysticks, and wheels.

Freetrack includes a free and open source SDK, but Natural Point appears to be pressuring game developers into not using it, or limiting it to 3DoF.

[fuzzychickens]

I agree. Which is why I'd like to see games accepting generic head position and angle as axis inputs, just like mouses, joysticks, and wheels.

Freetrack includes a free and open source SDK, but Natural Point appears to be pressuring game developers into not using it, or limiting it to 3DoF.

Exactly, the only thing NP will accomplish if they get widespread support from flightsim games is to cripple technology advancement in headtracking , except any advancement they themselves accomplish.

If history tells us anything, companies that have monopolies in their respective fields have little incentive to innovate.

[Soldatov]

NP gave 1C encrypted TrackIR API for SOW:BOB.

[julian265]

Thanks Soldatov, that in itself is fine (if you haven't bought TIR 1 or 2), but will 1C allow other trackers to work with BoB?

Does anyone know who to talk to, or where to ask, so I can get an answer to this question?

[Letum]

Natural Point is a business partner for 1C, Freetrack's maker isn't.

I'm a business partner of 1C and so is every other freetrack user: we buy 1C's products.

When you run a business and other people are making rival products you should
deal with that by competing with them by the production of superior
products at competitive prices; not by abuse of it's near-monopolistic position
to remove the competition (or, in this case, just the ingenuity of hobbyists).

Let's face it: If I can make a head tracking system for £15 that works as well as
NP's system at £160; the market desperately needs any competition it can get.

[brando]

"I'm a business partner of 1C and so is every other freetrack user: we buy 1C's products."

Sorry to burst your bubble but I think the word you're groping for here is 'customer'. Purchasing a product does not make you a 'business partner'.

B

[Letum]

The same could be said of the NP/1C relationship.

[csThor]

Not necessarily. If NP helps 1C/Maddox Games with technical support and - maybe, probably? - an SDK to incorporate TIR's abilities into SoW (the same way i.e. Intel did for years and still does) this makes them business partners in my eyes.