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#1
08-31-2009, 02:11 AM
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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. 
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#2
08-31-2009, 04:26 AM
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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.
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#3
08-31-2009, 04:51 AM
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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.
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#4
08-31-2009, 07:12 AM
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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.
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#5
08-31-2009, 07:33 AM
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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.
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#6
08-31-2009, 04:52 PM
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If history tells us anything, companies that have monopolies in their respective fields have little incentive to innovate.
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