Johnny Lee posted a new Wiimote video!
Mark Oates

Head tracking!

I want to see some games which use this technology. It wouldn't be too difficult to put together a real target/duck game similar to the one in the video.

gnolam

Neat!
This might just have been the excuse I needed to justify buying myself a Wii. ;D

MiquelFire

Or at least the remote :P

Mark Oates

I'd go out and buy a wiimote right now but I'd have to get a bluetooth receiver to make it work.

Kibiz0r

Whoa. If a full game like that came out, I would buy the hell out of it.

Mark Oates
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I would buy the hell out of it.

I get the feeling that we're witnessing a birth... 8-)

Slartibartfast

It looks cool, but doesn't seem too promising.

OICW

That pop up from the screen effect was really cool, I wonder what causes it. Anyway I always move myself when playing FPS games, and this feature would be really cool.

Hey a Wiimote works with computer as well?

ReyBrujo

Pretty good. Wish someone were able to make a full game with it ;D

Richard Phipps

Awesome! :)

Arthur Kalliokoski
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Anyway I always move myself when playing FPS games

I used to look at the monitor kind of sideways when playing Duke 3d, trying to see a monster behind the bookshelf etc.

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That pop up from the screen effect was really cool, I wonder what causes it.

You have to remember the camera he uses only has one viewpoint, I bet you'd have to close one eye or something IRL.

I never tried any "real" 3d except the kind where I had two little viewports and I had to cross my eyes to "merge" them, do the LCD shutterglasses look anything like that?

I bet the Wii company comes out with hardware you don't have to rig like in the video.

Another step closer to the holo-deck!

blargmob

Pretty clever. I'd like to see that in some FPS games.

CGamesPlay

Does anybody else get a weird feeling when they see the infrared LEDs light up red on the camera?

Mark Oates
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Does anybody else get a weird feeling when they see the infrared LEDs light up red on the camera?

it doesn't make any sense to me, the camera doesn't change the frequency of any of the other colors. How does it change infrared into visible?

CGamesPlay

It's not actually changing the frequency. It's just that infrared still excites the particles that receive red light, and so it translates that digitally into the red channel. It's just color inaccuracy, but it feels weird, because it's a very visible representation that visible light really is just radiation.

OICW

Mark: it all dependes on quality of the sensor in your camera. For example CCD chips in cellphones don't have any filters and therefore you can easily use them to catch infrared communication. Just pick up a remote from any device you have around and let it shine into the camera.

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I used to look at the monitor kind of sideways when playing Duke 3d, trying to see a monster behind the bookshelf etc.

Me too.

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You have to remember the camera he uses only has one viewpoint, I bet you'd have to close one eye or something IRL.

That would mean that with two viewports that effect would vanish?

Anyway it's nice to see how a simple thing for gaming spars imagination and new cool things are created.

Johan Halmén
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That would mean that with two viewports that effect would vanish?

Yes. Anyone seen the funny paper dog that turns its face against you all the time? The video looks really cool. I printed out the dog image and foiled it into the dog. The effect was not so good when viewing the real thing. Sorry, no links. Failed to google it.

Of course, with lcd shutter glasses or red/blue glasses the effect would be almost perfect.

Mark Oates

you could also shutter between 2 pairs of glasses for multiple player's perspectives. You'd need some pretty fast frame rates though.

Even without stereo vision the effect is more immersive than a flat image.

Evert
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That pop up from the screen effect was really cool, I wonder what causes it.

Parallax. Those objects have a larger parallax than the real objects in front of the TV when moving your head, which normally means they are closer.

ReyBrujo
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Anyone seen the funny paper dog that turns its face against you all the time?

Hollow-face illusion. The dragon is the most famous one.

Vanneto

Actually you could do the same thing with a normal remote-control ( for TV's ) and a Flux stabilizer. And a Tech-Z5 upgrade. You could also mod the on board Phony card and do the PBUS checking on the rear of Pi. ::)

HardTranceFan

Fantastic. Now let's hope either Nintendo or some game houses makes use of this idea and produce some games.

Mark Oates

The video is already over 600,000 views. Not bad for 3 1/2 days. I hope it catches on.

GullRaDriel

This man have incredible ideas. And he achieve some working demos. I WANT GAME WITH THOS EFFACTS !

gillius

When I saw the first video with the fingers being posted I wanted to start trying this stuff out. When I saw the touch surface, then it really got me excited and I am definitely trying this out. Before I was discouraged by trying to figure out what BT device will work -- I'm still wondering how to properly get one as I am in US and all BlueSoleil devices are in Europe and Asia (BlueSoleil seems to work best). WIDCOMM devices seem to be hit and miss to work and I'm afraid to buy one in a store.

Either way what I have done so far is that I have made myself an IR pen as Johnny did and I have tested it against the Wiimote and it works.

I am hoping to put up some more detailed info on my site after I get this working, to make it easier. I'm a computer guy and I know some really basic electronics stuff but I needed help from a friend at my company's electronics lab to help me do the actual soldiering work and check my math.

  1. Learn about resistor bands if you haven't already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code

  2. I already knew some basics like V=IR, but I learned a bit more about diodes and which side is anode (positive) and cathode (negative) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diode

  3. The simple schematic is at the author's site. My electronics friend disagrees that resistor is omittable at 1.5V, and I believed it, so I worked on that assumption. Therefore I needed to find a resistor. Johnny's schematic is simple at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/pen.jpg but leaves out details that would be obvious to an electronics guy.

  4. Pick a power source, I suggest a 1.5V AAA battery or coin cell. I used a 1.5V alkaline, and that worked for me.

  5. Buy or find an IR LED. I went to Radio Shack and just picked one up. When you buy it the package will mention the forward voltage drop (mine was 1.2V) and forward current (mine was 100mA), which I used as my current target. Your battery needs to have higher voltage than the forward drop. Try to find an LED with the widest viewing angle (mine is 45 degree).

  6. The resistor needs to go (at least from what I can understand) on the anode side, and its main purpose is to limit the current as the diode has effectively 0 resistance. Calculate its required minimum value from the circuit. To do this, find the "remaining voltage" after the drop, so in my example this is 1.5V - 1.2V = 0.3V. Now we want 0.3V at 100ma, the forward current. V=IR, 0.3V = 100mA * R, R=3 OHM. If we used 3V battery, for 1.8V at 100mA we need 18 Ohm resistor. The resistor I got from our electronics lab, but you should be able to buy them at a store like Radio Shack for very cheap.

  7. I also used wires and solder from our lab, but if you don't have a soldering iron you might be able to "hack it" with electrical tape. For wires make sure to get wires thin enough that you can flex around the pen.

  8. Getting the pen shell itself is as it is in Johnny's video; take a ballpoint pen and remove the insides and the back cap.

  9. Assembly: Cut down the long leads on the LED and the long leads on the resistor (for stability), then solder the resistor to the LED and a wire to the resistor. I used electrical shrink-wrap around the entire branch to prevent shorting, but electrical tape could do, even the resistor itself is in the wrap.

  10. Solder a wire to the cathode side of the LED, and wrap this to prevent shorting.

  11. Now the wires are sticking out. Test it by touching the battery's - end to the cathode wire and the + end to the anode wire. If you have an ammeter, test for current flow, if none then maybe your battery is the wrong way or there is a break. Point it at the Wiimote in the "sensitivity" screen and you should see the light show up.

This is as far as I've gotten. My next step is to actually get the software working, and then I'll work on getting a switch for the pen, battery holder, and making the pen itself nice.

ReyBrujo

Cool! I am searching for a program in C (for Linux) to read Wiimote values through Bluetooth. I have a BT USB connector, and want to test if it can read from it.

OICW

Looks like there will be "Post your Wiimote/Wii enhancement/upgrade" threads soon :D

ReyBrujo

Hopefully a Wiillegro one too ;)

GullRaDriel

I am willing to sell you ir-pen ;-)

De Baimbo

Do you guys think that thing would work with any infra-red videocamera or must it be a Wiimote?
Because there are many pages on the internet that explain how to make an IR camera out of a normal cheap webcam! look:
http://www.hoagieshouse.com/IR/

I didn't try it (I have no webcam) but it's only few simple steps, I think it should work. The experiments can begin right now!

ReyBrujo

Yep, there is this group at school that created a mouse that is worn like a cap using a red led and a webcam. But why reinvent everything when you have it already done? ;)

OICW

For what purpose do you need IR camera?

GullRaDriel

night shot

OICW

I mean for mending IR didodes with Wii to produce windows into the virtual reality.

gillius

Rey, there are C libraries discussed at http://www.wiili.org/index.php/Wiiuse_C and http://www.wiili.org/index.php/CWiid. I hear CWiid mentioned the most, but it is Linux.

Basically, I've been finding all of my Wiimote hacking info at http://www.wiili.org/.

ReyBrujo

Yesterday I tried to start the bluetooth service and Ubuntu froze. The last time I tried (maybe 6 or 7 months ago) it worked fine enough (could transfer things from desktop to my cellular phone). Maybe I need to reinstall everything and dump all the configuration files.

gillius

I just got a TrendNet adapter (TBW-105UB), and while it will associate with the Wiimote, programs can't read from it. From what I've searched, anything that uses WIDCOMM 5 won't work. So now I either need to try BlueSoleil drivers or find WIDCOMM v4 drivers from a similar device and try to get it to install somehow.

MiquelFire
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I just got a TrendNet adapter (TBW-105UB), and while it will associate with the Wiimote, programs can't read from it.

As I been too lazy to buy a new adapter, I recently tried again with the one I got with my MS mouse, and found that GlovePIE can send data with the bluetooth fix, and that's it. No reading what so ever! And BlueSoleil doesn't even know it's a bluetooth adapter either.

BAF

Weird, my BT adapter I got from Woot.com for 99 cents works perfectly. From what I can gather, it has a Broadcom chipset (at least it comes with Broadcom software). I must have gotten lucky with it... its only good for Wiimotes and tethering to my mobile phone for internet, apparently it's too slow to support A2DP so my bluetooth headphones are unusable with it.

relpatseht

For bluetooth adapters, these work with Wiimotes and are quite cheap (self tested). I've only tried it on XP and Linux, however, so I'm not sure if it works on Vista yet.

I've been trying out some of those demos, the effect is even more fun in real life.

karistouf

Be aware that Glove PIE is the fabulous script that enables you to use Wii ( and many other interfaces) with a PC.
here:
http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie

;D

BAF

I tried some other thing, forgot the name, but it beats the snot out of Glove PIE.

karistouf

it would be interresting to know what was this thing.
I m using glove PIE for real time performance, with audience, etc... and its stable, strong, no memory taking. Im taking different signal thruth glove pie, and receiving its envoices in MIDI with midishare library.
and glove pie is released with sources.

CGamesPlay

Yeah, WiinRemote really doesn't, if that's what you were talking about.

stapler: are you able to get the wiimote to pair with Windows automatically?

karistouf
relpatseht

CGamesPlay: I never tried and have since killed Windows. Sorry. I didn't use the Wiimote much in Windows, I would always just tell the driver to search and press 1 and 2 simultaneously.

gillius

Thanks to information from this thread: http://www.wiili.org/forum/tbw-105ub-connected-to-pc-but-has-no-response-in-glovepie-t3152.html, I have found out that the TBW-105UB works if you use the WIDCOMM 5 drivers from the Broadcom site, found at http://www.broadcom.com/products/bluetooth_update.php. The version I got was 5.1.0.4000. After I did that, WiinRemote and GlovePIE worked.

Karadoc ~~

Before watching, I was thinking "head tracking... cool, but probably useless".

But having watched the video, I'm impressed with how well it works. I think this definitely has potential to be something big.

karistouf

low cost sensors and captors are finally arrived !
i mean actually its interfacing that got all the challenges, and creating this interfacing creates new way to play/interact...

now what we need is new protocol because of tactil screens.

one mouse manipulating is not enough. we need to use our 10 fingers at the same time

lokk here on sergi jorda s work ( it s motion tracking in live):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm_FzLya8y4&feature=related

here the main site, qhere there is explanation also of reactvision and its protocol to handle multiple events at the same time
http://mtg.upf.es/reactable/

bamccaig

This is very cool! :D Though PlayStation Eye should provide this functionality and more. ;D

ReyBrujo

Implementation through PlayStation Eye may be difficult because you need the camera to recognize the face (and most specifically the eyes). Xbox 360 was going to use two cameras, that may be another option.

bamccaig
ReyBrujo said:

Implementation through PlayStation Eye may be difficult because you need the camera to recognize the face (and most specifically the eyes). Xbox 360 was going to use two cameras, that may be another option.

I don't see games from this generation requiring the console to specifically identify the face or eyes of the gamer. :) It's enough to track the head as in head tracking. ;)

gillius

I managed to get my light pen successfully built. Another tip in the building is that cameras can often see IR lights; interestingly my cell phone camera (SE W600i) and my friend's (Moto Razr2) were able to clearly see the IR light cast, letting me see if it was actually turning on. Of course, an adjustable power supply with built in ammeter also helps :).

The only problem I'm having is with the intensity of the light and getting the Wiimote placed close enough to have proper resolution and intensity (the farther you go out the harder it is for it to see the LED), but far enough away to reach the corners of the projected screen. Today I'm going to try with a tripod to see if I can get the ideal position.

EDIT: another interesting note is that for some reasons the Dell LCD monitors I have are very reflective to IR light -- interesting because they don't reflect visible light. But as a result, I'll bet that the touchscreen concept would work very well on an LCD although I haven't actually tried it yet.

Kibiz0r
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I don't see games from this generation requiring the console to specifically identify the face or eyes of the gamer. :) It's enough to track the head as in head tracking. ;)

How do you propose to track the head without identifying characteristics, such as, oh say... the face?

ReyBrujo

Not the line of sight, but the eyes relative to their eyes. I think the video example works very well because the sensor bar put below the camera does full eye-tracking, same as the glasses with the lights or the goofy cap. The point of vision is different if you are perpendicular to the TV screen at a corner or looking at the TV from the same corner.

My vacations begin either next Monday or the Monday after it (haven't yet decided which is better), I may (big MAY there) try to do something of this.

Mark Oates

Almost 2 million hits!

ReyBrujo

He has been interviewed by Game Informer, a pretty important gaming magazine. Didn't want to create a new topic about this, but it is worth mentioning it.

Thread #594473. Printed from Allegro.cc