Wiimote headtracking at Nordic Game Jam 2008

[warlockboyburns]

this game looks annoying as a hell

[Kibate]

put a camera on that guys head, i want to see what he sees

[inovatvstdios]

Sigh. More gimmicks. Why are geeks so uncool? Their websites always suck and beyond the obvious 1 to 1 peripheral substitution they can't think of anything remotely interesting. Good Job none the less.

[Zacharia10F1vE]

@inovatvstdios just the the general from alien vs monsters says youve got a better idea nerd?

[inovatvstdios]

@Zacharia10F1vE If I'm a nerd Then I probably know what I'm talking about. And yes I have better idea(s) (see plural) that don't involve utter gimmicky shit. Cmon.. moving your body around will never be nothing more than an arcade game concept. And worst yet, moving your head.. really. The only thing worse is bad eye tracking implementations. Besides, Unless we see a robust Kinect type framework on PC there won't be any innovations made in this field. ALien VS Monster? I don't comprehend

[Zacharia10F1vE]

@inovatvstdios I was referencing a quote from the movie alien vs monsters.

thats were the my comment "youve got a better idea nerd" came from. but seriously this is revolutionary technology your just another dumb critics who doesnt believe in any thing is going to work same thing goes for the dumb critics that believe that Kinect or playstation motion is going to fail they dont even know for certain that its going to fail at all .you guys dont even give the technology a chance.

[inovatvstdios]

@Zacharia10F1vE there's a BIG difference between a critic and an industry insider who comprehends the short comings of these devices. More so from someone who followed all of these technologies when they were just core components and predicted all these obvious iterative gimmicks. The technology itself cannot fail, but the implementations created by developers can. WII is the best example of a motion tracking peripheral and it is still basically a gimmick, PS3 is too late, &kinect well we'll see

[holyburritoimmexican]

i want a swordfighting game using this technology.  dat would be beast.

[KevinHarper3DArtist]

@holyburritoimmexican hmmm call of duty....

[holyburritoimmexican]

good point

[jeefness43]

nerd

[Grimnersmal]

i'd buy this if i knew how.

[EvilHeadBoy]

i want to download!! now!! I use a mac and wii!!!!

[Zintendo]

mini games on the wii shouldnt be 50 dollars for 8 games, instead they should be sold on wiiware ONLY and bought very very very cheaply.

[Hostile]

It looks awesome, ShiftControl. I imagine that if one was to play this game on a large screen, they'd be incredibly immersed.

[Kwizii]

But then moving your head would have much less impact, thus loosing the whole point of it, no?

[ministe2003]

by taking the size of the screen into consideration, movement could be scaled up and down to suit it

[Kwizii]

true :)

[Totalidiocy]

Ah, next time if you're going to film it, hold the sensor bar or whatever you're using under the camera. It's kind of unimpressive as it is, and just makes the player look like an excitable guy who thinks he needs to move around to play the video game.

[gabman6]

you can really take this a step further a larger walking area for more areas for "cover" and then implement 3d glasses.

It really is nothing new given this technology was already used in the arcade game "Police 911" except with a more logical sensor placement.

[Hostile]

Oh man, I loved Police 911. Ever since I saw the Johnny Chung Lee video I've been dreaming about a Source engine shoot-em-up that applied the same gameplay mechanics. Physically leaning around corners to shoot was just so much damn fun.

[hergersheimer]

this break wii console and control ??

[grimlock047]

no it won't

[ShiftControlStudios]

There's no distinction between movement & rendering with this technique. The effect comes from changing the perspective of what ever is rendered based on the input from the head tracking. Like prizegotti says, the effect is only evident to the person wearing the glasses.

[goingwithzed]

This game clearly uses headtracking for in-game movement but unfortunately not for rendering input (the immersive 3d effect that Jonny Lee demonstrates). I'm guessing that this will come in due time as the game engines do not currently support it but will some day...

[prizegotti]

thats because you can only see the 3d effect if you are the headtracker.

[Foxinni]

YES! WiiWare ftw!

[h5e5l5l5o5]

could they make this a wii ware title?

[HaxNigga]

this video shows us nothing. why don't we get a first person view?

[ShiftControlStudios]

It definitely has a future in games. It creates a VERY immersive experience and the technology is not complicated or expensive compared to other products shipping with games these days.

[BIGBMH]

I see. So let's cut to the chase. Do you think headtracking has a future in real wii games or is it just an interesting concept?

[dayat24]

I remembered Johnny Lee saying that EA is using the concept for their games. I sure hope that this will be used for Wii games.

[Zacharia10F1vE]

@BIGBMH I say headtracking has a future in real games weather it be for xbox360 ps3 or wii cant wait to see some games that implement this technology it will be very interesting

[BIGBMH]

@Zacharia10F1vE I certainly hope so. Microsoft's Natal seems like it would be able to use it.

[ShiftControlStudios]

I think the implications of the extra freedom of movement in an FPS style game would require some extra work. The time consuming part of it was testing it and adjusting it to get it to look and feel good. We only got it good enough to show in a limited setting with me playing - getting it to work 'out of the box' is something completely different.

[BIGBMH]

3 days is pretty quick. Would you say this technology would be relatively easy for a developer to implement into a larger scale game like Metroid Prime or something? Or is it limited to the arcade type?

[grimlock047]

looks like games with this kind of interface could make you sweat more than playing with the wii fit thing.

[ShiftControlStudios]

We actually discussed that a lot before doing this game, but in the end we went for a simpler 'light-gun shooter' style game. For us it was a matter of choosing something that could be done in a couple of days and by staying in one place we could limit the scope of the project a lot. Potentially I see a conflict between splitting up motion between actual movement and some kind of gamepad input. Should be tested though.

[BIGBMH]

Interesting work. The posibilities of head tracking are pretty exiting. Do you think it could be used in a game where the person is not stationary? I mean while shifting the perspective and dodging with head tracking, could someone also move their character through the environment.

[dfordom]

awesome,Johnny Lee is gonna be happy to see this!

[ShiftControlStudios]

This was done with a Wii enabled version of Unity under Nintendo license, which unfortunately means that we're not allowed to publish any source or builds. I'd like to port it at some point to use either DarwinRemote or the WiiMote plugin for Unity and make it public, but it's not in the near future :(

There's some nice resources on the Unity forums and the Unity wiki on using the WiiMote Plugin that should provide enough for anyone interesting in experimenting with these things.

[jasenj1]

Are you guys using DarwiinRemote for your Wiimote interface? If so, I'd love to see a post to the DarwiinRemote forums on how you did this.

(DarwiinRemote maintainer)

[nickkrogers]

umm. so can i play this game somewhere/how?

[stemcellfilms]

so awesome! really great to see it on mac!

[MiskonceptioN]

Fantastic! Where can I download this?

[fittsaften]

haha va löjlig han ser ut

[D413373R]

kool

[magnus4070]

snygg stil, brossan!