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TrueMotion Game Controller a Step Up From Wii Remote

Posted by Soulskill on from the maybe-i-can-actually-putt-with-this-one dept.

Harry McCracken writes "One of my top picks at the Consumer Electronics Show was Sixense's TrueMotion, a game-controller technology that resembles the Wii's remote, but uses an electromagnetic field to provide far more precision — it knows the exact location of the controller in 3D space and which way you're pointing it. (The Wiimote only knows which direction you're moving the controller.) TrueMotion-based remotes are due by Christmas, bundled with a PC game for under $100."

5 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Inaccurate wiimote description by Space · · Score: 5, Informative

    The statement "The Wiimote only knows which direction you're moving the controller" is not accurate, The Wiimote has a three axis accelerometer in addition to an infrared camera. The camera looks for two infrared LEDs on the "sensor bar" and depending on the distance between the LEDs and their position in the image from the camera the Wiiremote can fairly accurately determine where it is pointed on the screen.

    --
    I Don't Work Here
    1. Re:Inaccurate wiimote description by KDR_11k · · Score: 4, Informative

      Additionally they're releasing the Motion Plus in the future that would allow accurate tracking of where the thing is pointed.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    2. Re:Inaccurate wiimote description by neokushan · · Score: 2, Informative

      I wouldn't say it's "fairly accurate" at all, it can only determine where it's pointing on screen relevant to the size of the sensor bar. So if you have an insanely large screen, your movements become much more pronounced.
      It's also not very accurate in terms of motion. Move too quickly (and it's not that quickly at all) and it gets confused. This is why a lot of games only require tiny movements to make huge movements on screen, the only thing it knows are the velocity and the direction it's moving in.

      Since we have Gravity, it knows it's orientation in most directions. Turn the Wiimote upside down and it knows about it, because gravity has went from -1 to +1 on the Y axis, however if you rotate it left and right, the direction of gravity has not changed and thus it doesn't know about it. This is the real reason why we have the sensor bar and why it's not accurately depicting where it's pointing at the screen.

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      +1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
    3. Re:Inaccurate wiimote description by HisMother · · Score: 3, Informative

      Except that when you're facing away from the screen, the camera doesn't see the LEDs, so in fact, the machine [i]can[/i] tell the difference. Another thing no poster has gotten so far is that the WiiMote can compute z-access position using the distance between the LED images -- as you get closer to the screen, the lights get farther apart. I realize that the system described in the article can do more, and do it more simply -- but people shouldn't underestimate what's possible with the existing hardware. There's more there than meets the eye.

      --
      Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
  2. Re:Eh... by Tainek · · Score: 4, Informative

    You plug it in, turn it on, drop in the CD/DVD/cartridge and it works.
    No half hour installations, needles restarts, patches that take several hours to download and install...

    You evidently haven't used a console recently, I've experienced all of the above with mine.

    Not to mention the fact that my 4 month old 360's DVD drive decided to die recently. Now I have to piss about with Microsoft getting the console replaced. If that takes 2-3 weeks, I've lost 2-3 weeks of gaming. It usually takes me on average 30 mins to install a pc game&patch (10 hours a year), and a day to get a new DVD drive, I can live with that.

    As far as needing to buy new hardware for new games? I buy a new gaming PC every 4 years, Halfway through my third cycle. I have *Never* needed to buy hardware to play a new game (Excluding of course, the rise of 3D Graphics-Once). I've had to turn settings down a couple of times, but never to the point where poor graphics interfere with gameplay ( In COD4 multiplayer I used to keep all settings low out of preference, not need)

    I Spend £500 every 4 years. Even if every PC game I bought was available on the consoles I'd spend WAY more on the extra cost of console games (20 Games a year average, £10 extra cost due to console tax is £800 extra, not including the cost of the console)

    I Spend a LOT more money per console in the long run than I do on my gaming PC, despite playing about the same of games on all of them.

    Consoles are good, So are PCs. Your arguments alas, are not.