Head Tracking with Cliffs of Dover - Page 19

Wolf_Rider · #**181** 02-14-2011, 03:44 AM

sport, you really could do well to read the thread through from the beginning, and who the heck are you to demand anything anyway? you see that is part of the FT problem and why should anyone who does that, be taken seriously?

5year old? well, at least I don't bang on about some people having no arms and legs, or make outlandishly wild statements

Wolf_Rider · #**182** 02-14-2011, 04:09 AM

oh well goodo then, its obvious you have nothing to offer the thread apart from insult?

Wolf_Rider · #**183** 02-14-2011, 04:18 AM

my point proven

Blackdog_kt · #**184** 02-14-2011, 04:19 AM

It's really nice of you to consider i'm missing the point W-R when you are in fact conveniently, but very obviously, doing your best to sidestep the fact that i gave you an answer to your questions. Maybe it's one that doesn't suit what you wanted or expected to hear, i don't know.

So, one more time, freetrack can work on its own as long as there are 6 mappable axes of a generic interface within the game. Also, your points about FSX are invalid because freetrack has a simconnect output that bypasses the NP software and interfaces directly with FSX.

Finally, the developer won't really have to scour the net when
a) FT is a well known project by now
b) even if they never heard of it there's currently an, as of now, 20-pager in their own forums and they are not blind and finally
c) if another alternative surfaces and becomes popular enough the users will let the developers know about it too and they won't have to scour the net in this case either.

In fact it's better for all developers to code ONE generic 6-axes interface today and have it become an industry standard so that future alternative head tracking methods would be coded from the start to support that, instead of having to do it separately every time a new method gains popularity. If you really care about the developer's time that's what you should be asking for, so do you or is it just for the sake of lending credence to the argument that providing native FT support would be impossible/time consuming/detrimental to game development/etc?
In short, what your beef is with FT (which i also agree on as a basic premise, let NP protect their software) is a non-issue on the part of FT because they already have an alternative in place that works as long as the game in question is willing to receive the inputs.
The issue arises solely from games not supporting the FT interface, plain and simple. Who's to blame for that?

You could say it's partly the fault of FT for not pushing for the inclusion of it, but FT is a community project and not a company, their representatives are their users. In that sense, you could also argue that 18 pages of back and forth is a sufficient and as official as it can get demand on the part of FT to push for its inclusion in the new sim. So that's one more issue down and a few more to go.
Others will say that it's the fault of game developers for not listening to the wishes of their customers. Personally, i think it's peanuts to add 6 more axes to the ingame control options compared to the making of the rest of the game and if it keeps their customers happy they would be more than willing to do it.
So, i'm naturally suspicious about why some don't...or not, because some developers have said that NP stopped them from including a parallel implementation, one that would also be totally independent of reliance on NP software and thus completely legal.

Does it start to look like some people want the competition to have no legal way of operating, or am i just exercising the use of too common sense for this forum?
Which brings us to the final theory about who's to blame, some will say it's the fault of naturalpoint for boycotting the development of a generic interface that will give alternative methods a legal way to do what they want to do.
Now i'm being reasonable with you here, i'm accommodating towards your point of view and i even agree on some of what you say, i've been a very satisfied naturalpoint customer and i certainly don't like the zealotry displayed by either side of the camp. Freetrack is not the spawn of the devil and neither is Naturalpoint.

However, there has been evidence of NP stopping developers from coding an alternative interface. I'm still leaving some room for doubt here because i don't know exactly how it went down (i don't own a copy of DCS or frequent their forums), but it sure looks plausible when it's a well documented case that's coming straight from the horse's mouth.
There's two links to the DCS forum in this thread alone, where two separate members of the staff openly admit they stopped working on an independent head tracking solution at the request of NP (i think one also phrased it as "pressure"?).

Well, i certainly don't think the DCS guys just got up one morning with the intention of p*ssing off a substantial portion of their customer base and said "hey i'm bored to code this, let's stop working on it and blame it on NP for sh*ts and giggles". First of all, NP would be all over them for spreading false accusations.
Also, if it was destined to be an independent interface that didn't rely on the NP SDK, then they shouldn't really have much ground to legally stand on. The only thing they would be able to do is threaten to stop trackIR support for future releases of DCS, at which point the devs would obviously cave in.

Now i don't like basing my arguments on assumptions, so if someone has a link to answer this by all means provide it. So, was the DCS interface independent of the naturalpoint SDK? Again please, i'm not looking for hearsay but a clear and valid forum post from an eagle dynamics staff member that say they were working on an interface that was independent from naturalpoint's SDK. If such a thing exists, the only way NP would be able to force the DCS devs to stop working on it would be through "shady" means (aka "stop it or the next version of trackIR won't work with your games). That's why i'm asking for it, i want to be fair to them have some info that would indicate a high possibility of NP blackmailing eagle dynamics before i start accusing them of it on my own.

But why is all that important you'll say? Very simple.
IF it's true, and that's a big IF, the premise behind it is a classic example of a circular argument: i will prevent you from coding a legal way to support competitive products, so i can bring up the illegal use of my software as a bargaining chip against the competition in every turn along the way.
Again, i'm not saying this is what happened, i'm saying it's possible and i will reserve judgment until someone can answer the question in the previous paragraph. However, if it's indeed true then the blame rests solely with NP and nobody else for leaving no legal alternative to the competition.

So what's the bottom line to all this? How do we, as a community help solve it?

It's dead simple, if you really want FT to stop using the NP software, which is something i would like as well, you really should be asking for a generic interface with 6 mappable axes in the new sim like the rest of us, instead of forcing us to go around in circles for 20 pages in an effort to answer the exact same questions that you repeatedly posed 3-4 times despite receiving a multitude of answers to choose from.

If you want the universal truth sorry but i don't have it, nobody does in fact, unless we have some godlike entity among us and we don't know it

So, i just spent a good deal of my free time providing you with enough reasonable possibilities to choose from, inserted a healthy dose of doubt into my own arguments for the sake of fairness and reserved final judgment on the matter to be decided if and when i receive additional evidence. If that's still not good enough for you, then i'm sorry but i'll have to relegate you to that bridge over yonder where certain creatures of folk legend make their living by demanding a toll from travelers

Wolf_Rider · #**185** 02-14-2011, 04:42 AM

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