Wii Gesture Project - "Wii Swing To Music"

OK, this is a pretty big step up in the versions, so I'm going to stop giving releases a version number or we'll be up in the hundreds before too long I shouldn't wonder...

What would have been version 5 was the application's ability to recognise simple gestures. Whenever a gesture was recognised, the application played a lightsaber sound (yeh, I know, too tempting right?)

Now (for technically version 6) the application has morphed into a simple game - just for the purposes of demostration - where the player has to make the correct gesture displayed on the screen within a certain amount of time. All this is happening in time to a piece of music, so the general idea is that the player should wave the Wii Remote in the correct directions in time with the music...

...and it 'kind of' works!

Anyway, take a look at the video below. There isn't any audio present at the moment due to some syncing problems I had with the screen recorder, so at some point my trusty camera will come out again and I'll have to film myself playing it...! For the time being, picture it being played to Lady Gaga's 'Just Dance'.



Higher quality video available here...

That's all for the moment.... Over n out...

Movement purely on accelerometers!

Finally back on track after months of mucking about...!

Today, I altered my Wiimote program in Director to make a 3D object move around based on the data gathered from the Wii Remote's accelerometers. The control is actually pretty accurate. So far, you have to hold the remote in a fairly 'wooden' fashion. By this I mean that you can't swish the remote left or right as one might if playing a real Wii game (Wii Sports Tennis comes to mind here).

So, after some faffing with the Lingo in Director I have the following degree of control over my 3D ball...

note: the 'deadzone' for movement is attained when you hold the remote straight up in the air.

Move left: swing the remote to the left
Move right: swing the remote to the right
Move down: pitch the remote forwards (the end of the remote is moved in an arc away from your body)
Move up: pitch the remote backwards (the end of the remote is moved towards your body, the amount of movement is limited for this action)

At the moment, the movement of the ball isn't directly related to the accelerometer data in terms of the actual numbers... So if the accelerometer hints that the Wii Remote is being swung to the left then the ball is moved left by a finite amount.

That's all for the moment, however everything is well on the way to more exciting things!

Wii & Director MX

Well, the software I'm using to make my project has changed since the hazy summer days when Flash seemed like the ideal option.

There are a few reasons for this!

One - Director MX has an Xtra that you can download for free that enables seamless integration between the Wii Remote and Director using very little Lingo code to get the data into the software...

Two - It's possible to import 3D models from 3dsMAX and then traverse them in Director - again with relatively little effort compared to using a 3D-engine with Flash (like Papervision 3D)

Three - The method of getting the data into Flash, using WiiFlashServer, required the use of AS3, some of which is radically different to AS2 and I personally do not have the time to update my knowledge of AS. As I have to learn Director's Lingo language for another module, it's easier really!

Next up is the proof-of-concept!

cheers...