Question for Wii DEVELOPERS: Sensor Bar?

[Blade]

This article (and others, I'm sure) has ruffled Nintendo's feathers in regards to the Wii's sensor bar.

Speculation is running rampant as the we (gamers) approach launch and have only base knowledge of the system's capabilities.

Those who have worked with the Wii hardware, a few questions if you will. If there's an NDA preventing any of this information from being divulged, I apologize. Now then,

A. Have player distance and physical placement of the sensor bar dramatically affected usability? (i.e. does it need constant adjustment?)

B. Is there a user-accessible calibration option, as there is on the Nintendo DS?

C. Has light caused havoc with the sensor bar's readings, in your experience?

D. In general, how do you feel about the sensor bar moving forward? Is it the Wii's Achille's Heel as some are beginning to suspect?

Thanks, guys.

 

[Rolf N]

This article (and others, I'm sure) has ruffled Nintendo's feathers in regards to the Wii's sensor bar.

That was a pretty interesting read, but I think he's totally going out on a limb with this:

You must point the controller at the sensor bar and not the TV and I found myself struggling to locate my center. Taller people gaming with a low sensor bar will make things much harder because you must turn your wrists down in order to get a center spot on the monitor.
<long skippage>
If the sensor bar is placed to low, like on some people's home TV stands, aiming will become almost impossible.

Alternative explanation: the particular machine wasn't calibrated properly (at the place of the event).

He said the "OS" couldn't be acessed, so if a calibration option exists, he wouldn't have seen it. It is very very likely that the Wiimote can be calibrated. It is in fact much more likely than it is for the DS touch screen, and we know that even there, where all parts are static and reasonable factory-side calibration would have been okay, Nintendo didn't take any chances and included a (re)calibration option. I'm sure the Wii will let you calibrate the Wiimote. And I'm sure that you will be able to "find your center" where you want to.

 

[Blade]

I would think so too. I just figured I'd kill my paranoia by asking this question to those that might know.

 

[darkblu]

don't worry Blade, though i'm not a wii dev i'm certain about these two:

A. player's distance (i.e. wiimote's distance) has quite reasonable usabiliy requirements - from all reliable 1st hand accounts i've seen so far mentioning distance as a factor, they claim that as long as you don't hold the wiimote unreasonably close (say, as close as a ~foot from the screen) it just works (tm).

B. nintendo would shoot themselves in the forehead if they did not provide some means for calibration of the wiimote. and all accounts on the sensor bar (i.e. nitendo's and 1st hand witneses, bar that 2old2play guy) claim that placed below or above regardless, it would still work, even at 'rather extreme angles of reception' (to cite the words of one guy, IIRC) - so the issue the article's author speaks about is most likely what zeckensack says it is.

 

[Guden Oden]

From what we've been told, there's no calibration, nor any need to calibrate anything.

Besides, how would you calibrate that thing anyway? The touch screen is from what I understand essentially an analog device that measures resistance across X and Y axis or somesuch, and its operation is temperature dependent as well it seems (which would be why the DS has an integrated temperature sensor). The wiimote on the other hand is a digital device. Since you wave it around constantly while using it, if it required calibration it'd need calibration pretty much every time you pick it up, or move your body.

Speaking of 'achilles heels' and shit is just purest sensationalism, there's not been any credible reports of misbehavior so far - but I'm sure come launch day, we're going to see some isolated cases of it, and it'll cause huge ruckus on the internet of course. As per the course.

 

[darkblu]

From what we've been told, there's no calibration, nor any need to calibrate anything.

re the pointing functionality - the relative position of the sensor bar vis-a-vis the screen - i can imagine it'd take re-calibrating each time you move your sensor bar.

re the accelerometer functionality - those should be factory-preset.

 

[Rolf N]

From what we've been told, there's no calibration, nor any need to calibrate anything.

Besides, how would you calibrate that thing anyway? The touch screen is from what I understand essentially an analog device that measures resistance across X and Y axis or somesuch, and its operation is temperature dependent as well it seems (which would be why the DS has an integrated temperature sensor). The wiimote on the other hand is a digital device. Since you wave it around constantly while using it, if it required calibration it'd need calibration pretty much every time you pick it up, or move your body.

Err ...
The idea is that you can point the Wiimote at an object on screen, and if the game has a cursor that follows that movement, like Mario Galaxy, that cursor would follow where you pointed. Right?

The Wiimote of course does not "read" the screen, but only its position and orientation relative to the sensor bar are known. Thus there are variables you have to take into account to make the transformation "position relative to sensor bar"=>"coordinate of pointed-at pixel on the screen".
Namely you must compensate for the position of the sensor bar relative to the screen and also for the size of the pixels (basically the ratio between sensor bar length and screen edge length).

And then again some high-sense people might not even want a correctly calibrated device, but instead prefer "cheating" the calibration process to be able to pull off quicker turns or whatnot.

 

[Bohdy]

Err ...
The idea is that you can point the Wiimote at an object on screen, and if the game has a cursor that follows that movement, like Mario Galaxy, that cursor would follow where you pointed. Right?

No... You move where you are pointing till the cursor hits the object. Since the Wii doesn't know the dimensions and location of your TV, all the pointing is relative.

 

[darkblu]

No... You move where you are pointing till the cursor hits the object. Since the Wii doesn't know the dimensions and location of your TV, all the pointing is relative.

you know that for a fact? 'cause that would make for one hell of a physical-vector pointing device - 'point to your tv's upper left corner when you want to shoot lower right - it's all in the relativity!'.

ed: to make it clear, what i mean is not whether you know for a fact that the orientatin is realtive (i bet it is) but that the software does not care to know where, say, the centre of the screen is, in wiimote orientation coords.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

No... You move where you are pointing till the cursor hits the object. Since the Wii doesn't know the dimensions and location of your TV, all the pointing is relative.

Which is why you'd want calibration. The Wiimote reads the position of the Sensor Bar (stupid name, as stupid as SIXAXIS, but these companies are getting stupider and stupider in their nomencalture ). To interpret that into screen coordinates, it'll have to go through a transformation. Thus there's going to need to be a calibration where you stand as far from the Bar as you intend to play and then point at the corners and centre, from which the Wii reads the states of the IR LEDs referencing those points and can interpolate for different coordinates.

 

[Bohdy]

ed: to make it clear, what i mean is not whether you know for a fact that the orientatin is realtive (i bet it is) but that the software does not care to know where, say, the centre of the screen is, in wiimote orientation coords.

The software couldn't know anything about the screen without user calibration (unless it can do something funky with the IR camera to detect screen brightness, which I doubt). Extrapolation from calibration data (as Shifty describes) would be possible in theory, resulting in just being able to point to a target on the screen. But that is just theory. Who knows if it would be possible in practice.

Either way, I think developers will eschew any sort of calibration for the sake of ease-of-use. Relative control is apparently quite intuitive to most people.

 

[darkblu]

The software couldn't know anything about the screen without user calibration

ergo the whole calibration argument going on here.

Extrapolation from calibration data (as Shifty describes) would be possible in theory, resulting in just being able to point to a target on the screen. But that is just theory. Who knows if it would be possible in practice.

qustion is not if it would be possible (i don't see why i should not be), it is, if you were a wii developer, would you be ok if in your FPS game the player's physical aim can be an arbitrary number of degrees off in any direction.

Either way, I think developers will eschew any sort of calibration for the sake of ease-of-use. Relative control is apparently quite intuitive to most people.

except for games supposing physical aiming where it would not be intuative at all.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

qustion is not if it would be possible (i don't see why i should not be), it is, if you were a wii developer, would you be ok if in your FPS game the player's physical aim can be an arbitrary number of degrees off in any direction.

It shouldn't be anything like that bad. The margin for error should be no worse than an analogue stick - a few pixels either side of where you're pointing and considering the users aiming will be wiggling a bit and not pixel-perfect anyway, I doubt anyone would notice.

 

[darkblu]

It shouldn't be anything like that bad. The margin for error should be no worse than an analogue stick - a few pixels either side of where you're pointing and considering the users aiming will be wiggling a bit and not pixel-perfect anyway, I doubt anyone would notice.

i was referring to the case when there would not be screen coords calibration.

 

[Nightz]

With the Wii you dont actually point at the screen but to a relative point in space. It works more like a mouse and less like a light gun - the sensor bar detects your movements and translates them to scaled-up movements on screen. And also like a mouse, there will be a sensitivity option that'll allow you to set how fast the on-screen cursor moves relative to your hand movements.

 

[Beafy]

With the Wii you dont actually point at the screen but to a relative point in space. It works more like a mouse and less like a light gun - the sensor bar detects your movements and translates them to scaled-up movements on screen.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. While the Wiimote technically does not point at the screen, it does point at the sensor bar. In that sense, it is exactly like a light gun.

 

[Nightz]

I'm not sure where you got that idea. While the Wiimote technically does not point at the screen, it does point at the sensor bar. In that sense, it is exactly like a light gun.

Why do you think the senor bar can work on any size screen? You dont point at the screen, you point at the sensor bar and that is your point of reference not the screen.You could have the sensor bar placed anywhere in the room and still aim accurately just as you would with a mouse mat.

CVG explains how it wrks read the 6th paragraph
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=147543

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You could have the sensor bar placed anywhere in the room and still aim accurately just as you would with a mouse mat.

To be clear (which you might know, but that comment doesn't show) the Wiimote has to be pointed at the sensor bar. If you were to place the Sensor Bar behind you, you wouldn't get much joy from playing the game. The Bar could be placed anywhere around the TV, but you're going to want to have it central for maximum 'vision' by the Wiimote when you're pointing at the screen.

 

[darkblu]

to reiterate once again: the relative tracking/orientation of the wiimote vis-a-vis the sensor bar does not preclude the use of some point-at-the-screen calibration which, low and behold would allow you to map your physical vector of pointing to effective coordinates of the cursor on screen. and that such a thing would be really apt for shooting games with aiming. all that said, the above does not claim that (all) wii FPS' were actually done this way, it's saying that it would be only natural for them to be done like that. but at the end of the day none may be doing it, and thus none may provide for actual aiming. which would be a bummer, but hey, there's always new games coming out.

 

[Siraris]

From what I've heard, standing within 6-7 feet of the unit makes it go wonky and inaccurate. I also heard that if there's any glass near you it will cause the wiimote to go haywire (windows, glasses etc.)