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Resident_Hazard on 07 December 2010
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daroamer said:
Resident_Hazard said:

From my experience, working at Best Buy in the games section, and having ample time to play with these things--and having to reset and recalibrate them fairly often so customers can use them--all I can say is they both have their wonkiness and issues.  Move requires way more calibration than either the Wii Remote/Motion Plus or Kinect.  Kinect's reaction time isn't perfect, but it's mostly a side-effect of the in-store display model I've used.  It'd doesn't do so well recalibrating every few minutes to different sizes of people.  It manages, but isn't perfect.  Plus, in a big, open store, there are a lot of distractions for the camera. 

At least Microsoft thought outside the box and tried something other than directly ripping of Nintendo. 

The thing I don't get about Move is, if the camera can see those glowing balls so well, why does it need any calibration at all?  Why can't it adjust on the fly?  And menu navigation with the thing is asinine.


I'm guessing here since I don't have Move but from what I've seen and read I think the calibration in many cases has to do with figuring out Move's relation to YOU as opposed to Move's relation to space.  Since the camera is not really tracking your body it doesn't know how long your arms are, for instance, or where your body is in relation to the wands. 

So, for example, you have situations like The Fight: Lights Out.  When you throw a punch you bring your arm right back and then extend your arm fully to deliver the punch and the game needs to interpolate this motion and animate the characters.  The problem is, how does it know you've fully extended your arm?  Or that you pulled your arm all the way back?  Without calibration to your body dimensions it has no way of really knowing this.  I think that's why the controls for that game in particular don't work well for a lot of people, especially when the calibration is off.  

The same would hold true for something like archery in Sports Champions, it needs to know when your arm is locked forward as far as it will go, and when your other hand has been brought all the way back to your ear.  I know I had similar problems with this in Wii Sports Resort, you could compensate a bit for the game but often in archery I had to draw back my arm further than I should have had to in order to get full tension on the bowsting.

As I said, that's a guess but I don't think I'm too far off.

I'm really not sure what the issue is, but I do know it needs to be calibrated every single time it's used.  And I set it up at work so customers don't have to hassle with it.  Hold the controller by your shoulder, press button.  Hold by hip, press button.  Hold at belt buckle/midsection, press button.  Every time.  Wii Motion Plus?  Set controller upside down on a flat surface for a couple seconds and it's good to go. 

I won't dismiss that it has to do with the controller's relation to the user, but it's so much more finnicky than the relative ease of Wii Motion Plus or Kinect.  Give Kinect a couple seconds and it detects you and you're fine.  When Move is being used, the movement isn't too bad, but going by the sports game it comes with, it's still far from perfect.  Frankly, I feel that Sony's frisbee game with Move is inferior to what Nintendo put out when they launched Motion Plus with Wii Sports Resort.  That frisbee game still feels far more natural.

None of the motion control methods is without their issues, but I think that after four years on the market, Microsoft and Sony should both have been able to come up with something truly superior to the Wii Remote, and by and large--they didn't.  At least Microsoft was thinking outside the box, rather than directly copying Nintendo.  I like that.