By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
TWRoO on 12 March 2010
Edit Thread
WereKitten said:
TWRoO said:

Reading the glowing sphere movement means very little though, that's what I am getting at.

If you move the Move (lol) horitontally while pointing at the screen, but without twisting it in any way (1 dimensional movement) then you are, by 1:1 standards, pointing at a new part of the screen. If you do the same movement, but rotate the handle left or right, you could be pointing (as a line of sight down the handle of the device) at the same place all the time, or somewhere vastly different, even though the camera read the same movement in the sphere.

...

The Wii remote only needs the accellerometers as a periodic check to make sure you haven't moved the remote vertically (while still pointing at the same position) as well as making sure you haven't turned the remote over while not pointing at the screen.

Even with the Wii IR camera it's not like the software pointer is exactly where the physical remote is pointing. You rotate the wiimote, the image of the bar LEDs inside the camera translates in some direction, and through factors of calibration and software elaboration the cursor is moved. Think of games like the Conduit where you can change all the factors of speed and bounding box.

That is all to do with the game though, not the tech.... the simple fact is if you had to aim 1:1 with the TV screen, people like me would have to be astonishingly accurate (i have a 13.6 inch screen) as such games that need it have their own calibration.

A bit like a mouse the movement will be intuitive if by moving the device up the pointer will move up and so on. From what I understand of this, you mean ignore the handle and use only the glowing ball to move the cursor.... this would be very responsive sure, but not very easy for someone to be accurate with their movement.

As for your example of translating the wand without turning it

a) doesn't make much sense as a user action if you're using the wand to point, and I would not have any problem as a developer of such a game. I'd throw away the lack of rotation and use the translation to move the cursor. If we're pointing, we're not replicating 1:1 anything, strictly speaking.

That would not work at all. These situations have to be accounted for because the user cannot be expected to keep their hand in the same position and only rotate the wrist, the accurasy of these devices means that even a slight movement in any direction would mean the pointer needs re-calibrating.

b) there's no reason in general to imagine that the cursor shoud lie on the intersection of the wiimote direction and the TV plane, really. Why shouldn't we intercept a virtual plane that is 3 meters in front of a 3rd person shooter protagonist? That's all into calibration.

??? If I understand that correctly, You mean a virtual plane that is where the glowing ball is already, ie as if you are drawing on the TV screen itself but viewing the screen further away? If that is what you meant then that is basically the same thing as my second bit of text (ignore the handle).... it would work brilliantly for some things, it could be like a virtual drawing pad, but for FPS the accuracy of people's hands is an issue (as I said before), holding it mid-air to find the central point of the screen would also be tiring (the central point can't be on your lap for instance, as you wouldn't be able to aim down)
If that was not what you meant then ignore what I said of course.

As I have said though, I can't be sure... perhaps the compass thing it has inside means less reliance on slow accelerometer tech.