Head Tracking with Cliffs of Dover

[CharveL]

As a long-time beta tester with NP I just wanted to raise a couple points with the caveat that, despite what might seem like a conflict of interest, I think free tracking alternatives are a great thing because not everyone can afford a TIR.

My personal experience with the NP guys is they are a really dedicated group of innovators in a smaller company that have managed to carve out a niche for themselves by creating a product that improves our simming experience. From what I've seen they are always willing to help their customers personally and often beyond what's called for, and seems a bit unfair when they are made out to be villains simply for protecting their work. Either way, that's for anyone to make their own opinion based on their own experience.

Anyway, I think it comes down to what works best for you considering the tradeoffs. FT has the benefit of being less expensive or even free if you already have a webcam and don't mind fashioning your own clip/reflector system. It's a great way to introduce yourself to head-tracking and see the benefits it provides for immersion!

Obviously the TIR gives the benefit of a more comprehensive and intuitive setup being specifically designed and supported by developers for seamless integration. The software gives better control over all axes and key-binding options, not to mention auto-detection of whatever game/sim you start which also adds to convenience, although perhaps minor for some.

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. With that said, some people can't tell the difference between a framerate of 20fps and 60fps so YMMV.

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. On the other hand, if developers will support FT using FT's hooks then power to them and everybody is happy.