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Next Generation of Gyroscopic Controllers on the Horizon
Jamie found a story about a next gen input device that is functionally similiar to the Wii, but instead of using IR, it gets all location information from gyroscopes and accelerometers. This has the potential to be more accurate and maybe not require me to contort my wrist to bizarre angles in order to successfully collect the stars that are like oxygen to me.
They will jump all over this. Even if it is a premium controller for the Wii, there will certainly be a market for it.
Any input device that requires you to continually keep your hands elevated will never work. Not to mention, constant movement. The reason a mouse and keyboard is so effective is because you can use them both all day long with little to no effort.
Motion sensing is all well and good, but you need accuracy with respect to the video screen, and cameras sensing infrared points is the ideal way to do it these days.
I could see a combination providing a much more enhanced experience, though.
The difficulty will come when developers try and create user interfaces that are intuitive and don't quickly tire the user's arms.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If that was a reference to Super Mario Galaxy, I'd have to say you must be playing wrong. SMG leverages far less Wii controller range of motion than most other Wii games I've tried. WarioWare Smooth Moves gives a bunch of cute names to various Wiimote controller positions, so it's handy to talk about other games with these terms too. SMG just uses "Remote Control" and "Umbrella" postures, and to spin you need to shake the Wiimote a little. If you want wacky untenable wrist positions, try some of the later levels of Kokorinpa (Marble Mania). There are wrist positions in that game that even Smooth Moves didn't try to name, but I'll call them "Policeman's Thumblock" and "Say Uncle."
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The Wii is partly to blame for your wrist problems, the lack of female interaction might play a bigger part.
This is a fine idea for games that are purely motion based. So, the Wii Sports and Tiger Woods and driving games and such. However, for games that need to interact with the screen, AKA every shooter, adventure, action game, it will not work. The Wii sensor on the TV isn't there to tell the Wii where the controller is. It's there to tell the Wii where the TV is. Without knowing where the television is in relation to the remote, you lose the ability to move the cursor on the screen.
As the comment title states. The acceleration due to gravity from the Earth allows it to track which way is down, too, avoiding the need for little spinning gyroscopes. What did submitter think the Wii used to track movement when the remote wasn't pointed at the IR sensor bar? Psychic powers?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This new gyroscopic + accelerometer technology would be great if combined with camera based motion tracking and included in a VR goggle. Since you would want to physically walk forward without bumping into this .. it should be combined with a hand held game controller that can be used to propel oneself forward or in a particular direction etc. Of course in the future even the game controller can be eliminated because the VR goggles can utilize brain waves and neural signals to be controlled and told to walk forward etc.
If you think gyroscopes are next gen, I have just one word for you: plastics.
The Wii Remote tracks its position via an infrared sensor that users must attach to their televisions.
Firstly, while it is called the "sensor bar", it isn't a sensor at all, it is just a row of IR emitters. There is no receiver on the bar. Instead, there is an infrared camera in the Wii Remote that takes a "picture" of the bar to figure out which way the remote is pointed.
Also, the IR system is only used as as calibration for the accelerometers. The accelerometers in the Wii Remote still do the bulk of the work. If the Wii Remote relied on the IR camera as the primary sensor, it would be useless every time line of sight to the sensor bar was lost. What the Wii Remote does is keep rough track of remote position using the accelerometers, and then when the camera is pointed at the sensor bar, it re-calculates the starting point for the motion tracking to start from.
As far as this outfit using the fact that golf on the Wii leads to bad golf habits in real life: Duh! The Wii is a toy; it is not meant to be an accurate golfing simulator.
I can fully understand Nintendo not putting gyro's in the Wii Remote. It would have driven up the cost, reduced battery life, and introduced a moving part just begging to break.
SirWired
wiigyratelikethis
Galactus, is that you?
However, this brings me to the point: I don't feel it's as much a controller issue as it is a complex programming issue. Perhaps a precision controller would allow for functionality, but it still has to be programmed. Wii Sports isn't exactly a precision sports game...
From the article, it appears this MIGHT have the POTENTIAL to be more accurate than a wii controller, but the current versions have suffered from accuracy problems. This company has an expensive solution for golfers. It has a 30ms latency that might not be apparent in a single golf swing, but I bet the fps gamers on a so-so link might not want the overhead.
As far as this tech, the only benefit seems to be the stand-alone IR thingy. This devices uses the earth's magnetic field to orient against which might present a new set of problems in some laditudes.
Perhaps like many, I've found Wii's Boxing game to be (part of Wii Sports, iirc) to be very frustrating. It's hard for many of us to reliably throw the punches that we want to, despite carefully studying the directions. Either the Wii's current motion sensor is flaky, or the game is badly programmed. I'd gladly buy a controller with a new technology just to make Boxing work properly.
yes folks, you CAN get addicted to videogames
if you don't get the stars, you get the spiders on your arms ***SHAKE***
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Anyone else tired of the phrase "next-gen", even when it is warranted?
Living With a Nerd
The wiimote uses a 3-axis accelerometer to calculate roll, yaw, as well as gravity forces on each axis; this gives everything except for yaw. Yaw would be nice but it really isn't needed because the shape of the object in your hand doesn't feel nature (or comfortable) to rotate it in that direction. To solve the issue of pointing the wiimote uses a camera sensitive to IR light and captures it at 1024x768 resolution. Since the wii sensor bar has two dots the virtual screen resolution is actually slightly bigger than that.
In addition to actually pointing at the screen the wiimote's IR camera can also be used to estimate the distance you are from the TV. So in all the wiimote has several degrees of freedom:
- Pitch
- Roll
- Yaw (very limited with IR)
- Distance
- X,Y position on the TV
With all of this you get a pretty decent idea of where the wiimote is in 3d space and at what orientation it is at.Now consider the distance you are from your TV. As you move further away then the angle you should move the wiimote either up, down, left, or right should also decrease because the object. The wiimote can do that because of the IR camera. If you use a gyroscope you lose this because no matter where you are in 3d space it only cares about the orientation it is with respect to gravity. So if you are aiming at the top of your TV and you move backwards with a gyroscope then it will still be aiming at the top, whereas with the wiimote it will go above the top because that's where you're actually pointing the device.
With a gyroscope and accelerometer you would get:
- Pitch
- Roll
- Yaw
That's about it. No distance, no X,Y position.I think the wiimote still wins out. The only thing that I would change with the wiimote is give it a higher resolution IR camera, but maybe that was too expensive for Nintendo (that may also have been a reason they didn't do high def?)
Also you can already use the wiimote on a PC for free and have millions of potential customers already owning one. So why would anyone want to pay royalties to use this thing?
Infact, most robotic applications that need balancing use a system of gyroscopes and accel's. Typically the application is use to gyroscopes for percise movements, while the accel.'s are used to off-set gryo drift.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Yaarrrrr! When be they making one to resemble me cutlass? When do we pirates get our'n?
There seems to be some misconception or simply a confused journalist that put down that the gyros align with the MAGNETIC North. Gyros are set up to align with the physical Latitude and Longitude. Now unless they are using a differing process to calibrate the gyros, this would be the normal procedure.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
This device is neat to see, but eliminating the IR sensor doesn't necessarily add accuracy. (Not that accuracy is even the goal here. Clever UI design can hide a lot.) Gyroscopes drift, especially if they are cheap, and need realignment. The article notes that the device uses magnetic north as a reference, which is probably to allow the gyroscopes to be recalibrated. I would not expect this thing to have better pointing accuracy than the IR sensors.
It will have some advantages, though. The Wiimote has no gyroscopes, just linear accelerometers. You have to make some assumptions about the type of motion being performed in order to convert the force readings to either a device orientation (using the gravity vector as your reference) or a linear acceleration. Gyroscopes and linear accelerometers will let you get both orientation and translation independently, which should make for some interesting motion control.
So either this forthcoming gyroscopic wonder will be tethered to the game console or it will run on disposable batteries which will last about fifteen minutes.
Sorry, I don't see it.
Aircraft have been using this combination of sensors for a while to handle attitude adjustments, however over time the sensors will accumulate minute errors that ultimately compound into larger ones. For this reason, an absolute reckoning system like GPS is always included.
This is a great step forward but does not mean current IR strategies are necessarily old news. The blend of these two systems holds the future.
If it can be hacked, and converted into an inertial navigation system... Then the Wii will run afoul of ITAR export regulations... Truly the mark of all sufficiently advanced video game systems.
The stars are _on_ the screen, so no matter what system they use to work the pointer (sensor bar works great in my opinion), you'll have to point to the screen to collect them.
The _real_ improvement would be the ability to use it as a light saber. Right now, games just recognize 2 or 3 movements (slash, stab, etc), and play a fixed animation, which is bullshit. That is what they need to improve (and they probably will, I know that sony and nintendo are pretty desperate for someone who can program a lightsaber-like experience with their controllers).
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Whenever I see new handheld gyroscopic devices I think of one word:
Holodeck.
Remember that if you differentiate distance with time, you get velocity; differentiate again, you get acceleration.
So, if you have accelerometer data (acceleration), you integrate once to get speed, and then integrate that to get distance. If you begin the process by seeding with a known position, then the initial known position summed with the distance calculated gives the new position.
This is exactly how inertial navigation systems on flight vehicles work.
However, accuracy over time is a function of the quality of the accelerometers, requiring things like Kalman filters to deal with. Sounds like a lot of work for a game controller, but I'm not a gamer. Maybe it has other compelling applications also.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Relying on accelerometers would amount to Dead Reckoning. Position errors would quickly build up.
So the controller will weigh .75 kg, will take 6 minutes to spin up the gyros before it can be used, and needs a 12V lead to supply the motors? Progress, indeed...
...but mandatory xkcd.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Having been involved in the design of robotic control systems using both accelerometers and gyros, I can tell you a difference.
An accelerometer can only measure acceleration. An accelerometer cannot tell the difference between a tilt and other accelerations. Think of the acceleration you feel that pushes you back into your car seat: you can't tell if thats due to the car accelerating or tilting (going up hill).
A gyro, on the other hand, is immune to accelerations. A gyro tells you the attitude of the device. Generally you'd use both gyros and accelerometers together to give both attitude and acceleration info. Kalman filters are your firends. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I wonder if wiimotes can get spatial disorientation? In humans, the inner ear has fluid filled circular tubes used as accelerometers. When you tilt your head to the left, the fluid on that axis stays stationary, and moves against flagella in the the tubes, which your brain has learned to identify as a tilting of your head to the left. Now, if you continued to turn your head to the left at a constant rate of speed, friction rather quickly starts the fluid moving at the same rate as your head, thus the brain does not sense a continued tilt to the left, but believes it is stationary. Humans counteract this problem by having eyes, which can see what is going on and override the lack of signal from the inner ear. Obviously if you are blindfolded or flying in a cloud, there is no outside reference, and you can quickly lose track of your orientation. This is called spatial disorientation.
I wonder if you turned the Wiimote at a constant rate, if it would suffer similarly, or if the infrared sensor acts as eyes to aid it in establish orientation.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
The article states "Finally, the system relays its positional information to the console in fewer than 30 milliseconds, Mahajan says, adding that this is faster than the human ability to perceive delay." Musicians who have used multitracking recording software on a computer with stock drivers know that 30 ms latency is not only perceivable, but unacceptably long. The solution is to use ASIO drivers, which deliver a truly unnoticeable 4ms latency. I'm sure 30ms is fine for a golf club swing, but it isn't negligible under some circumstances.
That's a very good point, and I must rescind one of mine - that accuracy over time is a function of the accelerometers. In fact, it's a function of the gyros, and the accelerometers. Even ring laser gyros have drift, so position inaccuracies creep in over time. I think modern inertial nav gyros have appropriate control systems to not suffer the same trouble as you describe in the inner ear - but I think your point is still valid. If control limits are exceeded - for whatever reason - then the equivalent of spatial disorientation might occur.
Good thinking.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I don't want to hold anything - I want a couple of cameras and some software to track my hands and fingers. Gesture based input with multiple finger positions available would be way better than a mouse. This would even get me to learn sign language to compare it to voice recognition. It would be close to magic: waving at lights and pointing to appliances to turn them on or off, controlling the volume of TV, stereo, or whatever with a simple gesture.
I want to lean back in my easy chair and point to my wall mounted flat panel so I can browse without sitting at a desk.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
There is no thing as a perfect gyroscopic controller/accelerometer. In the long run they all tend to drift. So you're gonna need another tracking system to have a working solution.
BTW I though that the nintendo WII controller has already embedded accellerometers and gyroscopes. At least for the nunjago attachment!
Gyration has been making gyroscopic controllers for years now. The only new thing in this one is the magnetic sensor. However, the problem with the Gyration pointers is two-fold:
1) gyroscopes aren't instantaneous. They can't spin constantly or your batteries would be dead in a few hours, so they have a noticeable spin-up delay every time it's idle for a short bit. This is ok for a mouse you are using for windows, but would never work as a twitch game controller
2) Even when not spinning all the time, the gyration could go through 4 AA batteries in a week of moderate use as a media-center pointer. I can't imagine how long they'd last during a marathon gaming session.
If they've somehow licked such problems, it might be ok. But I don't see any reason to replace the Wii-mote for the types of games you get on the Wii. It's fine so far.
The IR camera on the wiimote are like eyes in your analogy. They "see" the sensor bar IR LEDs and allow correction of the errors that build up from accelerometer drift error (not fluids in tubes, of course.)
everything in moderation
The Wii remote fails in two fundamental aspects:
1) Most famously, the Wii remote has latency (a bit over 100 ms in the least-affected games). The buttons and directional pad are fine, but the aiming function is hopelessly lagged. There are examples of this on Youtube. "Changing the sensitivity" of course does nothing to correct this, but it's a popular placebo fix and almost a mantra among Wii aficionados. The result is severalfold. For example, in aiming games, you don't aim-shoot, you aim-wait-shoot, because the trigger button is essentially lag-free but the target cursor floats behind your hand motion, forcing a wait. Casual gamers are not likely to perceive this lag as a detriment, even though the experience is completely different from, say, the use of a desktop mouse and its corresponding pointer, or even a gun-based game at the arcade.
2) The design of the Wii remote is similar to that of the earliest handguns: basically a bar which must be held forward in order to aim. And, like those models which were ultimately abandoned, it has a major flaw. The default aiming position forces the wrist's pivot to one extreme, rather than in the middle of its range of motion, as a contemporary handgun would. This is a strain, and particularly so whenever the need arises to aim lower. The Wii remote compounds this flaw with the need to use the thumb to access buttons and controls on top of the device. For a dramatic illustration of this flaw, grab your Wii remote, point your arm straight ahead, point the remote straight ahead as though aiming at something parallel with the remote, and now access the d-pad with your thumb. Try this while aiming down. Visualize playing a game for several hours like this. Now visualize using a Wii remote which fit the hand like a hand gun and decide which would cause fewer problems for the wrist.
The new device outlined in this article may or may not fix the first problem - and make no mistake, it is a problem that should never have existed and could easily have been avoided - but its design is clearly too heavily inspired by the current Wii remote. Still, the day is young.
Suppose you put strong gyroscopes inside the controller, and could power them adequately. Couldn't you then provide sudden resistance at certain points in time? Imagine playing a tennis game, where it really felt like you hit the ball mid swing. Or playing a sword game, and feeling like you've struck something, as your controller suddenly stops. I suppose they can only resist acceleration, rather than provide acceleration, but it would still add a lot of realism to many games.
Can someone with a better grasp of their physics comment?
I'm surprised how many people thought this was a bad idea. I teach computer science and I have an air mouse from gyration. It takes a little getting used to, but it makes it possible for me to use the mouse on my computer from across the room. It is useful for anyone who needs to use programs other than powerpoint(like an ide) while giving a presentation.
This sig cannot be proven true.
If I have 3 gyroscopes spinning on axes each at right angles to the others, inside a little box, does that seem to increase the mass of the object just as if it had more mass? Would spinning faster make it seem heavier, more inertial?
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make install -not war
That aside there really isn't a need for an official driver, you already can get drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux, there really isn't much if anything left that isn't known about the Wiimote. People can use it if they want. The problem is non-standard peripheral don't have a chance on the PC, not even joysticks are used these days, everything has to work with mouse and keyboard, so a Wiimote even with official driver wouldn't have a chance. Also keep in mind that the PC doesn't stand next to the 42" Plasma, but in places where there often simply isn't room to swing the Wiimote around wildly. The IR tracking also doesn't really work when you are too close to the sensorbar, so it simply would be very impractical for most users.
It's true - you could attempt to use the consumer grade sensors in the Wii to create an INS, but even with deeply-integrated, GPS-aided nav solution, it would perform so badly that it would be unusable for military applications. Inertial sensors come in several "grades", each one based on how much position drift it has - strategic (< 100 ft/hour), navigation (< 1 nautical mile/hr), tactical (< 10 nautical miles/hr), and consumer/automotive/commercial grade (worse than that). Tactical grade sensors are required for short range missile guidance - the Wii's sensors aren't coming anywhere close to that.
Of course, this wouldn't stop the DoD from classifying it as export-restricted and locking the builders up.