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sbern

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Everything posted by sbern

  1. I use a saitek X52 handle attached to a MSFFB2 base for the stick, along with the x52 throttle, ch rudder pedals and trackir4. Everything works great other than running 4 different input devices from 4 different manufacturers makes management a little more complicated. pics of the stick in http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=36683
  2. Well, I didn't extend the shaft since I use my desk/chair for a lot of stuff so I mostly play with the stick on the desk. Plus I'm way too lazy to add a mounting tray to the chair.... the upside is that the shaft is actually threaded into that pipe coupling so I could make an extension and screw it on there.
  3. There is room inside between the two motors... I was just in too much of a hurry to play with it after I got all the wiring done! I can't actually figure out a good way to hold the jack for the ps2 cable that goes from the throttle to the stick in place. I may end up just cutting a hole and using epoxy, but the jack is on a little chunk of circuit board that makes it tough to position correctly. Actually, now that I think of it I'll get a short ps2 extension and use that... leave the male end plugged in inside the case, hang the female end outside or cut a hole and epoxy it in place. That won't happen till I'm done playing around though :)
  4. Welp, I have the stick I always wanted. Obviously inspired by Urze's awesome stuff! It was pretty straight forward... the only tricky part was mating the two shafts together... I ended up using a pipe coupling and epoxy... that and splicing all the wires back together on the lead from the x52 handle was a pain. Other than that, though, smooth sailing. It shows up as two sticks now (2 usb connections) axes from the MSSFFB2 and buttons from x52. Except for the rudder... that still comes from the x52. Chris
  5. By the way, I ordered a trackir4 and clip last weekend. Before FreeTrack, I thought head tracking was kinda dumb. I couldn't imagine it being worth $150 and figured it probably worked poorly at best. The chance to try it out so cheaply with FreeTrack and the fact that it worked so well is what sold me on the concept. From there, it was an easy decision to spend that much on a setup that (I hope) should work a little better. I would have spent the money even more happily if natural point hadn't closed their interface, but I spent it nonetheless. The stuff should be arriving today so I get to crack it open when i get home from work. I also have some CH rudder pedals on order that are scheduled for delivery today, so it should be a good night for flying helicopters and a bad day for work tomorrow. Hopefully next week my MSSFFB2 stick from ebay arrives and I can manage to attach my X52 stick to it. I got motivated by the pics on Urze's web site! Has anyone else given this a try? Chris.
  6. I wish we had a patent/copyright lawyer who could settle some of this stuff. Without that we're just going to go in circles... I think trying to copyright/trademark/whatever an API is impossible. http://www.eetimes.com/news/design/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201801579 If you're familiar with WINE for linux, by the way, it basically does the same thing... provides it's own implementation of the Windows API. I'm sure Microsoft would have sued the pants off the WINE dev team if they thought they had any chance at all in court. I also don't hear many people crying about poor microsoft. If I came to you criticizing someone who had put instructions for building your own car on the web and had maybe even posted up some code for electronic ignition control etc as being evil because now a bunch of freeloaders would be able to use the road systems that the major car companies had put so much work into getting the government to expand and improve upon without having to support them by buying their cars, you'd think I was nuts. I think the only real difference is the likeability of a smaller niche industry company vs. a Microsoft or a GM.
  7. Hey Urze, that stick looks great... but... how much longer till we see that X52/MSFFB stick? I've even already ordered the MSFFB 2 from ebay to use! thanks for everything and keep coming up with the cool stuff! Chris.
  8. Prophet, there's no stealing involved here. the Freetrack guys probably asked for a copy of the trackir sdk here: http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/05-developers/developers-pc-game-simulation-sdk.html from there, building up your own code to mimic the same trackir API isn't too hard. It's really the way open source implementations of all kinds of proprietary software happen and it's not illegal. The openoffice/word comparison isn't too far off track. I wouldn't say it's apples to oranges at all. As far as IP goes, naturalpoint didn't invent head tracking, they were just the first (as far as I know of) to make a solid, working consumer product out of it. It was inevitable that someone else would make software to do the same thing and then give instructions on how to make the hardware. Naturalpoint has two options here... make a product that's so much better than what hobbyists can do on their own that people buy it, or try and block the competition out by closing up their interface and playing hardball with game developers. Unfortunately, they appear to have chosen the latter and that never works. Remember 3dfx and Glide? Remember when the good people at AOL kept trying to make the AIM protocol impossible to talk to with jabber etc? Everybody gives up eventually... the smart ones figure out a way to make a buck off having a bunch of new users who weren't interested in their original product. I'd like to see Naturalpoint start selling just their hardware for use with freetrack at a lower cost. I have to assume they spend a lot of resources messing with the software (support, etc) that they could let the freetrack guys or the open source community at large deal with and focus on the cameras and clips. sbern. ps. I get 100 fps with my wiimote freetrack setup and it's really low latency..
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