Quarrion

Note how they never mention encryption? They're ashamed and afraid of the legal implications. The problem of concurrent access does not require, necessitate or justify the use of encryption.

Most flight simulators use a nice clean blur model for props or rotors when they reach high rpm. No fancy DirectX 9 motion blur effects required. It really bugs me that DCS doesn't have this, it's such a simple and fundamental thing. The flickering is visible in the pit, making it very obvious and distracting. When the two rotors appear overlapped the flickering produces even stranger effects.

What? You didn't know the Black Shark had a cloaking device? :P

"No patch whatsoever. Thats me using an early version of Black Shark, but this is still possible, if you have the skill. :)" -- Glowing Amraam Prove it. :)

The mouse should be slaved to the cockpit, not the view. That way you can look around freely while the mouse remains static, precisely placed over a cockpit switch. This really should be compulsory for clickable cockpits. I'm actually surprised ED haven't done it yet!

You can do this with FreeTrack by mapping inverted x and y measurements to yaw and pitch in the game (eg moving to the left rotates the view to the right, moving up rotates the view down) and z to inverted fov (moving away from the monitor zooms the view). If you fiddle with sensitivity and limits you can get something that has a nice effect.

I'm surprised that 'Winder thinks I'm a FreeTrack developer just because I have criticized NaturalPoint's business practices. I'm a long-time FreeTrack and TrackIR user but I have absolutely no affiliation with either. The DCS compatibility problem drew my attention in the first place, I tried to contact FreeTrack developers, but they had not been very active and couldn't help. So I took it into my own hands to find the root of the problem, which to my dismay, turned out to be encryption. I was thinking of integrating an encryption counter-measure into freetrack but I don't know the language and some of the files are innaccessible so it will probably never happen, crappy hacks are currently the only solution, which has motivated my activism. The very nature of non-profit open software encourages anyone to contribute to it, in doing so they are likely to defend it, the same cannot be said for commercial. I don't see how people using ad-hoc head tracking with a webcam or wiimote is enough of a threat to justify NaturalPoint using encryption, which is extremely bad PR (also breaking TrackIR 1 and 2 compatibility in the process). FreeTrack is buggy, tricky to setup and has bad tech support also webcams and wiimotes are inferior to a TrackIR camera. I really hope the NaturalPoint business model is not so weak that it cannot rely on hardware sales alone and has to coercively manipulate the market to remain profitable. It would be a genuine setback for head tracking if NaturalPoint were to go out of business, absolutely nobody would want to see that. But they still have to compete fairly, like all businesses in a free market. I only hope that more people become aware of head tracking and buy TrackIR to ensure NaturalPoint remains in business. At the end of the day nobody gives a damn about factions, only that head tracking grows and prospers. The early versions of FreeTrack worked as a 6DOF head tracker without any TrackIR interface, instead using lua, tcp and udp interface protocols which are still in the source. Definitely not "built on the TrackIR interface." NaturalPoint had the opportunity to make a really secure interface from the beginning, they clearly didn't do this, and are paying the price. Once reverse engineered and established amongst competitors they can't legally encrypt it to prevent competition. They only have themselves to blame. NaturalPoint may be a small company (?) but they still have a monopoly over head tracking in games (company size is irrelevant). USA vs Microsoft set a precedent that a monopoly encrypting an interface simply to block competition is illegal. EULA claims are irrelevant and so too is copyright when used for the same end. It's very disappointing to see that NaturalPoint have chosen to dig themselves into a hole on this matter.

They DO need advocates. I haven't seen any FreeTrack devs make accusations of any sort, they do what they do for free, not only could they not afford court action but why would they even consider it? Anti-competitive behavior is more serious than just a civil issue, with involved parties taking each other to court, it's CRIMINAL, so the US Goverment takes businesses to court on behalf of its citizens. Or, at least, it is meant to, the difficult part is informing them and providing enough evidence for them to be able to take action. This is something that is intrisically difficult due to the secrecy involved in anti-competitive behavior. Remember anti-competitive behavior violates the rights of ALL consumers. This makes it a public matter, not a private one between parties.

No amount of accuracy in the modelling of minor subsystems and loadouts can make up for the fact that you can fly through trees unscathed. :smartass:

The virtual cockpit shake in LB2 doesn't seem intentional, it jumps in small steps, as if it were caused by a low precision integer number. Possibly an engine limitation.

Since 'Winder's post this thread will be locked in 3... 2....

Because Longbow 2 is still the best all-round helicopter simulator to date. Black Shark excels at simulating the aircraft systems but lacks the gameplay and atmosphere of a dynamic campaign.

There is no indication of any dispute, the Wiimote's reported resolution has been well known for the last few years now. 'Each location is encoded in 10 bits and has a range of 0-1023 for the X dimension, and 0-767 for the Y dimension.' -- http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiimote It's certainly much more than an "academic" detail. First, having a camera that refreshes at the same rate (or slower, for that matter) that the game refreshes is a problem. It needs to refresh at least twice as quickly. Point taken, but I mentioned Black Shark running at 30fps, the Wiimote, operating at 100fps, refreshes at least twice as fast, satisfying your requirement.

What part of 1024x768 do you not understand 'Winder? [EDITED by mod: unnecessary comment] With bright tracking points you can get the full 1024x768 out of the wiimote, down to the pixel, actual sensor resolution is academic. With regards to frame rate, if you can't run Black Shark at more than 30fps, having a tracking device running much faster than that is also academic. Wiimotes are very common and so too are bluetooth dongles so you could already have them, or know someone who does, making the total cost $0.

Johnny did a great job of publicizing wiimote homebrew by making some great videos and apps but his work was not entirely new and was largely founded on the hard work of others. I believe the guys that reverse engineered the wiimote and made the details public, making all this possible, deserve much more credit. Positioning the camera is probably the biggest pain for this project, it has to be rock solid for calibration reasons but is likely to get in the way and be knocked.

http://forum.free-track.net/index.php?showtopic=1255

"Fog and Rain Night vision is very responsive to reflective ambient light; therefore, the light reflecting off of fog or heavy rain causes much more light to go toward the night vision unit and may degrade its performance." http://www.nightvision.com/howitworks.html I think this is somewhat realistic, especially if a full moon is peaking through the clouds. But if there is absolutely no light source nearby the water droplets probably shouldn't be that bright.

2. Have you seen Glide? It's huge, nobody dared to reverse engineer it, and x86 is patented. The only protection the TrackIR interface has is an NDA. 3. http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=33510 4. All head tracking solutions have the right to compete at a game interface level if they so choose.

In response to above: 1. TrackIR is not patented. 2. Compatibility with a proprietary interface is completely legal, moreso for monopolies. 3. NaturalPoint won't allow DCS to support any head tracking interface besides TrackIR. 4. Competition is an essential part of the free market. Hence the anti-competition complaint contacts above.

NaturalPoint's monopolization and anti-competition is a violation of your consumer rights. You can take action by making a complaint about them to the following organizations: Department of Justice, State of Oregon, Antitrust Division http://www.doj.state.or.us/contact.shtml consumer.hotline@doj.state.or.us Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Competition http://www.ftc.gov/bc/bccontact.shtm antitrust@ftc.gov United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/newcase.htm antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov And you can also inform these folks about it: Electronic Frountier Foundation http://www.eff.org/about/contact information@eff.org Free Software Foundation http://www.fsf.org/about/contact.html info@fsf.org

@ryuzu Face it, they broke it, putting their own interests ahead of users. If you think competition sharing a software interface is illegal and comparable to piracy you couldn't be more wrong. The opposite is true, it is a serious crime in the US for a monopoly to try to prevent competition from sharing an interface. TrackIR 1 and 2 were capable of 6dof with FreeTrack until they were forced to remove this feature. With TrackIR 5 coming I wonder how long it will take for TrackIR 3 support to become broken.

@drummer NaturalPoint have broken compatibility with TrackIR 1 and 2 by changing the interface to try to stop other programs from working with it.

FreeTrack doesn't reset the view when tracking is lost.

There are 8.5million wii remotes in the US alone! The notice on the FreeTrack site is referring to the fact that it cannot support TrackIR HARDWARE, which should not be confused with the ability to interface with TrackIR Enhanced games. Have fun! :pilotfly:

@ ryuzu Did you know that encrypting an interface with no obvious purpose other than to harm interoperability is a violation of antitrust law? See USA vs Microsoft. Don't worry ryuzu, the fixes are just temporary. Renato71, would you be able to post a link to those RPG proof watches? Might come in handy next time I'm taking a stroll through southern Afghanistan. :D