Wolf Rider, i'm someone who's actually tried both methods and found trackIR to be better, yet even to me you seem like you have an agenda to push.
They just gave you links where
developers of DCS say that naturalpoint stopped them from providing support for other headtracking interfaces. It can't be spelled out any better, so you can either acknowledge it or bury your head in the sand.
The industry can't make games that only support one standard and then claim FT are violating copyrights when they are shutting them off from doing it in a legal manner, at least not without looking ridiculous.
So, in order to clear up some things, maybe i'll try to describe it a bit better to you.
A joystick, any kind of joystick, works with all games because there's a generic interface to control axial input for games.
Today, the same thing exists for headtracking but it's not getting used (and in some cases actively being prevented from use).
Well, my question is how would you feel if suddenly the only people who could fly the new sim where those who had a microsoft stick? I'd be fine, because i have a 10 year old precision pro 2, so who cares what happens to the rest of the community, right?
As for how hard it is to do it, i recently got a friend of mine to start flying IL2 with me. The guy is a programmer and a Linux user. Once i explained headtracking to him, he dug up a stagnant linux project, contacted the original author for some information and got to work. In TWO DAYS he had his own headtracking software, it works with normal LEDs (not even IR) and a webcam in a room with all the lights on. Heck, i tried it and it was smoother than the freetrack installation i tried on my home PC.
In the following weeks or months, he's probably going to code something open source and free from the ground up, which will be also coded in C/C++ and will be much less demanding on the PC than freetrack.
There is a very simple solution to all of this really.
1) Naturalpoint protects their software and API so that it only works with naturalpoint products, i'm all fine with that.
2) The developer provides a secondary, generic interface for alternative headtrackers, so that they don't have to use NP's API anymore. All it needs is the game to recognize 6 generic axis and accept inputs under a standard, generic interface.
Freetrack does have it's own API and doesn't need to use naturalpoint software. The reason FT is parsing it's data through the naturalpoint API is that freetrack's API is usually blacklisted or simply not used due to ignorance.
Finally, in regards to copyright, i asked my buddy about the possible legal implications of using the trackIR .dll file. He looked it up and apparently (maybe that's also the reason NP don't hold a patent), there's a legal clause that in the case at hand permits to sidestep the issue if certain measures are followed.
I don't remember exactly how it goes, but it seems that part of that .dll's content falls under public domain or something similar (you can't copyright basic mathematics after all), so all you need is a programmer to write his own .dll and make it available under an open source/free software license.
So, to sum up...freetrack doesn't NEED to use naturalpoint software to work. It just needs the developers to accept to use freetrack's implementation alongside the naturalpoint one. Then everyone is legal, we all get more options and you know me, i'm all for extra options so more members of the community can stay happy with their flight simming and the hobby can advance
