Head Tracking w/ the Wiimote

mrneutron2003 writes "This guy just doesn't know when to stop. Johnny Chung Lee graces us with yet another one of his inventive Wiimote projects. This time it involves using the Wiimote and a pair of inexpensive LED safety goggles (with the standard LED's replaced with InfraRed ones) to allow positional head tracking , achieving an effect similar to what is experienced with three dimensional displays and CAVE systems. The video dramatically illustrates the effect. Game developers take note. This simple little variation on infrared tracking could allow for some seriously immersive gameplay in the future." This guy deserves a medal.

Re:Aiming a gun by looking at your target

[LanceUppercut]

The system in the helicopter is in no way "similar" except from the fact that it used head tracking. Head-tracking helmets have been used for aiming weapons in aircraft for quite sime time now. Mass-application of the concept originates from Soviet fighter planes, MiG-29 being the most notable example.

Fantastic

[Tom]

Between those things and multi-touch, I am literally waiting for a revolution of computer input design. 10 years ago, there was the movement, but not the technology. Today we have the technology. Please, give us some games that use this, give us multitouch tablet Macs (sorry windos fanboys, microsoft could pull it off technologically, but it wouldn't be useable), give me a VR multitouch table! Now! The flying car can wait until next year...

Re:processing power

[datajack]

Not very.

Not to trivialise what Johnny is doing there is basically measuring the position of the wiimote in relation to the sensor bar - something it already does. The code to do this shouldn't be that difficult. The true genius was in him realising that you could do this easiest by reversing the moving component and the stationary component.

Apart from some smoothing algorithms, this is no more complex than reading the wiimote's pointer position and mapping that to a camera viewpoint.

Re:processing power

[cowscows]

Correct. As far as the rendering engine is concerned, whether you're moving the camera with your head or a mouse, it's all pretty much the same. This guy is probably using a PC instead of the Wii because it's much easier to get code running on a PC than a Wii (you don't need Nintendo's SDK), which makes it cheaper and more useful to share the code with others.

Johnny Lee Rocks!

[gwait]

What is interesting is that he's coming up with some very creative ideas, and giving them away for free.

This will likely spur an avalanche of Wii hacks, and could easily cause wiimote sales to go thru the roof..

I'm totally enjoying the adventure Johnny!

Combinations?

[AntiPasto]

How about three WII remotes together... you'd have a virtual room you could write on and move things around with your fingers?

Re:Nintendo! Hire Johnny Lee!

[Opportunist]

If so, some PR guys should be fired.

Keyboards on consoles ain't news. That's about as stale as a Sega Mega Drive. Not to mention that people would most likely rather use a "normal" computer for browsing the web.

This is a new feature. Brand new. And doesn't need any additional gadgets or any new developments. At the very least, Nintendo should have had something like that demo in its standard applications to show it off and leave the customer dreaming of games that make use of it.

Split Screen?

[Woogiemonger]

He says this is only good for one player at a time.. if the Wii remote was able to map other colors to other players, it'd be able to handle different players for each window in a split-screen game, no?

Re:processing power

[Aladrin]

I'm an almost-hobbyist (time constraints, ugh!) game developer and I've already thought of 2 games I want to play since I saw the video this morning. I usually suck at ideas. This this is ripe for the plucking.