Nintendo announces WiiMotion Plus
Spilling out of the empty halls of the once vibrant and now completely abandoned video game industry showcase of E3, Nintendo has announced a new Wii peripheral, the Wii MotionPlus.
What's it do? Nintendo's PR department spends a couple hundred words clumsily illuminating:
Nintendo's upcoming Wii MotionPlus accessory for the revolutionary Wii Remote controller again redefines game control, by more quickly and accurately reflecting motions in a 3-D space. The Wii MotionPlus accessory attaches to the end of the Wii Remote and, combined with the accelerometer and the sensor bar, allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player’s arm position and orientation, providing players with an unmatched level of precision and immersion. Every slight movement players make with their wrist or arm is rendered identically in real time on the screen, providing a true 1:1 response in their game play.
So, basically, another accelerometer, which will make Wiimote control more precise. I'm skeptical this is anything that makes much sense to buy: Wii games will need to continue being able to smartly translate imprecise, hip-level aiming, since this is a peripheral, and the only games I can think of that would benefit from this are FPSes and RTSes... both of which are largely absent from the Wii's line-up. But we'll see what demo apps Nintendo rolls out: if there's anything Nintendo's taught me over the last few years, it's that products that look stupid at first blush often have some methodology mixed in the madness.
WiiMotion Plus [Nintendo]
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My money is on a rate gyro or a compass, more likely the former (since compasses are subject to magnetic distortion and the Wii already has absolute tracking via the sensor bar)
A MEMS chip based 3 axis rate gyro is capable of determining the rate of rotation of an object and distinguishing it from acceleration. In an appropriate six degree of freedom strapdown Kalman filter it is much easier to determine the absolute orientation of the controller which would be handy for a broad variety of controller apps.
Sounds like something a game developer would request Nintendo for a sword/light saber based game...
I am thinking this will be coming with the new Star Wars game that is cross platform but the developers have promised the Wii version will be good too and not just a cheesy port.
I can't wait.
Since the Wiimote is regular bluetooth, I hooked it up to my linux box, used one of the existing drivers, and attempted to write a pirate game. There was going to be fencing, you see. Not like Wii games do it right now, with pre-scripted motions corresponding to what would be button presses on PS3. But, like, you'd actually be fencing, from a first person view, and if you moved your wiimote two centimeters to the right, so would your avatar with his sword.
But, it turns out that with the single accelerometer and the so-called sensor bar, you cannot determine orientation or position of the wiimote to any acceptable accuracy. If you make the assumption that the wiimote is perfectly still, then it's possible to determine the vector along which the wiimote is pointing. This might give you some idea of where the wiimote is, since you can make assumptions about the setup of their living room. But, of course, any motion renders this approach useless, since it's based on finding the gravity vector.
I'm with Monopole above: it's a gyro. With a gyro to handle the wiimote's orientation, you can integrate orientation-corrected accelerations to get position estimates. With the right statistical manipulation, as suggested by Monopole, you could probably get pretty decent results. Likewise, it's possible to improve your estimates through in-game elements. For instance, in my pirate game, you would have to come back en-garde. This would require you placing the Wiimote in a known-standard orientation, allowing me to reset my position estimator and get rid of accumulated errors.
This is the peripheral that lets us move from Wii motion controls that are merely single-activation button-style actions controlled by matching a discrete motion to a reference motion. Programmers will finally be able to do real motion control, based on arbitrary real-world motions.
You won't have to make the "chopping" motion in Cooking Mama. You just have to put the knife on top of the daikon, and press down through it.
Um, could it be that it has IR sensors on the back side of the Wiimote plug-in module so it could pick up the IR with the Wiimote in a vertical orientation?
Or perhaps an RF-enhanced sensor bar and receivers for omni-directional position sensing would be keen but likely costly...
#4 - I think #1 and #3 are probably on the right track. The IR sensor I always felt was a limitation, not a benefit. Gyration, the company that makes the internal parts for the Wiimote, also makes remote controls with the same motion sensing technology, and I can move a cursor around my computer screen using their remotes without needing to point the remote at the screen, it always aggravated me that the Wiimote needed to be pointed. Its great for, say, any light-gun type shooting game, but very annoying otherwise. If a gyro can overcome this and allow for more accuracy, I'm all for it. I do worry that some games will suck without this add one though.
Yay! I need a game controller that will let me exercise my hard-earned skills with hand weapons, and the current generation of wiimotes is far too crude for real swordsmanship.
As I get older it's getting harder to recover from injuries :(.
--Charlie
Lightsaber - most definitely...
#5
You have to keep the sensor bar due to it providing absolute reference information. Accelerometers and rate gyros only provide relative positioning information. While it is possible to dead reckon for considerable distances with laser ring gyros and precision accelerometers within missiles, subs, and aircraft, the bulk and cost of such units are prohibitive. The MEMS based inertial sensors incorporated in the WiiMote and gyration products have very high drift rates that vary as a function of temperature. Since it is necessary to integrate rotation once and acceleration twice the drift accumulates respectively linearly and quadratically. As a result they can only dead reckon for a matter of seconds before they loose all accuracy. To compensate for this, it is necessary to incorporate an absolute reference even if it is quite noisy. In fact noisy absolute measurements complement drifty inertial measurements in that the absolute measurements reset drift while the inertial measurements smooth out the absolute jitter. Thus a tightly coupled Kalman filter in the fashion of a GPS/INS navigation filter will work in a smooth and accurate fashion.
I wouldn't want to get rid of the sensor bar, I just hate having to use it when its not needed. The Gyration remotes work without it, your cursor starts in the center and then it just moves it from there based on movement of the unit, regardless of where its pointed at. It'd like to be able to do this in things where absolute reference isn't needed, moving the cursor around the menus, etc. Though their television remotes have the advantage that they're only engaged when you hold down a button, where as the Wiimote is always on and tracking, unless they added some sort of button-press tracking like the remotes.
My issue with this stems from my own personal frustration, my TV sits lower than where it is comfortable to hold the Wiimote at a 90 degree angle to the screen, making navigation on screen painful over time, as I've got to either sit or hold my arms in an unnatural way. No easy solution for this besides getting a new TV, as its a very large CRT HD, and finding a taller stand capable of supporting its weight isn't going to happen! Hmm, maybe if I angled the sensor bar slightly... I'll have to try that!
I'd be happy if they could just release the hardware they've been hyping the bejeesus out of. You can't get a Wii Fit for love or threats of murder in the UK.
I live in a major city and the local large game chain stores in the city centre get two a week, which goes to first come first served.
I'm about another week of asking the assistants (who won't take pre-orders) if they have one yet before I sell my entire Nintendo setup.
Very poor customer service, Nintendo.
#7
You can always get a Nyko Wireless Sensor Bar and mount it anywhere you want or simply put two IR sources at a level spacing at any height(candles will even do).
As long as the sensor bar is level it works fine, (all the sensor bar consists of is two continuous IR LEDs). As a result you could put it on the floor and point your Wii straight down.
I'm with #2 -- this thing just screams "light saber" to me.
There's a reason early attempts at Wii swordfighting have failed (Red Steel, anyone?)... the Wiimote just doesn't have enough precision. Hopefully this solves it.
The MEMs gyros are still kinda expensive for a consumer device even in quantities of a zillion.
They might be able to simulate gyros by using multiple 3 axis accelerometers.