PowerBook As A New Kind Of Human Interface Device

An anonymous reader writes "As covered earlier on Slashdot, Amit Singh had shown how to access and use the motion sensor feature in the late model PowerBooks for innovative things, which created quite a buzz in the Mac community. In an ingenius new article, Singh has taken the idea all the way and released software which lets you use a PowerBook with a motion sensor as a general purpose input device which works with existing apps. IMHO the coolest use of this is for playing games: be sure to check out the video footage in the article. For instance, in a car racing game, you steer by tilting the PowerBook left and right, go faster by tilting it forward, brake by tilting it backwards! You can also scroll in apps. Google Map scrolling with my PowerBook feels like flying in an aiprlane over the terrain. I must say you have to try this in real life to appreciate the experience ... go to the Apple store or something if you don't have the hardware ;-) Before this my girlfriend (who uses a Dell notebook) has never called anything computer related "jawdropping"! Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"

Comments

music applications

[akuzi]

I can see the powerbook/ibook sensors becoming popular amoungst laptop music geeks as a controller for interactive performances. (making the computer more and more like an instrument that can be played live)

Nokia 3220

[BarryNorton]

Hate to sound like a phone geek, but my new Nokia 3220 with this standard mod has this feature, supported by 'Java motion' for programming, and ships games that use it...

The coolest thing I've ever seen...

[sootman]

...was at Siggraph in Orlando, FL in 1998. One booth had goggles (not sure what else to call them, kind of like these) and a headband with a gyro-sensor-thingie. Even though it wasn't 3d/stereo (the only possible improvement), it was so awesome. They had a good FPS game running (I think either GLQuake or Quake II at the time) and it was the greatest thing in the world. Just as good as you can imagine--walk with the arrow keys on a keyboard, shoot with 'control', but you could look around with your head, rather than the mouse.

It worked perfectly. Just what VR should be. Better than the those big, clunky, slow things at the mall; probably as good as what was imagined by Gibson. Better than what was shown in that crappy movie with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, based on the equally crappy Crichton book. Perfect, perfect, perfect--very fast, no delay at all, nothing unnatural about it. Just turn your head, look up, and that's what you see. Exactly what you would expect.

My question is this: it's six and a half years later. Gear like this should be a few hundred bucks now. Why isn't it everywhere? Sony quit making the glasstrons, and this place has gyros be they seem like they cost a lot more than they should. I don't know a gamer who wouldn't love a setup like this. Gamers have spent a zillion dollars on video cards and controllers in the last decade. Stuff like this seems like it would have a huge market, and capitalism--more than nature itself--abhors a vacuum.