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HappySqurriel on 04 June 2009
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WereKitten said:
NJ5 said:

I suppose you haven't watched this video. It has a few parts where he controls the height of a sword when the Wii Remote is not pointing forward:

 

This debate would be much easier if you had actually seen what Wii MotionPlus is capable of.

 

Not only I have seen it, I have also commented about it in another thread yet. They are calculating the position from angles and accelerations by using biometric data about arm length etc. with respect to a fixed virtual shoulder. Keep your wrist angled with your forearm and that model won't work anymore.

@MrHappySquirrel:

I'm not inflating anything. I worked with interfaces that used Wiimotes and the guys who implemented the software, and I routinely read technical blogs from guys who hack them. Some of the technical limitations are very real, and can't be fixed in any generation of games unless the hardware is changed.

All this conversation started because I said that using an external camera allows you more than the very restricted field-of-view of the camera in the Wiimotes, thus allowing continuous absolute position tracking. I can't see how that is debatable.

All the nice tricks that can be used to replace this tracking in several conditions will allow very good things to be done with the Wiimote and WM+. But it won't be able to do nearly as well with inputs involving precise translation tracking, compounded with big rotations.

You're still missing the larger point of my comment ...

The video Nintendo showed when they announced the Wii, and the demo software that we saw with the Wii initially, is very similar to what we have seen for the HD console manufacturers. It is both specifically designed to make people imagine/see the strengths of the system with no consideration to its weaknesses or limitations, and most problems are immediately discounted under the assumption that it will be fixed by the time they release the system. It is very likely that there are large limitations with Sony and Microsoft's systems which haven't been realized yet because few people have had an opportunity to explore the device.

We know about the problems with the Wiimote because it is a physical product that you can buy today, and we know that many of the worst problems are solved by MotionPlus. Just because we haven't experienced enough of Sony/Microsoft's systems to list off their problems doesn't mean they don't exist.