1C's stance on head-tracking devices for BoB?

[TheGrunch]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

propriety software isn't illegal grunch... look at Apple, or Dell, or Compaq Do you have some proof of the allegations you make, regarding payments, etc?

Go to the Ubisoft forum, see for yourself. Start a topic about Freetrack and see what happens. If there's not a payment of some description in effect there, what's happening? Care to provide a theory?
I'm aware that proprietary software isn't illegal, but this isn't just about software in general, this is about software interfaces with a whole class of input device. Abusing a leading position to make games exclusively compatible with their products is, however, illegal.

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

as for the rest of your post (and I don't particular give a toss if it is a format which you understand or not), it reeks of 1, trollish beviour yourself and 2. gives full support for hacking. You say "Either way I don't see how acceptable head-tracking could have been achieved by anyone apart from NaturalPoint without hacking NaturalPoint's interface and without a substantial amount of money to pay publishers and developers to support their product. Either way, just demonstrating that the product would work in a modern game would require hacking the NP interface. That just goes to show that there is a problem., yet others say the means to do so has been around for way longer than NP, ... so who's right there?
Is there some reason FT can't send a "kit" over to game developer's for evaluation?

Care to explain where I've been trollish? I've explained my position in detail and I have not attacked you personally unless you count observing the fact that your responses are quite often devoid of detail and responses to people's actual points.
Freetrack can't send a kit in because they're a free, open-source solution worked on by people in their spare time. You're right, though, a commercial competitor could do that if they could get big publishers to abandon exclusivity deals.
The question is whether publishers should decide on which products are compatible by how much the respective product developers are willing to pay them for an exclusive? I don't believe so.
The reason that open standards exist is to prevent situations like that. My argument is simply that there is no reason that head-tracking should not use an open standard and that it would only benefit US if it did. That's not support for hacking, that's support for competition. I don't think that should be hard to understand.
Cam2Pan WAS around before TrackIR, they are right, but Cam2Pan relies upon mouse emulation, which is not a good solution.

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

NP went and approached many developers to include their product, why can't freetrack do that, instead of just hacking their way in?
BIS went through a great deal of turmoil until they told the FT footsoldiers to cease and desist in their behaviour and for FT to actually make the approach. At this point, FT was considered and a poll held, which was favourable to FT for inclusion in a patch (I've mentioned patch before, yeah?)

See above. Like I say, this is the only occasion on which this has worked.

See, it's much easier to have a discussion when both people are actually participating.