Druid_

Hacks do exist but only to tap into NP TIR monopolised games. FTN supports many games that aren't which might go some way to proving that it isn't using NP source code. As has been explained in this thread, Hacks exist & I am not saying I support such Hacks but partly understand in some way why they are done. To suppose therefore that face-tracking software, that does on some occasions get around NP to provide its freeware to over eager supportive users means its software is a complete Hack is short-sighted.

@ WR well for one you get an injunction against the host website. Our doubt there are many people who are completely anonymous on the internet. Hackers to Peer-to-Peer providers have been succesfully prosecuted in the past & will continue to do so in the future. Many of the free face tracking providers do not hide but often provide names & contact details. A single post in a large thread is your sole proof? I prefer to do my own research & not believe everything said on the News, in the Papers or on Forums before I commit to a stance. Have you done likewise? Like I said, the proof is in the code, its open source so download it and go from there.

@ WR I think we'd all like some proof that the various face-tracking products/freeware/shareware out there all hacked or ripped off NP. Provide proof and as I said, I am more than willing to admit I was wrong and change my mind accordingly. Until then .... (Fully cocked & loaded, do I need to add a smiley? Of course I've read the thread). Why does true competition require Hardware to be true? let alone options. (here's a list of Hardware for you though) edit: FTN is opensource, feel free to download it and compare it to NP source code, highlight the relevant sections & post back. I think NP would have already gone down this road though & no court action that I am aware of has taken place.

Excellent, didn't realise that was an official green light. Nice one ED.

You could always do a little more work and produce an equivalent without the DCS material in it. As far as I can see (and I'm no Lawyer so could easily be wrong) your only stumbling block is reproducing the pictures from the encyclopedia. I think you would be able to find all of the pictures of the DCS aircraft, vehicles etc on the web. As for the descriptions of what the aircraft/vehicles/missiles etc are capable of & A10c checklist items, I dont think ED can claim copyright on those. (p.s. A small fee for your hard work is completely acceptable as I see it, remember apple won't let you put it up for nothing).

If you don't know then I'm sure I don't :smilewink: (immovable springs to mind though).

^correct. Running the graphics off the CPU won't slow it down, it runs in parallel. p.s. Sorry for the VGA typo but glad it amused!

@ WR I have no idea what you're talking about. "true competition" nVidia & ATI, "to google". Give the analogies a break & stick with the facts, many of which have been presented eloquently. There have been a plethora of posts which have described the competition and if by the fact you mean they haven't got the backing of millions of Dollars & a huge brand name then so what. There is lots of competition out there to NP and its in use commercially in a variety of uses & products, just not games. To put it simply, its very hard to compete in a market where a single company monopolises. NP uses this monopoly to stifle competition through forcing developers to accept a single head tracking solution (TIR) to their software, either that or No Support! "showing TIR the door" in the context I wrote was from the developer perspective & not from the NP perspective. Your statement doesn't make sense. You've made clear you're views & of course you're entitled to them but given the facts presented throughout this thread you appear not willing to change your stance. However, I am liable to change mine given sufficient facts & evidence, at the moment everything that invovles NP has a distinct bovine smell.

RAID is a little more complicated than you & that old article imply & coming out with a blanket statement like that is inaccurate. It depends on how & what you use your PC for. My Real Life experience of RAID 0 is this. Windows boots up 30% faster, Games boot up to 50% faster, DCS A10c loads up 30-40% faster. In game load up times are negligible (small file transfers in short bursts). In essence, it depends what performance you are measuring. LOts of small file transfers in short burts will provide little extra performance (partly due to all of the extra heads that have to seek and align), large chunks of sequential data (larger file sizes also help) however will provide huge gains in performance. This is one reason why I hate patching & prefer a complete re-install with patched executable. If the files are on the disk & can be read sequentially then I get excellent load times. (my timings are taken from an identical PC I built for a friend without Raid).

^nope no flaming from me, completely agree. Good post. As Sobek said, they are using their weight to monopolise & control the face tracking games market. This will always be a bad thing for the consumer. Hopefully future developers will take the bold move of supporting FTN & show TIR the door when they send in the heavies. Once enough games of sufficient standard & sales quantity supporting FTN are in the market maybe NP (TIR) will have a rethink. Until then we are stuck with them methinks. @WR , you don't honestly think NP protect their work out of some desire to save the head tracking experience surely? Its simply this ... $$$$ at the end of the day, like it always will be. Bring on the competition ! When Mower's TIR finally gives up I'm sure he won't complain when it costs half the price to replace (which he won't if there are better solutions around of course).

Well I wouldn't call a recently released Agility 3 a regular drive, by curretn standards its a performance drive & a price to reflect this. Although maybe I should have been a little more specific. Any SSD with a read/write throughput of less than 300 Mb/sec average is ok with SATA 3 which at the moment is a huge percentage of the SSD's out there, anything more you need SATA 6 as it will bottleneck.

tbh I'd rather buy 2 x 120Gb drives and RAID them. The difference in cost isn't much. As for the price, 1. Its only just come out so prices will fall after the Rush 2. Don't buy in UK, for instance amazon.com are selling the 120gb model for $270. I expect prices will fall below $220 in the next 4-6 months especially if competitors release similar performing drives. Pyro, using the SATA 6gb/s for normal hard drives is a waste. Even a regular SSD wont bottleneck on a SATA 3Gb/s. Unless of course its a RAID controller issue with those ports.

That review is from 2006, 80gb hdd with 8mb cache, those figures change when you are talking about large 1TB drives with larger cache sizes & newer controllers. The performance boost of 50% I mentioned was refering to the Disk performance. Game/application performance is dependant on how much disk access and the block sizes etc of the app. I might also add that how your format your Hard Drives in respect to block sizes will also affect your Raid 0 performance. As for using software RAID, don't bother. It will never be as good as hardware raid and guess what, your CPU will take a hit. Most motherboards come with an onboard RAID controller these days. I have never had any problems with reliability either. RAID 0 on the last 4 PCs I've built. With regard to performance drops using RAID 0 on SSDs. The latest SSDs, especially those using the latest version of the excellent Sandforce controller, have excellent garbage collection (similar to Trim) which work on RAIDed drives. Team this with a drive which has over provisioning (spare unused capacity) provides excellent performance with NO need to reformat and Negligable or NO performance drops with use. By the way, those who are in the market for a SSD, this one gets my vote. just make sure you have SATA 6Gb/s on your motherboard.

If the FAC is airborne then apart from when the unit is obscured due to slope angle & line of sight FAC - engage group works well & is realistic. If you put the AFAC at 15,000 or above then unless the terrain is particularly mountainous he should have a visual on the enemy the whole time. You can also assign priority on targets with this option (once again 0 is confusingly the highest priority). I also like to request cannon occasionally rather than AUTO just to make the player come in closer at lower levels. Else they'll just CBU from 12,000 ft !! Occasionally though the AFAC/FAC will designate targets out of order (i.e. not based on your priority) this is obviously a bug. I believe he does so based on proximity to each target when you call him. As for the distance from the target, for a Hog AFAC I would keep him within 20k of the target group. Set up a race-track orbit offset to one side of the target group at about 15,000 ft should work. Once more thing, as he's set up as an AFAC in the GUI options, he will designate any other targets he sees. If you dont want him to do this then you should delete the statement 'AFAC' in the advanced tab. Here is the advanced options of my AFAC If you dont want him to be seen by the enemy or want him to be indestructable then use the respective perform command invisible or immortal. Attached an example miz. Notice how AFAC ignores the other unit close by that isn't set as a 'engage group'. If you had left the FAC -a comment then he would have assigned you this target also (and possibly before your 2 assigned groups). a10c afac.miz

I think the question should be ... why not? If you are after a performance increase then raid stripe. If you want to backup your other drive then raid mirror (no performance increase). I have raided my last 3 PCs and with win7 I can honestly say its incredibly easy. Just make sure to read the instructions in your motherboard manual on Raiding. BIOS may need changes for instance. Both your drives for RAID 0 (stripe) will appear as one drive in windows. Partition it and your away. As for the performance boost there are many factors affecting it but 50% increase minimum for 2 1TB drives with reasonable cache.

Look forward to trying this one out Speed.

Badger. If it doesn't mean to much work may I suggest you delete the FAC and start again with a new unit FAC. The reason I say this is becuase occasionally the ME produces some corrupt code. For example I am pulling my hair out on a 6 sec lag pause in a mission & I'm sure I am going to have to start again from scratch (well actually a much earlier save). I think I might do some testing with the FAC and report back because I do believe there are issues with the FAC system that need reporting. BTW priority 0 should be the highest. Nomdeplume. Absolutely agree. I prefer to use 'engage group' for the FAC whenever the scenario allows. Its more realistic and I like the way mobile units keep sending targets whilst on the move. Works great in my SpecOps mission anyway. Like your solution to the mobile SAM units hadn't thought of that one, certainly didn't realise they switched off their radar. Great info. I did test the AI OFF with Static Sams & it did switch the SAM off but no good for mobile units. Badger, I don't have any problems with AI avoiding AI OFF sam units, just tested this the other day and the SU25 attacked & wiped them out (forgot to turn the AI ON again doh), in fact if anything he went for them first instead of a closer target. I have the problem of making them do what I want sometimes, involves lots of ROE weapons hold, and reaction to threat ignore commands!

I have a mission in which there are 2 moving FACs, 2 stationary FACs & 1 AFAC. The stationary FACs work great, the moving FACs work although 1 of them stops giving targets after target number 3 for some reason. The other moving FAC only provides 2 targets and works as advertised. I assign freq (using FM for all ground based FACs as IRL) and callsign at startup and then assign FAC targets 1&2 at waypoint 1 then target 3 at waypoint 3. Works ok. The next targets at waypoints 8&12 don't for some reason. It's almost like becasue he's sent me home after the first 3 his logic is switched off & he won't assign anymore. Although he does speak to me. Another thing I have noticed is that even if you set the AI OFF on a FAC unit he will still show up in the FAC menu list and will also speak to you about targets (so I have to activate them). Badger, without seeing your mission it difficult to know what is wrong but it does look like the JTAC system needs some refining. My mission works in MP & SP and the freq isn't set at every waypoint. With moving FACs it does appear that using engage group is more effective than assign group but that is only my experience based on minimal testing. With regard to your problem are you seeing the FACs callsign in the F4 JTAC menu? Does he respond or not at all? With my FACs the first 3 advanced options I set as follows:- (First he is set as FAC in GUI). Advanced Tab 1. Units freq is set (are you setting 66 FM or 66.0 FM btw?). 2. Units callsign is set 3. set immortal (or invisible A/R) 4. Hold Fire (cant have him as an invisible warrior, this aint predator vs aliens) 5. Assign Group or Engage Group with appropriate priority. This ended up a bit of a ramble, but hope I've given you something to look at.

If the target co-ords are close to my current location, I hate being heads in pushing buttons. Therefore an alternative method I use is to change the TGP displayed co-ords to the same format as sent by JTAC/FAC/Message, then slew it to the given co-ords. Then MARK. Doesn't take long, especially when you become familiar with the co-ord system and the given targets position relative to your own. To slew the TGP quickly, turn the A/C in the approx direction, boresight it, then start matching up the co-ords. Using this method I am nearly always quicker on target than my wingmen (button mashing) mates.

I prefer to leave waypoints for my flightplan, I use markpoints for tactical info. So after you have selected the triangle as SPI with TMS up long, just follow it with a TMS right short. Rotate TAD selector to Mark and there it is.

At the moment its just not possible to add different aircraft types to the same flight group. Due to the different turning radius of the diff types of aircraft even when set to the same speed, they will not follow each other closely. You can do it for maybe 1 or 2 waypoints and thats it I'm afraid. If you want to make the F18s refuel then just set their fuel state low at start. As for getting them to follow in formation over many WPs , not possible I'm afraid.

If my memory serves me right, it doesnt matter which channel you use, the main reason tankers used to set Y channels is just so they didn't accidently interfere with an airfield tacan freq which were all X.

yep but hopefully the face recognition software will alert you to her presence first and automatically alt-tab you to the holiday booking website or something suitably acceptable.

^ I have same problem although not quite as bad as some. Its a solution but its in no way perfect thats for sure. I'd also add that with the trackclip pro, an awful lot of tweaking is required to stop the fore/aft movement when you rotate your head as a result of the clippro being on the side of your head and not in the middle. Even then its not ideal. As for the FOV with Kinect, it will come down to placement, if you have your monitor on a wall and sit 2 ft from it then I guess you are stuffed otherwise there are options. I have seen a Kinect used on top of a monitor so are you sure the FOV is that limiting? These specs say almost 60 degrees, how much moving about are you doing man? I don't think size is a problem, there are solutions.

I agree, although I must say I rarely use the Z? axis (move closer or further away from the screen, I believe most people use a zoom key or button because of the limitations inherant in the HUD display. Webcam face tracking do it and do it suprising well though. Sure, this is some software that is built by a Phd student and is also for recognition as well as tracking, also consider the amount of movement he makes compared to what you make sat in your chair in front of your TIR receiver. Not a bad effort for 1 guy don't you think. Have you used the hacked pc drivers and tried it hooked up to your pc or are you talking about an xbox experience? Also are you comparing similar movement i.e. sat still moving your head left/right/forward in a similar vain to when you use your TIR or leaping about the living room ;). Maybe it won't be as accurate, I don't know, I doubt it though, the damn thing can lip sync. Running on pc it should be more accurate, check this out. My first & subsequent posts are in reply to the thread starter & I just wanted to point out that it may be worth exploring other alternatives. A friend of mine with TIR hooked his ps2 camera up to DCS and I was quite frankly blown away by how good it was. The downside for some was that the CPU hit is about 10fps, he's running at 80 so no probs for him there. (don't know what TIR hit is tbh). I know of 1 helicopter sim developer that intends to explore the possibility of using the kinect to also track hands for button pushing, if it works well then you can probably bet others will follow. Would I spend the money right now on a new TIR5, with the existing cheaper alternatives and exciting technology on the way ... well my answer would be NO I'm afraid. A technology which has no light problems, doesn't mean wearing a hat or antlers, incorporates a microphone & is also able to track more than your head gets my vote. At the very least wait until MS release its SDK for the kinect (which is v soon although I'm sure I'll get quoted on this in subsequent posts by the uninformed) and see what the developers (many) can come up with. There's nothing so healthy for the consumer as good competition.