Revolution wand sensor pic

[Jabjabs]

I have a feeling I know what that extra port on the back off the Rev is for now, this thing.

And IMO the remote is far too small.

 

[Squeak]

Point the revmote up though.

Or down, or out of range to either side I presume? I don't see what the problem is. The revmote only needs to do detection in roughly the same direction as the TV.
Besides it has the tilt sensor, so it will have a sense of up and down no matter what.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

AFAIK the positon doesn't need to be constrained to the screen. Obviously the 'laser pointer' bit does, but the range of motion could be achieved with a triangulated signal, perhaps 2 transmitters at the ends of the Revmote. You'd calibrate the controller and it'd know full 3D position and orientation. The sensor bar doesn't define the limits of a field of action, but just provides two sensors of fixed distance apart that the difference in time a signal takes to be received in them can be used to determine the transmitters positon.

I think the Revmote would need to transmit gyro/accelerometer values plus probably a clock/timer signal. BW would be low, power consumption should be pretty minimal as you don't need to worry about range or passing through objects and could possibly manage with pulsed signals 60 times per second, though more would be preferably for accuracy.

 

[OtakingGX]

Or down, or out of range to either side I presume? I don't see what the problem is. The revmote only needs to do detection in roughly the same direction as the TV.
Besides it has the tilt sensor, so it will have a sense of up and down no matter what.

The revmote needs to be able to detect where it is no matter where it's pointed. You could have a shooting game where you hold the remote more like the grip of a gun rather than the barrel. You're still pointing it at the TV, but the front of the remote is now facing up.

To locate yourself in three dimensions you need 6 coordinates: x, y, z, α, β, and γ. The tilt sensors will handle the last three, now you just need x, y, and z. This is, presumably, what the sensor bar is for. It's definitely a solvable problem, but without knowing what's inside the revmote and what's inside the sensor bar, we don't know how Nintendo's engineers solved it.