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
Friday, February 22, 2008
EA's Boom Blox to include Wiimote Headtracking
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20 comments:
Awesome feature.
Glad to hear your projects are being put to use.
(Even if it's for free - but hey, maybe someday you'll be invited by Spielberg to act as consultant for one of his movies! ;)
Keep up the good work! :)
awesome !!! congratzz
Oh, wow! It must feel cool having a technique you developed inserted into a commercial game! I'm still happily waiting for the other Windows version of it you're working on for me to try. =D
Wow, a weaker mortal would be brimming with anger if their technology was used without royalties.
You sir are a gentleman and a scholar.
Nice work, that was one of those things I could imagine people saying "that's cool" but then never actually doing anything about it. Hopefully this will spur some more thinking by other game/software designers.
;_;
Youre to good of a man Johny, I wish that they atleast write your name down in the credits under the thanks to's.
But you can say, the wish came true that gamedevelopers are finally using that awesome feature, which is a great process in videogaming and Virtual Reality too :)
Also im awaiting the acessoire for it, to use it in computergaming through modding^^ (thinking again of the Source Enginge)
I bet its a Sensorbar-hat and legs for the Wiimote.
Johnny - thanks for working this stuff. A group of us at Georgia Tech are working applying the concept to some real world problems. We'll keep you posted. Thanks!
It's great that I'll be able to try out your concept in a real live game so soon! I salute you for not asking for royalties, as we'd no doubt never see this come to fruition if you did.
But may I suggest that you sell head-tracking "kits" to earn some money? I'm sure that EA won't be providing hardware, since it's an "Easter Egg" in their game. I'd buy a pair of modified safety goggles and/or a Wii Remote stand from you to help support your work and your web presence.
Thanks Johnny. When I saw your video I got so excited about the possibilities. It just seems like this could be a giant leap forward for immersive games. (I love your projector calibrator too) All the best!
Great Idea Uzziah!
I would definitely purchase the kits through your site. You deserve some type of monetary gain! (Please ship to Canada ;) )
So develop and manufacture the kits in your spare time while completing your graduate work ;)
When that feature is confirmed to be in the game, then I'll buy it.
I'm happy for you. Keep up the great work you do.
Johnny,
I'll be demoing a FPS game that uses wiimote head tracking for player movement and iSight laser detection for shooting at PyCon in Chicago in March. I'll send you a link when I've got source (and video) up.
You should put an amazon referral link to the game, I'd be willing to buy it through your site.
dude, you are a genius ! Keep up the good work. But, don't forgo financial gain, you deserve to get paid for such efforts.
I would love to see a simple replacement of the wii's sensor bar that received as well as transmitted (removes the need for an additional remote) and a proper headset (not goggles) that had headphones, microphone and two infrared transmitters. I would love to see this simple set up. The hardware at the other end of the sensor bar probably isnt geared up to receive signals, but wii 2 should have this out of the box (please!).
This would have been awesome but EA has announced the removal of this feature. :(
Hi johnny great work, i'd just like to let you guys know that there is people working on a Headtracking plugin for Compiz-Fusion on linux, to allow headtracking on the desktop and "cube".
http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=6395&page=5
once again, great work!!
I saw your headtracking demo when it came out and I was super-impressed by it. I just heard now that they're actually NOT including it in the final game build :( I'm very sorry to hear that, and to be honest, have NO CLUE why they'd do that. I was really looking forward to seeing the idea implemented in a commercial release since it would've spurred on other developers to think along those lines...
Oh, well. Maybe somebody else is going to have both the brains and the balls to use it :)
I sure hope so!
I can't believe they pulled headtracking from Boom Blox! That was the only reason I was going to get that game, and I know I'm not the only one who will NOT be getting it now! I'm VERY disappointed that they did this...how dare they tease us with such a cool feature, and then take it away a week or so before release. Screw them! I hope that game FAILS!
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