FreeTrack Forum

refeer to this http://forum.free-track.net/index.php?showtopic=3059

T think that we must put FreeTrack on launchpad...

https://launchpad.net/


Here's my idea to improve FreeTrack and to make TrackIR obsolete:


1.Foreword

I knew tha FreeTrack is only for windows, for some games. I had a lot of issues the last times I tried to use it, after bought the PS3Eye an spent weeks for building 3point clips, and weeks trying to get FreeTrack to work. Finally I gived up... the flight simulation! I have HOTAS Cougar, Pedals, a top-edge computer and licences for LOMAC fc2 and X-Plane... but I lost the hope to move my head in the game without gift money to natural Point (and I'm an engineer, not a stupid kid xD ).

2. Synopsis

- FreeTrack is only for Windows;
- FreeTrack is only for some titles;
- FreeTrack is not user-friendly;
- I apreciate A LOT the work of those people who worked hard, gratis, to develop freetrack.

3. Ehat about my suggestions

- Make FreeTrack more 'open':
 - portable (WinXP, Vista, W7, Linux, Mac, either x86 and x64);
 - not only for games or simulators (also motion capture, touchscreen, xperiments, etc.);
- make FreeTrack more user-friendly;
- beats Natural Point xD

4. What is needed to do this

a) Enlarge the comunity of users, supporters and developers
- sharing the source code, and with the intent to make freetrack portable to all OS and for other usings, the involved people will augmentate;
- doing a recruiting campaign for the developer comunity searching in comunity of open source game developers, but also non-official modding comunities (think about freefalcon, Openfalcon, etc.);

b) Organizing better the work:
- putting freeTrack with theese goals on LaunchPad;
- adding a wiki with the documentation of usage, source code and algorithms;

c) Creating a comunity intended to write open source drivers (or modifications) to use more friendly the available webcams.

I hope you will take the challenge!!!!!!!!

Carlo

SAY YOURS!

Hi,
just a few random comments...

Making Freetrack multiplatform is not easy as it seems, since the code is written in Delphi and as far as I can tell, there is no multiplatform Delphi implementation available.

As far as I know, Freetrack interface is freely available, so you can use it in any program you wish... And if developer doesn't support it , quite some programs allows you to use plugins for those purposes.

It is easy to say Freetrack is not user friendly; what is not so easy is to propose how to make it more user friendly - I'm pretty sure that if you come up with a cool intuitive user friendly interface proposal, developers will be more eager to do something about it, than if someone says 'it is not user friendly'... Criticism is a good thing, it just have to be specific and better yet constructive.

If I'm not mistaken, most of the code is freely available so I think it is possible to contribute...

Freetrack may be lacking Wiki docs, but IMHO the forums does pretty much the same job - threads can be pinned and so on...

Recruiting developers is not that easy as it sounds (working on opensource project for three years, but only 4 people chimed in) - find someone reasonably skilled, trustworthy and persistent enough is not easy...

Nowadays most webcams should be UVC compatible, so there should be no need for creating/modifying their drivers. That said, as we all know standards are one thing and their support is another problem. But then again, having uptodate compatibility list would help too.
And last but not least - driver development is not as easy as writing an application and there are not many people able to do that well (lack of documentation is another problem)...

Don't get me wrong - Freetrack is great project and the more people willing to help the better, but I think I'd set priorities a bit differently.

To be precise
 - clear definition of goals, areas needing improvement, but still in scope of FT (more user friendly GUI yes, webcam drivers no, as it is outside of the scope)
 - finding good programmers/artists/... willing to contribute in those areas

Kind regards,

Michal

PS. I'm not sure that having NP as an enemy is necessarily a good thing - I think NP and FT found a sweet-spot and should be able to coexist peacefully , leaving more energy to improvement...

Thank you =D