Remember [John]’s Halloween laser tracking game? He’s been busy since then. After building his own version of multi-player missile command based on his laser interaction game, he added head tracking (using the same method as [Johnny Lee] . Check out the video after the break, and grab the full source for Mac or Linux.
ellisgl,
Actually, I’m doing 3d tracking. The game knows your X, Y, and Z (I use all three for control) as well as the tilt of your head. I do X and Y by calculating a point that is between the two IR LEDs. The Z is determined by the distance between the two points. If you are closer to the WiiMote then the points appear to be further apart. If you’re further away then the points are closer.
I get the angle of the points as well but I currently don’t use them. I had used them for turning, I plan to use them for sidestepping.
Of course I could know more about head orientation by adding points. But I think I’m getting what I want out of head tracking. I’m going to use the other two points for an IR light saber, which I think would be more compelling.
Posted at 11:06 pm on Mar 25th, 2008 by a random John
tbare,
as long as we’re suggesting categories, in addition to wii hacks, I would add laser hacks and webcam hacks.
Posted at 11:08 pm on Mar 25th, 2008 by a random John
Freetrack is similar to this and works incredibly well.
http://www.free-track.net/english/
Is the tracking shown in the vid above for the Wii or PC?
Posted at 5:41 am on Mar 26th, 2008 by Mint_Sauce
@a random John:
Should have been more specific in my meaning of 3D tracking. Being able to turn around 360 Degrees.
Posted at 9:07 am on Mar 26th, 2008 by EllisGL
ellisgl,
You are correct, I cannot track orientation (with the exception of tilt), only position.
Posted at 11:26 am on Mar 26th, 2008 by a random John
I would love to see this kind of technology integrated with something like the Neural Impulse Actuator
slashdot: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/02/0131225&from=rss
video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKd_AJUUT7Q
to allow truly hands free gaming and faster response times.
Posted at 12:32 pm on Mar 26th, 2008 by William
video no longer avalable?!
Posted at 5:56 pm on Mar 27th, 2008 by charlie
I went to youtube this morning to check out the video again and saw someone posted that a company by the name of HyperTMG is putting out its own IR Headset with 6 IR LED’s. I have already ordered mine and cant wait.
As well, the site offers a Quake III mod download, so you can play Quake with the Wii mote. This is totally AWESOME. I have always wanted to play Quake or FPS with a gun.
Thanks Johnny for making ideas like this come to lifeâ¦
Posted at 11:03 am on Mar 28th, 2008 by JCL_Headtracking fan
mint sauce,
right now my 3d game only does head tracking on the mac. The game itself runs on linux and windows, but with keyboard control. Actually, you can use the laser in linux, but we haven’t hooked up head tracking in linux yet.
the missile command game that we’ve done:
http://blog.insightvr.com/?p=12
works on both mac and linux. that game will also run under windows, but we haven’t bothered to port the laser tracking to it so you’d be limited to playing with a mouse.
jcl_headtracking fan,
yeah, I owe a lot of credit to johnny lee for the inspiration, as well as to graffiti research lab. I should note, since engadget’s coverage of this has been sub-par, that johnny did not write this game. I wrote it from scratch. every line. in fact, i had to modify the mac wiimote libraries in order to get them to work with python…
Posted at 1:49 pm on Mar 28th, 2008 by a random John
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Now throw in a 3D Goggles and extra IR points for 3D tracking…
Posted at 10:01 pm on Mar 25th, 2008 by EllisGL