If you’re looking for an incredibly cool toy to play with over your Christmas holidays you could do a lot worse than checking out Johnny Lee’s Wiimote VR Head Tracking Display.
Using an LED array – as found in the Wii Sensor Bar – and a Wiimote, Johnny Lee has been able to track the movements of his head. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you see the video of the technology in action. Go ahead, visit the link. I’ll wait.
While everyone who is able to access YouTube goes and drools at the video, I’ll explain for those of you who might be behind a firewall: by placing the Wiimote below the TV and wearing the Sensor Bar (or home-made IR LED array) on your head, a laptop is able to track your position and viewing angle in relation to the display. It then takes this data and alters the viewpoint accordingly. As Johnny Lee puts it, the display actually becomes “a window onto another room.”
And blow me down if it doesn’t. A basic 2D image suddenly jumps out in ways that inventors of shutter glasses always planned, only this technology doesn’t give you a headache.
Things move completely convincingly as your perspective changes. If you’ve got a second Wiimote and Sensor Bar you can even play a simple Wii Play-type shooting game.
If you have a Wii and a PC with Bluetooth capabilities, you owe it to yourself to download the demo. It is truly amazing, and Nintendo needs to get this guy a job stat. I personally can’t wait for a first-person shooter to come out featuring this amazingly simple and yet incredibly effective technology.
Give it a go, and let us know how you get on via the forums.
Using an LED array – as found in the Wii Sensor Bar – and a Wiimote, Johnny Lee has been able to track the movements of his head. Which doesn’t sound like a big deal, until you see the video of the technology in action. Go ahead, visit the link. I’ll wait.
While everyone who is able to access YouTube goes and drools at the video, I’ll explain for those of you who might be behind a firewall: by placing the Wiimote below the TV and wearing the Sensor Bar (or home-made IR LED array) on your head, a laptop is able to track your position and viewing angle in relation to the display. It then takes this data and alters the viewpoint accordingly. As Johnny Lee puts it, the display actually becomes “a window onto another room.”
And blow me down if it doesn’t. A basic 2D image suddenly jumps out in ways that inventors of shutter glasses always planned, only this technology doesn’t give you a headache.
Things move completely convincingly as your perspective changes. If you’ve got a second Wiimote and Sensor Bar you can even play a simple Wii Play-type shooting game.
If you have a Wii and a PC with Bluetooth capabilities, you owe it to yourself to download the demo. It is truly amazing, and Nintendo needs to get this guy a job stat. I personally can’t wait for a first-person shooter to come out featuring this amazingly simple and yet incredibly effective technology.
Give it a go, and let us know how you get on via the forums.
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