WiimoteWhiteboard v0.2 - slightely updated/fixed

Hi, all. I got a few moments yesterday to make a couple of small improvements to the Wiimote Whiteboard software. Most notably, I improved the mouse emulation code. There were problems where it wouldn't work with some programs like PowerPoint, Alias Sketchbook, etc. So, those work fine now.

I also added a "Tracking Utilization" feedback to the GUI which tells you how much of the camera you are utilizing for tracking. This gets updated after calibration. This provides a way to evaluate how good your Wiimote placement is which directly impacts tracking quality. Getting this number to 100% is virtually impossible in any usable configuration, but dropping below 50% is a sign of not-so-great Wiimote placement.

I've also updated the code to use Brian Peeks's WiimoteLib v1.2. I think this may help a little with greater Bluetooth/Vista compatibility. On a technical note, the WiimoteLib in this download is slightly modified to increase the Wiimote camera sensitivity.

You can use this link to download the new version: WiimoteWhiteboard v0.2

Inspiring Students

One of the great, unexpected, and perhaps most influential aspects of creating these videos has been how many people they have inspired and sparked an innovative spirit in. I've gotten hundreds of emails from young students that express this enthusiasm. But, perhaps one of the best testimonials is this news article about kids in the Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School's Lego Club in Williamsburg, VA. The students there, lead by Kofi Merritt, are getting excited about innovating in technology by creating their own electronic white boards.

Tracking multiple laser pointers @ 200Hz using the Wii remote

A couple of videos (vid1 and vid2) from sha433 demonstrate that if you are willing to crack open your Wii remote (you'll need a tri-wing screw driver) and take out the IR filter, the camera will track visible points of light, including laser pointers. That's pretty neat. Additionally, it has also been recently discovered by a few people that if you read the data directly off the camera chip using I2C, you can get 200 Hz tracking (vs 100Hz that you get over Bluetooth). It looks like there might be a latency hit, though, depending on how you get the data into your computer.

So, if you are willing to get a little down and dirty with the hardware, you can pull out quite a bit more capability! Good job Sha!

YouTube Awards: Nominated for Best Instructional Video of 2007

Hey all, (shameless plug) it looks like my video on head-tracking was nominated for the Youtube Award - Best Instructional Video of 2007! Very neat. =o) Please, go to the site and cast your vote! Thanks!

EA's Boom Blox to include Wiimote Headtracking

Louis Castle announced yesterday at GDC2008 that EA's upcoming title "Boom Blox" will ship with an easter egg that allows head-tracking using the Wii remote! Very cool. Here's the Digg article someone created for it - which you should all digg to help drum up some attention and demand for this feature. Reward the developers who decided this was worth including and send a signal to EA and the greater game development community that this is a desired step forward in the evolution of game play technology. The expected release will be in May.

I'm proud. If this pans out, it'll be only 5 months between the initial research prototype to integration into a major product release. Sweet! Happy to see my stuff being used. Humorously, there were 3 other demos on the GDC expo floor showing variations of my head tracking demo. =o)

Just in case you are wondering: No, I don't get any royalties or benefits for the use of this technique in games. Personally, I'm much happier impacting the state of technology on such a large scale in such a short period of time rather than struggling to transform it into personal financial gain. In terms of my original intent behind creating the head-tracking demo, it has already been a wild success beyond my highest expectations.

Joystiq article

Digg article

Official Wiimote Project Forum!

The number of comments on my blog posts have gotten rather unweildy making them difficult read and thus, not extremely useful. It has become clear that a full up discussion forum is needed to manage the threads of conversation. I know there is already a lot of chatter scattered all around the web about these Wiimote projects, so hopefully this isn't too late to centralize some of that discussion.

JD has honorably stepped up the challenge. So,... announcing the official discussion forum for wii remote projects!

http://www.wiimoteproject.com/

Everyone give JD a pat on the back, and try to use the forum for discussing wii remote projects. I'll try to add links to this forum on the main project page.

Link to the WiimoteProject Forum

Wiimote DesktopVR - FAQ and Adv Discussion

A lot of very smart people have written in questions and suggestions and I think a lot of them are very clever and worth sharing... and I'd like to add some of my own expansions on what I showed in the video. Like they say, 2 brains are better than 1.... it turns out several thousand brains are even better. This post will be REGULARLY EDITTED to add new ideas as they come in. I know it breaks the RSS model, but I don't want to make a new post for every new idea. Sorry.
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Shutter/polarized glasses - if you are going to put something on your head covering your eyes for 3D, it is worth considering making shutter/polarized glasses which allows the computer to deliver a different image to each eye. This results in stereoscopic displays. Combined with head tracking, you get a DARPA grade 3D simulator. When just doing head tracking, the conflicting stereo depth cues weakens the illusion. I would love to do this, but it's quite a bit more hardware, and requires synchronization with the display refresh (or light polarization) which often isn't easy especially given the wide variety of display technologies out there.

Split screen for 2 people - if you split the screen and use two head mounted sensor bars, you can do this for two people... and possibly with one tracking wiimote. One wiimote does 4 dots, so it could (with some smarts) handle two heads. The field of view of a wiimote is only 45 degrees, so it might be cramped with 2 people. But, you could use one wiimote per head and still do split screen.