Wiimote as a head tracker -- who's gonna hook this up to the Jaguar?

[else]

Check out the third video on this page -- how cool would this be with Missile Command 3D?

 

Wiimote as a head tracker

 

Seems like it has the potential to be a very cheap solution to playing this game in virtual mode!!!

Edited December 24, 2007 by else

[wrenchien]

don't look at me. the jaguar might bite , especially if it just escaped from the zoo.

[+Stephen Moss]

Don't hold you breath.

My understanding of the Wii controller is that it only used the LED bars to re-orientenate itself, if it did not do this then the accumulation of errors in the G sensors would result in control problems. I doubt that you would get the same range of movement as with the head tracker and in any case a cheap headtrack is not issuse with VR it is the helmet costs and finally AFAIK the Wii controller communicates with the Wii via RF so not only would you need to get the correct reviever but you also need to work out the comms protocols and codes - not an easy task.

[Trey]

the demo in the video is static. with a dynamic scene, the total system latency will dominate its effectiveness. the sensor has to detect the head, process the data, transmit the solution, the computer reads the data, and incorporates the data in the current computation frame, computes the graphics from the model solution and pushes the data to the display device.

 

right now, there is no good, cheap head tracker out there for virtual reality games.

[Symmetry of TNG]

Hi!

 

Just some thoughts.

First wanna thank you Else for this post.. It opened my eyes for the Wii mote and it gives great inspiration =)

 

I have actually looked into this a bit before, wasted some moey on IR-angle sensors.. and stuff.. but this Wii thing is so much nicer & better...

 

However!... digging into this topic and you soon realise that its to early to connect it to the jaguar...

 

The wiimote uses BlueTooth to communicate with the world... and they use a linux BT stack on the PC to communicate with it.. So connecting this to the jaguar would mean making a BT interface with a BT stack for the jaguar... (count me out at step 1 =)

 

It would be easier if the wii mote was hacked 100% ..then we could just highjack the packet stream Before it got sent to the BT chip and make that data into a jaguar friendly data (bank switch via a converter of some kind).

 

But I did a quick search on the net and noone seem to know how to do that.. and since a cheap BT unit & the BT stack are available to the PC (ie "problem solved for them") I dont think anyone else will dig further into this..

 

How about using the sensors?

I dont know how intelligent the IR camera is, or how it works...

It would be bad if it was just an ordinary camera and there was some custom "graber chip" somewhere that converted the signal to data... It must be a digital stream... but that is like 78,6Mb/s (if its 8bit resolution) of data to handle each secound!...

If that is the case, that its just a digital data out chanel from the camera amd then that sensor could be used.. However!... you then need to surch for the blobs FAST.... = Edge&blob detection, which would mean a custom dsp or fpga to do that..

 

If the camera is stupid then the wii mote have such a chip somewhere that does this for you, & finds 4 blobs of IR light and report their position in the 1024*768 matrix... it would be a must to highjack the signal After that... not having to make your own edgedetection FPGA... (its not impossible just hard work =)

 

So.. sensor wise its interesting for tracking a VR helmet... but atm I'd say its not hacked enough to make an easy connection with the jaguar...

 

 

There is actually a better video of this.. using the Wii controller for viritual reality & measure 6DOFs.... check it out at:

 

 

 

It is defenitely the way to do it today.. I mean in essence its the same way atari did it back in the days..

Though i assume they didnt use a 1024x768, 100Hz IR camera... but perhapps some angle sensors like I bought.

But a camera is so much beter...

Imagine 2 cameras positioned as the ir "bugeyes" are positioned on the jagVR helmet.. it would give wider "field of view" detection capabilities than just one (which is 45degrees)... and it would detect your absolute position & orientation of your head in 3D in 100Hz.

(Atari had 200Hz right? ...and they had motionsickness problems?... hmm.... have you people who tried this had any problems with motion sickness? ...or was this just a notion that "some people Can perhapps develope it, hence it needs to be scraped", or what?... ie if we today dont care perhapps 100Hz would be enough?)

 

Ohh... he speaks of solving the overdeterimned nonlinear equations to get the (euler angles Id assume) and that "todays computers are fast enough" ...well... either an interface would have to containn such a computer or the jaguar would have to work its ars off to solve the equations...

Perhapps this would be possible with the JagCF... or there would have to be some kind of High preformance CPU in the converter to make the job easy for the jaguar... (which only wants x,y,z & 3 euler angles)

 

Having a PC running linux & all that you say?... well atm it seems to be the easiest way... having a linux with that program running... and using the BJL communication code & cable to talk to the jaguar, emulating a bank switcher... hmm.. that would actually work.... =)

 

 

Though I agree that the hardest part is the helmet... personally I havent found an "cheap headtracker" yet, so this is verry interesting to me... (any pointers to cheap headtrackers, plz!

 

 

enough speculation =)

 

interesting stuff anyway...

 

cheers!

/Sym

[Zerosquare]

Having a PC running linux & all that you say?... well atm it seems to be the easiest way... having a linux with that program running... and using the BJL communication code & cable to talk to the jaguar, emulating a bank switcher... hmm.. that would actually work.... =)

Hey ! I had the same idea a few days ago ! Stop reading my mind !

Although, actually, I was thinking of using the USB connection on the JagCF to do this... but BJL should work fine also.

Edited January 18, 2008 by Zerosquare