F-Gen was developed to create a larger number of supported games and applications for the Novint Falcon. We realized that the control and forces for many interactions in games/apps could be implemented without source code access. Therefore, Novint has been developing a system, F-Gen, where our community and users themselves can add support for games and applications, share their work, and get more game and application support more quickly, that is more robust. In essence, F-Gen is as much a community tool, as it is a driver set.

The F-Gen drivers emulate a mouse, and are customizeable, making the Falcon work with any PC game. You can adjust the movement scales for the Falcon's control, and save settings for various games. There will be settings where you can map buttons to different controls in games, and we also will have a system for gesture recognition in which you can easily access 36 simple to remember gestures to activate any key press or macro. A movement such as moving right then moving forward, could turn on your flashlight (along with haptic cues to make the movements easy to control), while down-down could make you crouch. We can even use it in other apps, such as forward-up is cut while forward-down is paste.

There will be 4 levels of game support for the Novint Falcon, 3 of which are implementd in F-Gen. They are F-Gen Bronze, F-Gen Silver, F-Gen Gold, and Falcon HD. F-Gen Bronze will just be basic mouse support with customized inputs. F-Gen Silver will have basic forces. F-Gen Gold will have strong force feedback support. With Falcon HD titles (all of our current titles are Falcon HD), we have source access to the game and we can get full Falcon support implemented. The following are our F-Gen titles, by category:

F-Gen Bronze

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

Call of Duty 4

Medal of Honor

Killing Floor

F-Gen Silver

Alien Swarm

Aliens vs. Predator

Borderlands

Bulletstorm

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Counter-Strike

Dead Space

Dead Space 2

Fallout: New Vegas

Half-Life

Half-Life: Blue Shift

Half-Life: Opposing Force

Left 4 Dead 2

Mafia 2

Mass Effect 2

Max Payne (Steam Only)

Max Payne 2 (Steam Only)

Portal 2

Quake 1 (WinQuake)

Unreal Tournament 3

F-Gen Gold

The Hunter

The House of the Dead III

Shatter

The following are all the F-Gen components that work in tandem to make all of the above possible:

F-Gen manager: This is the user interface that users can use to adjust settings to their preferences. Once you download a driver set for a game or app, you can use F-Gen manager to customize the experience. It is simple and straightforward to use. F-Gen manager can import and export settings (a '*.fgen' file), set profiles for game executables, link in a script, map Falcon events to game/app events, and generally control settings such as control sensitivities or force settings through the use of stand gui elements. Profiles can be created and edited to control windows itself or specific games. When a game starts, for example, the profile (and therefore the way the game is controlled) is automatically updated to be the active profile while the game is running.

F-Gen scripting: F-Gen has a scripting system, in which technical users can create and modify more detailed game/app settings. It is intended for technical users in general, though it is not overly complicated. It is robust as well - there is a lot that can be done with the scripting system. The scripting system can be used to adjust both the control and forces for a game.

F-Gen exe: F-Gen has an executable that is running when the Falcon is controlling the cursor. It is what interfaces the cursor control with a game, adjusts profiles when a supported game is launched, and can be controlled through its tray icon in Windows.

F-Gen tools: A tool in F-Gen is a separately implemented element that can be instantiated and utilized through a script. The script starts and calls the tool. Tools can be used to get the state of an application or game. Examples of tools are pixel readers, keyboard listeners, Direct X / Xinput readers, tie-ins with mods, sound interpreters, and memory readers. There are a variety of tools already under development, and community members can add their own tools as well. Tools are an important aspect of F-Gen. In general, to create forces for a game, you have to know its state. In a First Person Shooter, for example, you need to know which gun is active, if it has ammo, and if it is reloading to be able to accurately send a recoil force event to the Falcon. Tools can give this state. Different tools will work for different situations. A pixel reader might tell you when you are taking damage by reading a few pixels in the character's health bar, while a keyboard reader tells you which weapon is active. A memory reader might give all the information you need in a single player game, while other techniques might be needed for online games.

The Power of F-Gen

The combination of the various components of F-Gen should give both Novint and its community a way to quickly implement game and application support for the Falcon. Novint and N VeNT will also integrate F-Gen, showing a much broader range of supported games and applications, which games have what level of support, and how to download the drivers for each game. Novint's hope with F-Gen is that through the combination of both its efforts and the community's efforts, many games and applications will quickly have Novint Falcon support.