Comments on: Wii 3D

Wii 3D

Burhanistan — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:08:24 -0800

Wii + MacBook Pro + Dome - Experiments using the Nintendo Wii as a wireless 3D interface device.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:13:56 -0800

(also some nice images of buddhabrot fractals elsewhere on his site)

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:25:22 -0800

Jerry?

By: phaedon

phaedon — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:25:48 -0800

beautiful. i don't know how wii ended up being so easy to interface with (was this intentional?) but it was a brilliant move.

By: gwint

gwint — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:25:55 -0800

Also: Forget my flying car. I'll settle for the dome.

By: uncle harold

uncle harold — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:32:31 -0800

Awesome. The cherry on top would be if we could download the software he wrote... *looks at MacBook* *looks at Wii*

By: schwa

schwa — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:36:12 -0800

uncle harold: check out my wii mac software... Not quite the same thing ;-)

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 21:04:52 -0800

Can't seem to get Wii2MIDI working on my MacBook Pro, but hopefully will be able to control Live with it soon...

By: davejay

davejay — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 22:31:49 -0800

*looks at MacBook* *looks at Wii* *looks for dome* *doesn't find dome* *curses his domeless existance*

By: progosk

progosk — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:23:55 -0800

another interesting experiment: icelanders symbolic sound corporation have adapted the wiimote and nunchuk as controllers for their kyma x sound design environment ("...hybridize, mutate, and transmogrify your sounds to create new audio life forms!"). demo video: 48mb, 155mb.

By: mike3k

mike3k — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:49:36 -0800

The Wiimote is a very cool device. It's an (almost) standard Bluetooth HID device and it's easily hackable. See wiibrew.org

By: belling

belling — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:58:23 -0800

The Wiimote is pretty far from the 3D trackers that are usually used in VR. It's just a $1 accelerometer taped to a laser pointer. That's very different from an absolute 3D tracker, which still cost at least $5k. Nintendo is going to have to manage peoples expectations of it being a true tracking system. There's already some grumbling about the control not being all it's cracked up to be.

By: JHarris

JHarris — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:09:09 -0800

From the article: An interesting experiment would be to use the IR sensor as a form of stabilisation for the 3D mouse navigation, something I expect the Nintendo does. I can confirm that it does this. If you set the remote upside-down and let it switch off automatically, when you wake it by flipping it upright again and pointing it at the screen, the pointer hand will be upside down, and the arrow's motion will be reversed for a couple of seconds! This happens because the pointer sensing is done by using a low-res camera in the remote, which sees infrared LEDs in the "sensor bar." The LEDs are not distinguishable from each other however, so whether the remove is upside-down or right-side up it'll get the same image. So the remote can't tell if it's being held upside-down, but it does have one piece of information it can use to determine it. Gravity. According to the people who have been experimenting with the remote, the accelerometers constantly register a downward motion due to gravity, no matter how it's held. By figuring out where the constant motion is coming from, a process that naturally requires a couple of seconds of data, it can figure out which way it's held, and from there correct the pointer location and orientation on the screen.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:52:51 -0800

In case you're still reading, someone just posted those large slow downloading Quicktime movies to youtube. It's really worth seeing in action.

By: nickp

nickp — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:56:15 -0800

If you are more interested in the dome than the wii interface (which I certainly am), there is more info at: http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/projection/ (The author's home page has a menu thingie at the bottom that I didn't notice the first time, this is one of them.)

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 15:49:11 -0800

Appendix to this post: How it Works - Wii Controller. (In case you didn't already know.)