Head Tracking with Cliffs of Dover

[GHarris]

I don't see how these arguments, about the ethics or legality of Freetrack implementations in old games, are relevant to the question of whether Freetrack should or will be supported in Cliffs of Dover. If it is supported in Cliffs of Dover it will be done by an entirely legal and open API. Whether other uses of Freetrack are appropriate has no bearing on that.

But I feel like waffling a bit so here comes a wall of text.

Regarding Wolf_Rider's comments that Freetrack developers should "make the approach" or "seek inclusion - professionally"... "Professonal approaches" are what people with something to sell do. The Freetrack developers are not in it to make a profit. I don't understand why they *should* be expected to "approach" a sim developer. Freetrack is out there, it's open source, that's all that is needed. Oleg and his colleagues have heard of Freetrack (they must have done) and all they need to know about implementing it is readily available to them.

I am a supporter of Freetrack because I simply prefer an open and free (as in speech) implementation of head tracking to a proprietary one. A proprietary implementation will inevitably be abused by the people in control of it at the expense of current and past customers. As was the case when TrackIR started encrypting its data stream and made versions 1 and 2 of its TrackIR hardware incompatible with new games when they could otherwise still work. The controllers of a proprietary implementation might also seek to stifle competition from other proprietary or open implementations. As was the case when "Implementation of the "HeadTracker" interface <was> canceled at the request of NaturalPoint." in DCS: Black Shark.

A minor claim I'd like to assert would be that Naturalpoint created the market for head-tracking. They did not create head-tracking itself (and they have been awarded no patents on TrackIR). Naturalpoint's business model was fundamentally based on marketing - advertising of one kind or another - not technical innovation. They hyped the idea of head-tracking up, to sell the head-tracking kits they manufactured. They have been well paid for creating the market... for a while they were the only big player in the market, so all of the sales in the market they had created went to them.

In other words, they have already been paid for their hard work. They are not "entitled" to further income on anything head-tracking-related like the holder of a patent would be. In my opinion.

If they can still make money selling a proprietary head-tracking implementation when other viable head-tracking implementations exist then fair play to them. If they succeed in doing so it will probably be the case, much of the time*, that they are being paid for their marketing efforts rather than for their technical brilliance. It would be wrong if their continued success was due to monopolistic practices - marketing taken too far.

*(I say "much of the time" because (I don't know whether it's the minority or majority, and because) many people buy TrackIR rather than, say, setting up their own Freetrack kit, not based on a carefully considered weighing up of the options but because they have been advertised to (in one of many ways) by Naturalpoint. Blackdog_kt, who wrote a thorough explanation of his preferences on the first page of this topic, would be a clear exception to this. And good for him.)

I'd like to respond to a few of CharveL's points.

Originally Posted by CharveL

I think free tracking alternatives are a great thing because not everyone can afford a TIR... It's a great way to introduce yourself to head-tracking and see the benefits it provides for immersion!

I can afford a TrackIR and don't want it. Philosophical disagreement with TrackIR aside, I would consider Freetrack to be more than an "introduction" to head-tracking. I'm looking at building myself a Freetrack setup and do not see how NaturalPoint's head-tracking implementation would be an upgrade for me, even if money wasn't a factor.

Originally Posted by CharveL

The other factor to keep in mind is that the hardware itself relieves the CPU from much of the heavy lifting, providing up to 120hz refresh rate depending on the model, which improves your apparant in-game framerate considerably from the 24fps - 30fps (give or take) of your webcam. On a CPU intensive sim like CoD you need all the spare cycles you can get.

A Wiimote, when used with Freetrack, does the tracking in hardware. It also has a rather high refresh rate of 100Hz. Using a Wiimote, of course, is just one way of using Freetrack. People are free to use other devices as they see fit because Freetrack is open source.

Originally Posted by CharveL

NP did all the legwork to make headtracking possible including wooing developers into adding the necessary hooks into their software, otherwise there would be no Freetrack, so I don't exactly blame them for not wanting to let others ride off of their work.

I disagree. NP did the legwork to make headtracking popular. And they have already been paid for that work. They don't have a divine right to be the only head tracking implementation available. It's a little bit like saying "Apple did all the legwork to make MP3 players popular". Yes, they did a lot of the legwork of making MP3 players popular by advertising the heck out of the iPod, but they were given their reward for it in iPod sales. And they'd have been irrational to think that this means that no competing MP3 players should exist, or that the iPod should retain its market share forever in spite of competition.

One problem with this analogy is that it refers to hardware rather than software. Another problem is that Apple might very well have some MP3 player-related patents whereas Naturalpoint do not have any patents on TrackIR.