More Wii-mote Info

Psykechan writes "IGN has revealed some more info about Nintendo's Wii remote controller. Paraphrasing from the official Developer documentation, the controller will communicate with the console using Bluetooth and will last up to 60 hours on two AA (R6/UM3) batteries using only accelerometer functionality or 30 hours using precision aim functionality via the sensor bar. There's also details on memory, LEDs, possible camera functionality, and environmental distractions." From the article: "Light sources from fluorescent and halogen lamps, plastic, mirrors and more may occasionally interfere with the pointer, based on official documentation. To eliminate this interference, the pointer must identify the sensor bar and mark its two coordinates. When pointing with the Wii-mote, the unit is actually interacting with the sensor bar, which then translates data to the television, in effect simulating a direct aim to the television."

Comments

AA Batteries? Are they kidding?

[Rachel Lucid]

After seeing the piece of work that is the DS lite, I figured Nintendo would have similar recharge functionality for the remotes. I have similar issue with my wireless mice and I find it rediculous... sure, lithium-ion batteries are expensive, but for a $250 machine anyway...

Re:AA Batteries? Are they kidding?

[Osty]

Just because it can use AA batteries doesn't mean it won't have a rechargeable battery pack. Look at the Xbox 360 controller, for example. Out of the box, it comes with two AA batteries that fit into a little box that snaps into the controller. However, you can go out and buy a play and charge kit (battery + USB recharge cable) for ~$20 and use that instead. The battery pack is similar in shape to the AA battery cartridge and fits in the exact same place on the controller. Selling it separately may be seen as a money grab by some, but it does make sense (accessories == big money!) to help offset the console subsidy.

Then again, Nintendo didn't do that with the old Wavebird. If you wanted rechargeable batteries, you had to go out and buy your own AA-sized rechargeables. I would be very surprised if Nintendo didn't offer some sort of rechargeable battery pack for the WiiMote, though.

Uh... Need A Clue?

[MBCook]

I read this the other day. Most of it was known before. That said, the IGN writer needs a clue.

The Wii-mote features 6KB of "non-volatile" memory, whose exact purpose remains a mystery. IGN Wii speculates that this throwaway memory could possibly be used in conjunction with the Wii-mote's recently revealed internal speaker.

I wonder what the memory will be for. I can't think of any uses, unless it is used for calibration in which case it doesn't matter that much. That said, using non-volatile memory (which did not need to be in quotes, and is probably flash) to store sound clips seems rather pointless and a waste of limited write cycles.

But wait, there's more!

...which means that it is more or less seeing a megapixel image. Whether or not this data can be interpreted into visual information remains unknown, but we're not ruling out the possibility that the pointer could sub as a camera.

I'M ruling it out. That's like saying a mouse with a ball and a 200 PPI resolution could be used as a scanner. To put a live mega-pixel video sensor on the front of the Wiimote just to analyze every image to figure out which way the thing was pointing would be one of the most expensive, slow, battery draining, and stupid ways to accomplish that goal imaginable.

We'll find out more during Tokyo Game Show on Sept 22nd. In the mean time, if you are going to speculate in an article about something, get some kind of engineer to take a glance at your article first so you don't look too wrong.

Re:Uh... Need A Clue?

[77Punker]

Hey, at least it's not as bad as the IGN article that said the Wii would be less powerful than the X-Box because its CPU runs at a lower frequency. I think it went something like this:

"X-Box had a 780 MHz Celeron but Wii's processor is only 745 MHz so that means that Wii won't support bump mapping! OMFG!"

Maybe that quote is paraphrased, but it's pretty damn close to an IGN article I read about a month ago that made it onto Slashdot. IGN should either hire some editors or be destroyed.

Re:Uh... Need A Clue?

[MBCook]

I thought about that for a second but I ruled it out. What is the point of putting that on the controller? Unless your controller becomes your controller that you take to a friends house that keeps a tiny bit of data on you (favorite color, birthday, name) so when you start playing it's already configured for you. I wouldn't think enough games would have similar enough controls for that to work. When they do (such as the trigger in an FPS) then the configuration is obvious (are you going to change the fire button from the trigger to a button at the bottom of the controller you can't reach?)

On a PC you have a TON of keys to bind. On the Wiimote, you have 9 (if you include the four D-pad directions).

I don't see the point of storing that on the controller. After all, the system is supposed to have built in flash storage of some size (I don't remember) and you could store that data there. That would make more sense than storing it on the controller.

And on the storing sounds font, just how much of a sound could you possibly fit in 6kb anyway? Standard WAVs are 10MB per minute. If you make that mono, it's 5MB a minute. Cut the sample rate in 4 (to 11khz) and that would give you 1.25MB a minute. Go to 8 bit instead of 16 and things are sounding terrible, but you're at ~600kb per minute. So you could fit 1/100th of a minute of audio in that space. Even if you compress it 5:1 you only get 3 seconds.

And if you are going to use that memory for sounds in-game, why does it need to be non-volatile anyway? Would it really be that hard to download the sound to the controller again the next time they turn on the game?

Don't believe the camera bit.

[EvilFrog]

The bit in the article about the camera is pretty idiotic. IGN is completely misunderstanding the information they've got. It can read relative position on the screen to a resolution that is roughly a megapixel. Somehow they read this as a potential camera. It's not. It's no more a camera than your computer mouse is.

Are YOU kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

After seeing the piece of work that is the DS lite, I figured Nintendo would have similar recharge functionality for the remotes. I have similar issue with my wireless mice and I find it rediculous... sure, lithium-ion batteries are expensive, but for a $250 machine anyway...

Are you serious?!?!

Look, here's the options you typically have with batteries in consumer products:
1. Batteries are not user accessible. When batteries lose their ability to hold a charge, you replace the wiimote. Cost to you: $60
2. Proprietary rechargables. Really just AAs or AAAs, but inside a special case so that you have to buy them from the manufacturer. Cost to you: $35
3. User replaceable batteries of a standard size. You buy your own NiMhs. Cost to you: $6.99

You're COMPLAINING about this?

they now make a separate charger...

[YesIAmAScript]

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/x/xbox360quickc hargekit/default.htm

The play and charge doesn't really excite me. I use it, but when it runs down, I just grab my other controller with 2 AAs in it while the play and charge charges from my iPod USB power supply.

The play and charge has two major flaws:
1. If you charge your controller off your 360 while the 360 is "off", the 360 isn't really off, it is taking over 80W of power. It basically just turns off the video out. It gets hot and wastes a lot of power.
2. If you charge your controller off your 360 while the 360 is on, you must use that controller as player 1. That is, if any controller is attached by the play n charge kit to the 360, it becomes controller 1. If you turn it off (perhaps to make another controller #1), it just turns right back on and becomes #1 again. This sucks. This forces you to use the tethered controller to play, even if you have another that is charged. That is, unless you want to wait until your 360 is "off" to charge, in which case you end up at #1 again.

That's why I have to plug my controller into my iPod power supply (via the play n charge cable) to charge it. Weak.

Still, all in all it is a good controller, Sony will have trouble matching it with their PS3 controller.

Re:Weird information

[SirSlud]

Well, as a camera, no purpose, because the folks at IGN are, as usual, being paid to be highly speculative fanboys. I say this as:

a) a game developer
b) who has access to the wii-mote and has read the dev documentation
c) somebody who likes IGN, although my like of them dies by the day

Trust me, it can never be used as a camera. It translates position into co-ordinates because, holy fuck batman, thats what a pointer does.

The difference with a joystick or analog stick is that you map the 'force' of the joystick (ie, pointed up down, left right) into some kind of velocity and acceleration and determine where on the screen the pointer should be .. the "co-ordinates" you end up with are a result of your game logic that deals with the input values of the console controllers' analog stick. With the wii-mote, the idea is that it is pointing somewhere, therefore, the hardware can tell you where.

I read the article a few days ago on IGN, and for the most part, its correct. You have to distinguish between real input, and glare from windows or lights, and another interesting matter is that the controller is so sensitive that in order to deal with the input from the accelerometer you cant take what you get EVERY frame and go from that .. you should average it out over some small delta, maybe .2 seconds.

But the 'maybe it can be used a camera' part is just like .. man why am I working 50 hours a week to create something mediocre when I could be paid to work 40 hours a week, some of that playing videogames to write wild wet-dream conjecture?!

Re:Once it's out it's out

[DDLKermit007]

I played with it @ E3. It was flipping awesome. The Wii and the DS are the only things keeping me on console gameing at the moment. I have a PC for pretty graphics.

And btw...you won't be "waveing" the controler around for the most part. Most of the stuff at E3 was very point & click driven. The swining the controler around was mostly done with the party & sports style games. Feels quite natural to me.

Re:Bounds of the TV

[Lectrik]

That makes me wonder... how will the sensor determine the bounds of the TV that the remote is aiming at? Will it look up somehow to see where light is emiting from the TV somehow? Or will there be general assumptions about the size and aspect ratio of the screen?

Perhaps there will be a calibration on setting the system up... but they have to expect either the TV or the sensor to be moved occasionally. Any manual calibration can be expected to suffer from accuracy problems, I'd expect - especially if game makers somehow assume a screen aspect ratio when making their games. Games with relativistic controls wouldn't be so bad... but anything with precision involved would start to feel sloppy when anything changed.

I hope the relationship between screen and controller are more dynamic and automatic than just sensing the remote. Regardless, I imagine I can quickly get used to whatever it is, and the game makers will compensate as needed - I'd just like it to be as close to a precise 3-d mouse as possible without having to wave the controller too out of proportion to the actual screen.

Ha, something I have a little experience with...
first let's take old NES era light gun games, pull the trigger, the screen flashes white. some of the older arcade shooters use something similar, but can get away with much shorter flashes and the gun interprets that. Now the more modern ones, mostly SEGA ones where I work have a series of IR LEDs located at the edges of the screen (5 top 5 bottom usually) that are strobed in series. I'm pretty sure it measures the intensity of each LED to determine the position of the gun, and covering even one will make it think it's pointing off screen (a common problem in cold weather when people just thrown their coats on top of the game when they play it) I'm assuming the sensor bar they keep talking about will function slightly similarly to the later. You will probably want to calibrate it anytime you drastically change the relative distance from the TV because it starts to make a difference when you double the distance [i.e standing 5 feet away, or sitting 10 away on the couch with your buddies playing Mario Part-wii]

It's a "Beacon Bar" not a "Sensor Bar"

[Dr_Barnowl]

I'd guess this is how it actually works ;

The "sensor bar" sounds more like a "beacon bar". I'm guessing that it has two flashing infrared LEDs, one at each end (or maybe more, they might be lying). Each LED flashes in a different pattern (or is maybe a cluster of LEDs in a different pattern, a "barcode" maybe).

The remote has a megapixel monochrome IR CCD in it. This picks up the position of the LEDs in the "sensor bar". After calibration, the position and inclination of the lights in the image can be used to calculate the vector of your aim.

This is a nice, elegant way of doing it. It's akin to the existing way that TV-aiming devices work (lightguns), except....

• A lightgun works by picking up a single pixel of light, and relaying the timing to the base unit. The base unit uses it's knowledge about how far down the TV fram the electron beam is to determine the position of the lightgun.
• With a lightgun, the positioning relies heavily on scan-timing on a CRT. Given the modern display market, a consistent method of detecting scan-timings varies from difficult (100MHz flicker-free displays) to impossible (LCD displays).
• With a lightgun, you have to have a "flash" to enable the thing to work ; this is why House of the Dead and the like all flash the screen when you shoot - so the lightgun can pick up it's position regardless of whether it's aimed at a dark pixel or not.

This is a serious improvement on lightgun technologies. You can play Zelda without seeing unrealistic muzzle flash when shooting a bow. It should work with ANY display technology, not just scanning-raster, as long as it doesn't get too large (and even then, you should be able to move the "beacon" bar closer to you to enable larger screens with equal angular accuracy). The horizontal accuracy should be much better. And I'll wager it improves the battery life, because the remote doesn't constantly have to emit radiation at the sensor bar, it just has to capture an image.

Bah, tried to do an ascii art of how I think it works, but the lamo-filter won't let it past.