I could see how it could work perfectly for everything.... except blocking.

Since a blocking motion would need the IR to see where on the screen you want to block.

The Slashing already works fine,  Stabbing could be done by pointing and thrusting.  Blocking would have to be done with something like pointing and holding B.

Use numchuck to move, C and Z to cycle through force powers,  A to activate force powers.

Looking around would prove troublesome though unless you did a 2-D game with a step system for movement where you would be "Locked on" and fight only 1 on 1 duels..

i could see an over teh shoulder--that way you could still see what was infront of you and do movement--map teh c button to do straffing and the z to do jumps --snaps to do dodges

Ah yeah.  Jumps.  I forgot about the silly new movies.  Call me crazy but i liked lightsaber fighting better before everyone started jumping around like a kangaroo that stepped on a tack.

no i dont mean flips all over teh place---i mean like luke when he had to fight his dad---battle, battle, battle--jump to a new location-not flip behind you spinning my saber--ohh now i do a step ball kick sideback flip thingy and blamm i am over here now--having only made contact with you once in teh fight

@Sqrl:

Again, I'm most certainly not an expert on the Wiimote and I agree that the actual transmission of data from the Wiimote to the Wii is probably near zero latency -- or something like 10 or 15ms which is insignificant. What I'm questioning is the ability of the Wiimote's ability to read the IR sensor with a high enough sampling rate and with low enough latency that there is the *hardware* possibility of 1:1 data transmission from the Wiimote side. I've always been under the impression that IR devices generally come with a bit of lag inherently but this may not be the case. We are, of course, using light which has no perceptible delay but how fast is the IR receiver in the Wiimote? How many samples per second is it grabbing?

Also, how exactly does the Wiimote tell how a wiimote is oriented in space? Is it purely accelerometer? There are a couple of games -- SMG comes to mind -- that use very fine movements with the wiimote pointed vertically. The IR sensor is no longer line of site and that is coming purely from Wiimote internals.

Wii Sports Baseball is an interesting phenomenon also. You can hold the Wiimote back, wave it around, up, down, etc. and the game fairly closely tracks the movement even though the IR isn't pointed at the sensor bar.... I find it hard to believe that the accelerometers are that good, but maybe they are... It sure seems that the device is behaving as if it has a basic gyro in it...

All that said, the Wii side is also in question. Assuming for a moment that the wiimote is capable of sampling the wiimote's location in 3D space at least 60 times per second and can transmit those 60 samples with lag under 100-150ms, then we have to rely on the console to interpret. We will need a minimum of 60fps to keep everything looking fairly smooth when the action gets really fast... In order to do that, I suspect graphics quality would have to take a fairly decent hit as more and more resources are dedicated to keeping the 1:1 ratio intact both between wiimote and wii as well as on-screen...

Can it be done, though, is the big question. So far, the answer has been a "maybe" at best. Let's hope someone figures it out and charts a new course for the Wiimote....

Calculations taken from the accelerometer determine the wiimotes orientation when the IR receiver is pointing away from the screen. The problem is that calculation drift causes the wiimotes on-screen representation to gradually lose sync with the physical remote over time until the result is no longer reliable. The wiimotes orientation can be recalibrated on the fly at any moment the IR receiver is again oriented toward the sensor bar, even if only for an instant.

E.g., the "feel" of Wii Sports Baseball is authentic to the point of being able to "waggle" the bat behind your head while waiting for the next pitch. Every time you complete a full swing, the wiimote is recalibrated, as the IR receiver in the wiimote will cross the path of the emitters in the sensor bar at some point during your swing.

In a Star Wars lightsaber game, I think it can be expected that the basic gameplay mechanic will lead the player into doing something with the wiimote that will cause it to cross the path of the sensor bar every few seconds.

1:1 motion can be done without any (or only occassional) IR if the developers choose to do it. Wii Sports Baseball and Golf prove that. WarioWare and Trauma Center do as well.

The real problems in 1:1 motion are, first, accessibility. If devs make the system a perfect 1:1, it will be very unforgiving for inexperienced, less-coordinated players. Second, it will probably feel a little wonky without force feedback and "real world" collisions.  e.g. If two people go outside with those plastic toy lightsabers, they can bludgeon each other to their hearts content, and throw up blocks and so on as if in the film. On the Wii, though, you have no force feedback with the controller in your hands. After you swing through, how does the software determine where you end up? Did your swing cut through the opponent? Did you whiff entirely? Were you blocked? If so, we are now immediately no longer 1:1. Once you have "swung through," your body is no longer 1:1 with the images on the screen if the software representation of your combat determines your opponent blocked you.

To me, the problem with Wii 1:1 motion mapping is not technical; it's logistical.

Guys, i'm not going to fight. I do play with the Wii. And I know what it looks like.

But I also happen to work for VG website, and visit developers, and SEE and being explained how the Wiimote actually work, what are the data coming out of the wiimote (even with it's idle), how studios have to make their own tools to translate these.
And as I say, Wiimote "dectec forces".
You can draw circle with the pointer. True. And do it slow or fast.
But when it comes to mouvement, the strengh of the movement isen't really obvious. that's pretty much why, on so many games, you get the same result for an ample/fast gesture and a flick from the wrist.

If you believe that a Jedi Light saber game will allow you to manipulate the saber as you will do with a real sword, then great (I was dreaming about that too).
But I say we won't have it.

@Dryden.....i would ask then, why can i play baseball backwards....i have done this with bowling and batting whilst facing away from the screen to try to explain to my family how it works, admitedly with batting it was incredibly difficult to time it correctly using a mirror (no it wasn't big enough nor in the right position for the IR lights to be seen by the remote), but it still went back to upright whenever i pointed upwards.

@Cryroakira, you can draw complicated shapes and they register fine...there is no need for the sensor bar for shape drawing....SSX Blur for instance does not use the sensor bar.
What the Wii remote detects is accelleration, you may be confusing this with speed possibly.
If for instance you put your Wii remote on a moving machine, that goes at a constant speed in a straight line, then you turned on the Wii console. it would think the remote was still.
If the Wii was turned on... and then you put the remote on a machine it would detect that it had accellerated, then it would not be able to detect anything whilst the remote is at a constant speed...however it would remember that it had accelerated and not yet decellerated to zero...so it would assume the remote was still moving at a speed.
you can draw circles or any shape where the direction changes because accelleration relates to a specific direction, if you had a machine drawing a perfect circle with a constant rotational speed, it would be able to detect it fine because the acceleration is changing all the time.

I would even argue there is little need for the nunchuck, rather than doing the movement you could let the game do it for you like in Wii tennis... or maybe just simple sidestep/back forth movements with the d-pad (camera always locked onto enemy)
That could work really well in my opinion. The d-pad is easy enough to navigate whilst still swinging as long as there is no need for the A button.

Also i don't understand why blcking would need the IR sensor...i assume you mean blocking using a lightsaber, which would just work by where you put the remote....you block by merely putting the Wii remote in a position that would block the swipe from the enemy lightsaber.

Force powers however complicate things....maybe this game should have a simple...Wiimote only part where you have limited movement over body but unlimited lightsaber action....then you could press the B-button to turn off the lightsaber, and use the IR pointer and the A button to perform things with The Force. (oh btw this game is 3rd person...i don't think 1st person sword action will work well because of the limited viewing angle)
The same disc could have a seperate game to it (maybe a quest) where you use the nunchuck as well, and the lightsaber movement is not 1:1, but done in a similar way to Red Steel (i never played it btw) except in 3rd person, so you could do horizontal/vertical/diagonal slashes, stabs...and also parry attacks by holding a button then holding Wii remote either horizontal or vertical.....
So this would be like a single player adventure/action game in which you get to move about and do objectives etc....but what the game focuses on is the duels with CPU opponents, or else online against someone real.

The NES was already capable of 1:1 technology!

1st of all Nintendo made a mistake not to include 1:1 as a standard, a future firmware release will bring an answer to it. Or if Nintendo fails to listen, how hard is it to include a calibration screen in every game that requires it? Metroid Prime 3 prooved 1:1 it isn't a necessity for great controlls.