With Wm+, the bar is only used as reference for pointing at the screen (to know where the screen is), but that's all, with the comined sensors you have the position and rotation. For motion controls, the Wii remote does not need to point at the bar. This is way much cheaper than a camera

I think its brilliant, bottom line. Haters will hate anyways.

5:22 is just awesome

It's not very frequent because, due to this very technical limitation, Wii games have been designed to not mix IR pointing at the screen with big rotations of the Wiimote. Think in more general terms ( sword fighting, rotating objects etc) and those situations would crop up all the time.

As for how many errors would accumulate by relying on accelerometers, I can give you the benefit of the doubt... but the simple fact that Nintendo decided to add an IR camera to the Wii to track positioning suggests that it wasn't an acceptable solution.

I have to disagree with you when you say that Sony's motion controls = Wii motion plus. All we know is what they shown. Where are the hands on impressions? Where are the games that use this technology in a one to one fashion. Until Sony and Microsoft release thier products all we have is speculation. But you guys will continue on with the system wars stuff regardless.

Dedicated to all the fanboys.

Brilliant? yes

Unique? no

Able to be done with cheaper technology? yes

Conclusion = a very good step in the right direction, but has loooong ways to go

WM+ detects rotations only. The absolute position of the Wiimote is determined by the IR camera.

Motion controls don't need to poitn at the bar only if they don't depend on where you perform them.

I have a strong feeling that Sony will release their montion controller with the release of GOW3 and blow people away when they announce that the game is compatible with their motion controller. Both the game and the contoller is set to release in spring 2010........... Hey a gamer can dream right??

There have already been two or three public demonstrations of sword fighting with WM+ - AiLive like a year ago, Nintendo with Wii Sports Resort, and Red Steel 2 has swordfighting as its main mechanic. They seem to work great.

Simulating the IR with accelerometers was not possible because you don't know which direction the remote is moving towards. In a recent video of Red Steel 2 they say they use WM+ when the IR is not seen. Of course the IR is by definition 100% accurate (as far as not accumulating error goes), I'm sure WM+ is not quite as accurate but still seems accurate enough for a lot of applications.

I think it's pretty obvious that I'm going from what was shown. They did a pretty long demo which showed WM+ like functionality (sword handling and the like). Of course it adds the EyeToy as well, as I said.

Your image doesn't work btw.

Facial recognition can be done with any camera (as long as it's got a good enough definition to make out features), and voice recognition technology isn't exactly new.

Neither of those are ground breaking.

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The fact of the matter is, neither Natal nor Sony's system is groundbreaking. I'm assuming that the Natal accessory is just an emitter that calculates a 3D environment from detecting how long it takes for the wave to bounce back (like bats.... and Daredevil). Sony's system is just a high-res camera that calculates changes in pixels on each frame, coupled with a higher precision six-axis in a dildo-shaped casing.

Sony could achieve 3D-world tracking through just using their camera to detect when objects get smaller or larger: the smaller they are, the further away from the screen they are.

What I'm basically saying is that neither of the solutions' hardware is groundbreaking, but where credit should really go to is the software engineers who not only are able to turn the 0s and 1s received from these devices into a rendered 3D world but are also able to do it in a way that other developers can implement the technologies easily into their projects.