racketboy.com

Anyways, I'm suprised no one has started this topic.

But, realizing my laptop has a internal Bluetooth adapter, it really makes me want to start using my Wiimote for some of my favorite games

Especially FPS. I was thinking of getting Bioshock for 360, but then I had the awesome idea that maybe with my PC I could have such a better time with Metriod Prime 3 like controls. HECK!!! I want to play american Mcgee's Alice with my Wiimote !

Plus, since I plan on using my HDTV for gaming, the sensor mouse like movements will be covered by the Wii sensor bar I have near my TV... right?



But anyways, have any of you guys done this yet. How did you do your set-up? (e.g. what software did you use)

What was the extent of your abilities with the Wiimote?
Were you able to use things like the nunchuk or classic controller?

Also racketboy, this would be an awesome thing to do an article on. "Set-Up your PC to use the Wiimote"

getting simple button states probably wouldn't be that hard. A basic driver that handles a bluetooth port and watches for the button state change. You'd just need to know how to write a driver for that.

As for actual motion sensing? That I do not know. How would you hook the motion sensing bar up to the PC? You'd need to be fairly good at math to come up with the algorithm for the motion sensing controller (or some how locate Nintendo's algorithm, and rip them off, making it illegal since you broke several copyright laws).

Then not only would you have to device that algorithm, but then you'd need to set up a way to transpose those to the game or other feature you wanted it to control.

Would you basically convert hand gestures to mouse movements? Or would you create some other inversion method that was more complex.


It all sounds like it'd be a FUN and interesting project for the developers. There MAY be people already devising ways to do it (who knows, the mod teams out there sometimes do some bizarre things).


[edit] I guess a team already DID start putting this together. It appears to be fairly basic though. It recognizes hand gestures and converts them to basic mouse movements. Sounds interesting I guess, but in my first look opinion... probably is more of a nuisance then fun. Kinda like using a "cat mouse" left handed in water. Take a WHOLE shit load of getting used to.

My big thing about it is, it's based on software used for VR gloves. This means no motion sensing bar, it utilizes the gyroscope inside of it to recognize hand gestures. As you can see in the video it's not a simple point with the wiimote, but instead you tilt the wiimote left to move mouse left, tilt up to move it up. And of course button recognition... of which is probably the easiest of the bunch (as I stated in my first sentence).

here's a vid on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_ytdW6Ys2A&eurl

Actually the Wii sensor bar isn't used for motion.

Thats done by the accelometers inside the controller


Btw many of the things have already been accomplished.

Check out this link

http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie

Still I haven't tried it myself.

So I was wondering what fine tuning was needed.

I.e. you need to create scripts

Nitrosoxide wrote:Actually the Wii sensor bar isn't used for motion.

Thats done by the accelometers inside the controller


Btw many of the things have already been accomplished.

Check out this link

http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie

Still I haven't tried it myself.

So I was wondering what fine tuning was needed.

check my edit to my post... I located info on it.

Oh and motion sensing is done by a combination of the bar AND a gyroscope. To get the full motion sensing abilities of the Wiimote used in the games for the Wii. Just the gyroscope can handle basic hand gestures. Ability to point and click would require the bar, FPS REALLY need the bar (hand gestures to move your gun around would just be annoying)

FPS would really suffer a lot mostly in how would you 180 degree turn. This would require a combo of rotating character AND pointing gun... in wiimote this would require you to continually hold the wiimote tilted far right, but once you brought it back to center point the gun would sway back the to the left. With out the bar it doesn't understand where the wiimote is in respect to the playing field.

You could instead break the FPS controls into analog stick controls. Where there is two seperate commands for the rotation and aim. (kinda like Halo controls, left stick rotates, R stick aims). But you really lose the AIM feature the wiimote promotes so well in its games. That and it would have to be a game that was programmed with support for analog stick controls (i.e. with the 360 controller in mind... like Bioshock)


BUT, with a project like this underway, some math geek out there will probably devise some algorithm for this nasty funness... but don't hold your breathe. All of that sweet hotness bundled into a homebrew driver will take massive work.


really, as I describe in my pre-edit, the basics are covered in this driver they have. Button combos, basic hand gestures from the gyroscope. That's easy tasks. Interfacing the sensor bar and unlocking the 'full 3D motion sensing controls' of the wiimote will take loads of work.


[edit]
it still interests me though, and it appears there is some good access to the functions of the driver through scripts. I'm gonna test it out maybe in the next week or so and see what little gidgets I can pull out of the thing.

Still just sounds more like PC masturbation then something functional.

I've discovered GlovePIE

It however, takes scripts which don't seem to be too popular. Is there a better solution. I want something that lets me use the wiimote pointer and map keyboard buttons to my wii buttons and nunchuk

I found a good site that tries to explain some stuff to newbies

http://wiihacks.blogspot.com/2006/12/ne ... 6407968561


Also this site is great

http://www.wiili.org/index.php/GlovePIE#Sensor_Bar


The fourm over here seems to be active in creating more and more scripts, and indeed have created quite a few FPS ones.

http://www.wiili.org/forum/

I haven't tried any so..I can comment for now.

Glovepie is how I have done it. It is simple enough for the none programmer to wing through, and I believe it is the standard for this kind of thing. Sadly I have yet to build a sensor bar (which is just a two sets of three ir leds). Really the sensor bar just needs two light sources - as you can imagine using ir there is no light bleeding into the screen.

If you really want to see some neat things just search for "wiimote pc" on youtube. I highly recommend the Rez one.

My goal is to get mine working by the end of the week with a bar that I havent built yet...