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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.
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?
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
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?
I thought the whole point of the Wii was to try to incorporate realistic motion to the gaming world, without VR. The odd twists and motions of the Wii would still be there with a more accurate controller, just a lot more expensive and fragile (currently, smashing a broken Wii controller against the floor fixes most problems with the motion sensor [not the IR]). For most purposes the current Wii controller is just fine. This may be useful for creating extra controllers, though, like for feet.
Yaarrrrr! When be they making one to resemble me cutlass? When do we pirates get our'n?
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.
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.
I think the 'next generation' is a bit further off than TFA implies. I recently had the opportunity to play with an experimental device that our HCI department had which worked in exactly the way described in the article. While it was great for things like gestures, accurate position tracking was impossible due to rounding errors in the digitisation of the sensor readings. The reason the Wii uses IR is that the other sensors need recalibration very often, and the IR lets them do this. The Wiimote works better than the device I played with (and costs a tenth of the amount) as long as you wave it in the direction of the IR emitter periodically.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nintendo is smart, and they almost certainly began developing the "next generation" befor the Wii was released. I bet they had something very similar to this when working on the original Wiimonte before they finalised the IR-pointing/acceleromters/tilt sensors combo.
Also, it's as much about how talented the game developers are at interpreting the infornation from the remote. Whilst earlier games often had clumsy controls, they seem to be getting better at it.
But as others have pointed out, most games opt for a simple gesture based triggers, rather than more complex interpretation by the game. So even with more sophisticated equipment, developers might prefer to make their games more beginner-freindly or simply want to avoid more work.
b.) The Light Zapper accessory addresses this problem, and you don't need $100 new controller with less features to do it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The IR function of the Wii is for pointer functionality only. The Wii remote already uses MEMS accelerometers for motion-sensing in the Wii remote and the nunchuk attachment. -Signature