Old Discussion Thread for all 3 motion controllers

[Rolf N]

Looking at that Destructoid link and the last couple pages, the apparent lack of hands-on experience with Wii fps controls among press and gamers surprises me. It's one of the key strengths of the Wii platform, it's best traditional game genre quite possibly. How it can still be an alien concept so far into this gen, I don't understand.

I've heard concerns raised about max turning speed, which is less of a problem than on thumbsticks. Just look at how much you can incline your wrist and compare that to the working angle of a thumbstick. A pointer controller gives you more range to work with from the get go, and either scheme is usually subject to user tweaking anyway. Sensitivity options are everywhere. This is not a problem in practice.

 

[goonergaz]

Looking at that Destructoid link and the last couple pages, the apparent lack of hands-on experience with Wii fps controls among press and gamers surprises me. It's one of the key strengths of the Wii platform, it's best traditional game genre quite possibly. How it can still be an alien concept so far into this gen, I don't understand.

Because most Wii owners don't play FPS games on the console? I think most of the games that sell are party/mario games.

I tried playing Dead Rising (OK not an FPS) and OMG was it awful and clunky! I had such high hopes for the control system but (for me) it just didn't work very well.

 

[patsu]

Looking at that Destructoid link and the last couple pages, the apparent lack of hands-on experience with Wii fps controls among press and gamers surprises me. It's one of the key strengths of the Wii platform, it's best traditional game genre quite possibly. How it can still be an alien concept so far into this gen, I don't understand.

I've heard concerns raised about max turning speed, which is less of a problem than on thumbsticks. Just look at how much you can incline your wrist and compare that to the working angle of a thumbstick. A pointer controller gives you more range to work with from the get go, and either scheme is usually subject to user tweaking anyway. Sensitivity options are everywhere. This is not a problem in practice.

Rolf, how does the Wii FPS control scheme work ? Do you have a good example ? Just want to understand the differences.

 

[Rolf N]

Rolf, how does the Wii FPS control scheme work ? Do you have a good example ? Just want to understand the differences.

To get the easy stuff out of the way, the nunchuk is used exactly like your left analog stick on a pad, plus iron sights mode on the Z button.

The IR pointer and its distance from the center of the screen is used like a hybrid between a joystick and a mouse cursor. The default scheme usually includes a rectangular "dead zone" area in the middle of screen, where you point and shoot, like a lightgun with a visible on-screen reticule, while the camera stays static. The dead zone can occupy up to a quarter of the screen.

Once you move the cursor outside this dead zone, the camera starts to turn in the corresponding direction, faster the further you point away from the center. This differs from a mouse setup insofar as it's all relative movement. The turning continues for as long as you point outside the dead zone. Or in other words, outside the dead zone, it controls the camera exactly like your right thumbstick would. Inside, you can "point and click" while the camera stays still.

This is the default setup for virtually every Wii fps since Red Steel. Medal Of Honor and Call Of Duty games are more recent refinements.

Metroid Prime: Corruption offers an "Advanced" control option that completely eliminates the dead zone. When you use this, unless you point to the exact center of the screen at all times, the camera always turns, proportionally to the distance from center of the spot you're pointing at. This is the setup I personally like the best. It avoids situations where you need go back and forth between your intended target and a dead zone edge just to tug the camera along.

One thing to keep in mind is that Wii remote pointing is not physically precise. You do not actually hit where you point in living-room space, barring extensive calibration (which most games don't even offer). Even so, it's easy to adapt, since you always get the reticule and camera reaction as feedback. The game shows you where its neutral center position is. You associate that with a position of your hand and work out the rest in a relative fashion.

 

[goonergaz]

I guess you only have to play any Wii game (like the Wii play titles) to realise how the pointing works...the stick acts as the DS3 left stick - but with DR it just felt 'wrong' - have you tried DR at all?

With Move, are we saying it's accurate to the point you actually aim your 'wand' at the thing you want to shoot?

WRT the turning speed, could you not just use the stick for slow/normal turn and a flick of the wrist for a faster turn?

 

[patsu]

What's DR ?

EDIT: nvm. Dead Rising.

If DR does not have a good control scheme implementation, then people will just ignore it and imitate the good ones.

 

[NeoTechni]

With Move, are we saying it's accurate to the point you actually aim your 'wand' at the thing you want to shoot?

Neither Wii, NATAL, nor Move are that accurate. You aim at a sensor bar/camera, not the TV.

The best all 3 can do, is a calibration. Where they tell you to point at the top left corner of your TV, the bottom right corner, and it uses that to guess where you're pointing.

If Sony/MS were smart, they'd have you enter the position/size/camera location/etc of your TV into the system menu and it get it over with

 

[Danalys]

Move can be more accurate than a light gun because of the absolute positioning data. If you can calibrate it so it knows where the pointer is in relation to the TV. The torch demo was a good example of this. It was like pointing a torch through a virtual window at the TVs surface into a virtual room. They could make light gun games where the closer to the TV you were the more likely you were to get shot, or port Police 24/7.

 

[NeoTechni]

or port Police 24/7.

The PS2 version supported a camera that handled it already.

 

[goonergaz]

Move can be more accurate than a light gun because of the absolute positioning data. If you can calibrate it so it knows where the pointer is in relation to the TV. The torch demo was a good example of this. It was like pointing a torch through a virtual window at the TVs surface into a virtual room. They could make light gun games where the closer to the TV you were the more likely you were to get shot, or port Police 24/7.

This was my thoughts - I may have a fuzzy memory, but I had Mad Dog on the CDi and IIRC the accuracy was fairly good - and you aimed your gun to where you wanted to shoot on screen.

 

[Arwin]

Move can be more accurate than a light gun because of the absolute positioning data. If you can calibrate it so it knows where the pointer is in relation to the TV. The torch demo was a good example of this. It was like pointing a torch through a virtual window at the TVs surface into a virtual room. They could make light gun games where the closer to the TV you were the more likely you were to get shot, or port Police 24/7.

Agreed - pointing is very precise and should work as well as or better than any lightgun (which you always need to calibrate, by the way - I've got all PS1 and Ps2 GunCons). Also from my understanding, there are several aspects to Move that help not needing to recalibrate very often either. The demoes on the GDC show floor that did use calibration actually used it to determine the dimensions of the player, apparently.

 

[Rolf N]

CRT light-guns can be very precise even without calibration. The sensor detects the exact moment in time where the phosphors light up as the electron beam passes by, and can compute the corresponding spot on the screen with pinpoint precision.

CRTs are dead though, and current display tech is incompatible with traditional light guns.

 

[goonergaz]

CRT light-guns can be very precise even without calibration. The sensor detects the exact moment in time where the phosphors light up as the electron beam passes by, and can compute the corresponding spot on the screen with pinpoint precision.

CRTs are dead though, and current display tech is incompatible with traditional light guns.

The CDi lightgun used a similar thing to the Wii-bar and was infrared - it sat on top of the TV, I assume the PSeye will do the same job but with added information (distance from screen for example).

 

[Gradthrawn]

Might be worth a look this Saturday.

The Engadget Show is teaming up with Joystiq's very own Chris Grant this Saturday in a brand new episode that features the newly unveiled PlayStation Move motion controller. Sony's Richard Marks will take the stage, bringing some brand new tech demos that highlight what the controller is capable of.

 

[Danalys]

Agreed - pointing is very precise and should work as well as or better than any lightgun (which you always need to calibrate, by the way - I've got all PS1 and Ps2 GunCons). Also from my understanding, there are several aspects to Move that help not needing to recalibrate very often either. The demoes on the GDC show floor that did use calibration actually used it to determine the dimensions of the player, apparently.

Hopefully you can just calibrate once just so it knows where your TV is and how large it is and it's relative position to the Eye. But considering I still need to select my preferred language at times I don't assume this will be the case. It was annoying having to calibrate light gun games at start up all the time. It interferers with their pick up and play appeal.

 

[Asher]

ArsTechnica has a good article on the PS Move: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/03/playstation-move.ars

 

[MfA]

CRT light-guns can be very precise even without calibration. The sensor detects the exact moment in time where the phosphors light up as the electron beam passes by, and can compute the corresponding spot on the screen with pinpoint precision.

CRTs are dead though, and current display tech is incompatible with traditional light guns.

It really doesn't cost much to put a "low resolution" camera in a lightgun. Then you just program the game to put an easily identifiable border on the display (identifiable for the image processing algorithm, it doesn't have to be intrusive for the player). At which point you can determine the exact direction of the light gun relative to the screen quite easily, and without needing physical reference points on multiple axis (if Nintendo had used two sensor bars above and below the screen it would have had very high accuracy as well). Without calibration even.

Well it wouldn't cost much if it wasn't for patents ...

 

[patsu]

Cool ! Article reflects the me-too sentiments really well. The immature software and lack of excitement/surprises are good feedback as well. Sony should take all these responses to heart. They need to do more than PR to overcome these issues.

But I don't think Sony has shown its all its deck yet. On hind sight, I think the GDC exposure is useful for them to solicit real feedback. It would be a huge disaster if they reveal these in E3 2010. It would be silly if they show the same thing again there. ^_^

I am actually surprised by the positive note on Socom 4 and Augmented Reality (whatever game that is) in the article. Perhaps, they need to build their momentum around the good stuff.

Personally I hope to see more than raw motion sensing use alone. e.g.,

* The puppetry demo is my top pick but they need to dress it up with a real game, and please show intricate finger controls (more than just 5-finger grip) with button combos. Show me how the setup are _fun_ or useful for games and non-games.

* EyePet -- should focus more on AI (recognitions) rather than motion sensing. The sing-along, sketch recognitions are both wow-worthy.

* Hardcore gaming mechanics (Socom 4, MLB The Show, RTS, driving game like GT5). Please show *real* advantages quantitatively if there is indeed a balancing issue in Socom 4 due to superior waggle mechanics.


What I didn't see:

* The user generated content (Specifically, LittleBigPlanet and Modnation Racer demoes).

* Media management and viewing in XMB non-games and games (e.g., search for songs in SingStar, Rockband by humming, search for photos using sketches, ...)

* Educational titles (What about spelling recognition in EyePet or other games)


Finally,

* Would be nice to have everything together: 3DTV + waggle + AI.

Tall order, yes. But Sony needs to get there to impress, or be on par with Nintendo and MS.


EDIT: They'll also need household brands to help support their concept. Nintendo already has endorsement from the public. MS presented to the toy and women press a few weeks ago, they would have relevant/make-shift prototypes and endorsement from these people by E3.

 

[thop]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0puP8nrIU8

Surprisingly direct remarks about the competition. This will be interesting.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Surprisingly direct remarks about the competition. This will be interesting.

Not too interesting, I hope. If that guy were a member of B3D I'd slap him with a trolling infraction! For those who haven't viewed the link, it's a Sony promotional video for Move with their character VP, Kevin Butler, extolling the virtues of Move with digs at the rivals.