(yeh, the awful puns continue...)
Found an incredibly useful set of classes from here:
http://www.asb-labs.com/blog/flash-gaming-classes-wiimote-wiiflash/
Amongst other fun things you can:
1. Point the Wii Remote at the screen and use it to move a cursor object around the stage.
2. Control individual LEDs on the Wii Remote - a bit pointless, but very very fun I suppose.
3. Register if a certain combination of buttons has been pressed. Intended for use in game programming, however, there are a dozens of other uses for this ablity apart from gaming...
...back later!
MA
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Monday, 21 July 2008
3 Shades Of Wii... and Johnny Lee
(that's pun #2 up there... guaranteed to get much worse as this project progresses)
Below is a list - which I shall build up - of all the software that I've found, and will subsequently fiddle with and document in a fair amount of detail... but very briefly -
(note: if the software is for use with a PC then I'll assume that BlueSoleil is running and a connection between the Wii Remote and PC has been established)
glovePIE - script driven software that runs on a PC that senses all the movements from the Wii Remote including the accelerometers. The most flexible solution with a high learning curve.
(http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie)
WiiCade - this is a Flash API that allows you to create a Flash application with Wii Remote control other than mere pointing and clicking, more buttons are supported, intended to be run through the Wii Internet Channel.
(http://labs.wiicade.com/index.html)
WiiFlash - Probably the most exciting out of the lot because it allows you to directly access the Wii Remote from Flash using actionscript. It's also possible to connect and differentiate between up to 4 remotes and nunchucks. The major downside is that there isn't currently any access to data from the accelerometers on the Remote. You also have to run a piece of software called WiiFlash Server that may require you to update your .NET framework, although it runs transparently and doesn't need any configuration.
(http://www.wiiflash.org/)
Johnny Lee - OK, so he's not a piece of software but it would be stupid to be writing this without mentioning his research. Lee has come up with many ideas for implementing the technology inside the Wii Remote including an interactive whiteboard and many small 3D experiments that have to been seen! Anyway, his work has become quite an inspiration for my project - if only in terms of the innovations...
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/)
Thaaaaaat's all folks...
MA
Below is a list - which I shall build up - of all the software that I've found, and will subsequently fiddle with and document in a fair amount of detail... but very briefly -
(note: if the software is for use with a PC then I'll assume that BlueSoleil is running and a connection between the Wii Remote and PC has been established)
glovePIE - script driven software that runs on a PC that senses all the movements from the Wii Remote including the accelerometers. The most flexible solution with a high learning curve.
(http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie)
WiiCade - this is a Flash API that allows you to create a Flash application with Wii Remote control other than mere pointing and clicking, more buttons are supported, intended to be run through the Wii Internet Channel.
(http://labs.wiicade.com/index.html)
WiiFlash - Probably the most exciting out of the lot because it allows you to directly access the Wii Remote from Flash using actionscript. It's also possible to connect and differentiate between up to 4 remotes and nunchucks. The major downside is that there isn't currently any access to data from the accelerometers on the Remote. You also have to run a piece of software called WiiFlash Server that may require you to update your .NET framework, although it runs transparently and doesn't need any configuration.
(http://www.wiiflash.org/)
Johnny Lee - OK, so he's not a piece of software but it would be stupid to be writing this without mentioning his research. Lee has come up with many ideas for implementing the technology inside the Wii Remote including an interactive whiteboard and many small 3D experiments that have to been seen! Anyway, his work has become quite an inspiration for my project - if only in terms of the innovations...
(http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/)
Thaaaaaat's all folks...
MA
Thursday, 10 July 2008
Wii Things Amuse Wii Minds...
Phew! After a little while, I'm back with my account of my Wii little adventures (that's pun #1...)In the past, there have been many systems, gizmos and gadgets released that have incorporated some sort of pointing device. To cut to the chase, none have proven so sucessful, at least on such a widespread scale as the 'Wiimote' used as the primary control device for the Nintendo Wii games console.
There are sensors to detect movement in all directions, including the speed (or rather acceleration) of those movements. The remote can also sense it's tilt and pitch. The main use of the remote however, is to point at the screen and interact with various elements presented on the television. To achieve this, a series of infrared LEDs are placed above or below the television. The remote has a camera built in to it's point that senses the position of the infrared LEDs and interprets this information as a position for a cursor etc. on the screen. Yes, that so-called 'Sensor Bar' that is placed on your TV doesn't sense a single solitary atom of information... all the communication is between the Wiimote and Wii using Bluetooth!
Anyway - the point of me waffling about the Wii Remote is that it's possible to use all it's functionality with a PC!The best part is that it's actually a relatively simple process to make the connection between Wiimote and PC.
You need the following (links at the end of the post)...
1. a Wii Remote
2. an actual Nintendo Wii OR a wireless sensor bar - you need this for the pointing aspect of the remote. However, you could even use several candles if you wanted to!
3. Bluetooth connectivity on your computer (I'm using a PC with Windows XP for the record...)
4. BlueSoleil - this is the software that will actually detect and pair your Wii remote to your computer
5. glovePIE - finally, this is the software that reads the information from the Wii remote's sensors and provides appropriate feedback - in this case, through mouse movements and mouse clicks!
The only thing that remains is to tell glovePIE what you want it to sense from the Wii remote... The most reliable (but by no means the only) code I've found for controlling the mouse so far resides here:
http://www.wiili.org/index.php/GlovePIE:Carl%27s_IR_Mouse
Just paste all that code into the glovePIE code view and press the 'run' button at the top! ...and Bob should be your mother's brother...
I shall return when I've managed to write some of my own code for glovePIE :)
Links...
http://www.wiiprojects.org/bluetooth.html - useful for setting up BlueSoleil
http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/glovepie_download - glovePIE download page
http://www.wiili.org/ - everything else you'll need to know for research and scripts for glovePIE
Wednesday, 11 June 2008
Sensing stuff...
OK, here's another set of methods of getting information into the computer, other than my webcam experiments.
A short while ago I read a very inspirational book by Brendan Dawes (http://www.brendandawes.com/) called 'Analog In , Digital Out' (at Amazon UK). He's one of the gurus on Flash and all things multimedia. His book focusses on the ways that analog or real-life sources of data, like light and sound, can be converted into useful and meaningful data on a computer.
His experiments include making a doorbell ring when someone visits his website, and gathering colour, size and shape data from a webcam trained on a piece of playdough - where the playdough was the user interface...!
All sounds strange but these two examples alone have given me lots of ideas and influence on my project.
The doorbell example was created using the following kit:
http://www.makingthings.com/products/KIT-MAKE-CTRL/
This electronics kit connects to the computer using either USB or ethernet and can have an array of sensor devices attached to it. These sensors include those for light, infrared, pressure and a series of switches. It's also possible to send signals out to the device and control devices like motors and LED lights.
The data is received into Flash using a custom actionscript class as a stream of numerical data. It's then moreorless up to the designer to use the data as they see fit.
The playdough example was created using a combination of a webcam and a piece of software called Cycling74 Max 5. The software company originally began by making audio-plugins for editing suites on the Apple Mac. Using the program's video capabilities, it's possible to detect an object's size, colour and whole load of other variables...
Lastly, a lot of the examples in the book employ a programming language called Processing, which is derived from JAVA. The description from the website says...
"Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production."
Processing is an incredibly versatile language that makes programming specifically for graphics a complete cinch. Many of the classes you would have to explicitly call if using a traditional JAVA compiler are readily available. I downloaded a special class that enabled me to use my webcam within the Processing environment. The example I tested consisted of around only 50 lines of code. It enabled the user to wave their hand (or any other object) in front of the camera and attract a virtual tennis ball to their fingertips... I'll provide an example on my website soon!
These are the 3 main programming environments I shall research and employ during the course of my project...
MA
A short while ago I read a very inspirational book by Brendan Dawes (http://www.brendandawes.com/) called 'Analog In , Digital Out' (at Amazon UK). He's one of the gurus on Flash and all things multimedia. His book focusses on the ways that analog or real-life sources of data, like light and sound, can be converted into useful and meaningful data on a computer.
His experiments include making a doorbell ring when someone visits his website, and gathering colour, size and shape data from a webcam trained on a piece of playdough - where the playdough was the user interface...!
All sounds strange but these two examples alone have given me lots of ideas and influence on my project.
The doorbell example was created using the following kit:
http://www.makingthings.com/products/KIT-MAKE-CTRL/
This electronics kit connects to the computer using either USB or ethernet and can have an array of sensor devices attached to it. These sensors include those for light, infrared, pressure and a series of switches. It's also possible to send signals out to the device and control devices like motors and LED lights.
The data is received into Flash using a custom actionscript class as a stream of numerical data. It's then moreorless up to the designer to use the data as they see fit.
The playdough example was created using a combination of a webcam and a piece of software called Cycling74 Max 5. The software company originally began by making audio-plugins for editing suites on the Apple Mac. Using the program's video capabilities, it's possible to detect an object's size, colour and whole load of other variables...
Lastly, a lot of the examples in the book employ a programming language called Processing, which is derived from JAVA. The description from the website says...
"Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production."
Processing is an incredibly versatile language that makes programming specifically for graphics a complete cinch. Many of the classes you would have to explicitly call if using a traditional JAVA compiler are readily available. I downloaded a special class that enabled me to use my webcam within the Processing environment. The example I tested consisted of around only 50 lines of code. It enabled the user to wave their hand (or any other object) in front of the camera and attract a virtual tennis ball to their fingertips... I'll provide an example on my website soon!
These are the 3 main programming environments I shall research and employ during the course of my project...
MA
Jean Michel Jarre - An Introduction...
The first port of call for my research into unconventional user-interfaces begins with Jean Michel Jarre and his amazing laser harp! First, watch the video below...
For those who haven't heard of Jean Michel Jarre, he is one of the most innovative electronic music producers of our time (well, in all fairness, ANY time as he's only been producing since the mid 60s) in the way he pioneered the use of the first synthesisers and continued to do so.
He's also renowned for his live performances which include:
Rendezvous Houston (text shamelessly from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Michel_Jarre)
In 1986, NASA and the city of Houston asked him to do a concert to celebrate NASA's 25th anniversary and the city of Houston's 150th anniversary.
During that concert, astronaut Ronald McNair was to play the saxophone part of Jarre's piece "Rendez-Vous VI" while in orbit on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was to have been the first piece of music recorded in space, for the album. After the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986 which killed McNair, the piece was recorded with a different saxophonist, retitled "Ron's piece" and the album dedicated to the seven Challenger astronauts.
The Houston concert entered the Guinness Book of Records for the audience of over 1.5 million. During the concert, Houston native Kirk Whalum performed Ron McNair's saxophone part on "Ron's Piece". The concert featured giant projections of photographic images and laser patterns onto the buildings of downtown Houston, including a gigantic white screen on the front face of the Texaco Heritage Plaza building, which was under construction at the time. Due to vehicles stopping on the freeway passing the concert venue the freeways had to be closed down for the duration of the concert.
Twelve Dreams of the Sun
On 31 December 1999 Jarre held a spectacular music and light show in the Egyptian desert, near Giza. The show, called The 12 Dreams of the Sun, celebrated the new millennium and 5,000 years of civilization in Egypt. It also offered a preview of his new album, Metamorphoses.
The concert which started on new years eve and followed all the way through to the dawn of the new millennium in a 12 hour spectacular which including many performances from local artists and musicians, the concert used the backdrop of the great pyramids to project images onto, but fog during the evening concert by Jarre caused the projections on the facades of the pyramids to be blocked from view. Jarre played for around two hours during the build up to the new millennium with a countdown at midnight and spectacular firework display and then returned on stage in the early morning to perform a second slot to see in the first sunrise of the new millennium.
The following is a clip from Twelve Dreams of the Sun. It shows the countdown to the new millennium - forget London or NYC for the year 2000, this is amazing...
Anyway, I'm slightly off the point here... the focus of my research into Jean Michel Jarre is mainly on the innovative controllers for his synthesisers which include the laser-harp featured in the first video...
...more later!
MA
For those who haven't heard of Jean Michel Jarre, he is one of the most innovative electronic music producers of our time (well, in all fairness, ANY time as he's only been producing since the mid 60s) in the way he pioneered the use of the first synthesisers and continued to do so.
He's also renowned for his live performances which include:
Rendezvous Houston (text shamelessly from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Michel_Jarre)
In 1986, NASA and the city of Houston asked him to do a concert to celebrate NASA's 25th anniversary and the city of Houston's 150th anniversary.
During that concert, astronaut Ronald McNair was to play the saxophone part of Jarre's piece "Rendez-Vous VI" while in orbit on board the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was to have been the first piece of music recorded in space, for the album. After the Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986 which killed McNair, the piece was recorded with a different saxophonist, retitled "Ron's piece" and the album dedicated to the seven Challenger astronauts.
The Houston concert entered the Guinness Book of Records for the audience of over 1.5 million. During the concert, Houston native Kirk Whalum performed Ron McNair's saxophone part on "Ron's Piece". The concert featured giant projections of photographic images and laser patterns onto the buildings of downtown Houston, including a gigantic white screen on the front face of the Texaco Heritage Plaza building, which was under construction at the time. Due to vehicles stopping on the freeway passing the concert venue the freeways had to be closed down for the duration of the concert.
Twelve Dreams of the Sun
On 31 December 1999 Jarre held a spectacular music and light show in the Egyptian desert, near Giza. The show, called The 12 Dreams of the Sun, celebrated the new millennium and 5,000 years of civilization in Egypt. It also offered a preview of his new album, Metamorphoses.
The concert which started on new years eve and followed all the way through to the dawn of the new millennium in a 12 hour spectacular which including many performances from local artists and musicians, the concert used the backdrop of the great pyramids to project images onto, but fog during the evening concert by Jarre caused the projections on the facades of the pyramids to be blocked from view. Jarre played for around two hours during the build up to the new millennium with a countdown at midnight and spectacular firework display and then returned on stage in the early morning to perform a second slot to see in the first sunrise of the new millennium.
The following is a clip from Twelve Dreams of the Sun. It shows the countdown to the new millennium - forget London or NYC for the year 2000, this is amazing...
Anyway, I'm slightly off the point here... the focus of my research into Jean Michel Jarre is mainly on the innovative controllers for his synthesisers which include the laser-harp featured in the first video...
...more later!
MA
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Project Ideas
One of the aims of this blog is to document my work on my final year project for university... It's a facility for me to write down all the interesting bits and pieces I happen to discovery along the way!
At the moment my ideas are still coming together for my project. I'll be focussing on the following topics over the next few weeks:
1. The way computer games utilise music.
2. Unconventional user interfaces in - a. Computer games, b. Professional music software, c. Studio/Live artist performances.
3. Various programming langauges that support such interfaces.
4. ...whilst all the time creating/programming experiments, which demostrate some findings of the above points!
Just thought a small bit of clarification was needed before I plunge ahead (for me as much as you, the reader!)
MA
At the moment my ideas are still coming together for my project. I'll be focussing on the following topics over the next few weeks:
1. The way computer games utilise music.
2. Unconventional user interfaces in - a. Computer games, b. Professional music software, c. Studio/Live artist performances.
3. Various programming langauges that support such interfaces.
4. ...whilst all the time creating/programming experiments, which demostrate some findings of the above points!
Just thought a small bit of clarification was needed before I plunge ahead (for me as much as you, the reader!)
MA
Monday, 9 June 2008
Rez - Gameplay videos...
For those interested, the following links are complete gameplay videos, from Youtube - wish I was good enough to get past Area 3... C'est la vie...
Area 1
"Buggie Running Beeps 01" / Keiichi Sugiyama
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7hh9fZkr1jk
Area 2
"Protocol Rain" / mist
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=A4EFNWe4mCc
Area 3
"Creation The State Of Art (Part 1 - 6)" / Ken Ishii
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yzoGoAo0ZMA
Area 4
"Rock Is Sponge" / Joujouka
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cCh6WlK027I
Area 5 / Last Boss
"Fear" / Adam Freeland
"Boss Attacks" / Coldcut
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3nq_oMDlrtM (an awesome 26 minutes long!)
Enjoying watching!
MA
Area 1
"Buggie Running Beeps 01" / Keiichi Sugiyama
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=7hh9fZkr1jk
Area 2
"Protocol Rain" / mist
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=A4EFNWe4mCc
Area 3
"Creation The State Of Art (Part 1 - 6)" / Ken Ishii
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=yzoGoAo0ZMA
Area 4
"Rock Is Sponge" / Joujouka
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cCh6WlK027I
Area 5 / Last Boss
"Fear" / Adam Freeland
"Boss Attacks" / Coldcut
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3nq_oMDlrtM (an awesome 26 minutes long!)
Enjoying watching!
MA
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