I've been to E3 five times and had no plans to go again this year, but that all changed when I found out I would get to play the with Nintendo®'s Wii first hand(DOH!). No one was more excited to check out Nintendo®'s revolutionary new controller than me, since the day it was announced eight months ago I knew that the technology was going to change the way games are played forever.

So now that E3 has come and gone it's already obvious that Nintendo® owned the show. The line to get in and play the Wii was like no line I had ever seen at E3, spanning half of the entire hall and breaking every record with it's four plus hour wait time. The buzz is all over the net, the new controller lived up to all expectations...or did it?

The last thing I want to do is get in between Nintendo®'s fans and their new console, I can see the death

threats already. To clarify, I am a huge Nintendo fan, and in fact XGaming's official stance is that Nintendo is our game company of choice. Several of the XGaming staff including the President of the company and myself even own Nintendo stock (NTDOY). We all have said all along that we strongly believe Nintendo® is going to change the way games are played forever with the Wii.

Nintendo® has told us all along that this was a new technology and that ' the console's controller can detect its exact location and orientation in 3D space' with 'pixel-perfect accuracy'. This lead me and many others to believe that this was like some sort of 3D grid in the room that the console could detect exactly where it is, and in what position it is in. That if you laid the controller on the floor and started up the system, it would know that the controller is on the floor. You might liken this to the Motion Capture technology used for animating characters in games.

But after playing the new controller, it was apparent very quickly that something was not quite as I expected. It was when I stepped up to play Red Steel and the slightest left or right movement would make the cross hair jump all the way to the edge of the screen. I felt like an idiot for a moment as the guys peering over my shoulder watched me looking around erratically. But then a Nintendo® rep came to my rescue and told me to take 2 steps back and aim the controller at the sensor bar stuck to the bottom of the TV set...whoah!... that's better. Immediately I was in control and taking down thugs with shotgun shots in their proximity. I mean it was working, but it wasn't like I expected it to feel (like a 3D air mouse).

That's when I began asking questions, and got an idea of how it actually works. There does not appear to be new technology at work here, but rather the culmination of two existing technologies used in a new way:

"The Wii controller hides beneath its glossy exterior a number of cutting-edge technologies. The peripheral uses an accelerometer and a gyrometer to measure motion and tilt, and likewise utilizes both infrared and Bluetooth technology to interact with a sensor bar (placed near a television) and ultimately to send information to the Wii console." - IGN

First you have an IR (infrared) output from the sensor bar that is seen by receivers in the front of the controller to detect where you are pointing it (photo proof: IR LED's can be seen with a digital camera, but not seen by the naked eye). Like a remote control for your TV, so long as it is within range of the IR reader, it can tell where about you are pointing it on the screen. But if you get too far from the sensor bar (or aim the Wiimote too far away from the sensor bar, or get too close as I did with Red Steel), it will lose the signal completely. (For you projector owners out there like myself, this means that you may need to mount the reader bar in the center of your screen or on a table in the middle of the room to play it.)

The second technology that brings it all together is the use of motion sensors. This could be accomplished with the use of Gyros, as Nintendo did buy a sizable amount of shares in the company Gyration, Inc back in September of 2001. But we do know it does use iMEMS® solid state accelerometers that detect motion by way of acceleration which were provided by Analog Devices, Inc. and/or STMicroelectronics. After much prying around at E3, I was told (by Nintendo's Developer Support) that there are three accelerometers at work in the Wiimote. There are also at least two accelerometers used in the nunchuck add-on to detect motion in it as well.

The Bluetooth in the controller sends the IR pointing data and motion sensing data back to the Wii console.

The Duck Hunt clone demo used only the IR technology, and would in fact work without the motion sensing technology at all (I confirmed this with Nintendo's Developer Support at E3). The only difference is that the original NES light gun in a sense took a photo of the screen when you pulled the trigger to see what you had hit, whereas this new IR light gun technology uses the IR LED's to determine where you are aiming. This allows it to work on projectors, LCD's, Plasma displays, and even VGA. It could even work with no TV at all, though you could not see what you were aiming at.

The LCD TopGun uses this exact same IR technology, and works on all displays. If you are in the market for a light gun for your XBOX, Playstation 2, or PC (works with MAME!), I highly recommend it.

The racing game Excite Truck and the Airplane demo at E3 used this motion sensing technology exclusively, and will work even if you unplug the IR sensor bar completely.

This technology is by no means new, accelerometers were used in a product in 2001 that XGaming used to sell called the Cyberstik (or VRJoy), and back in 2000 Microsoft had a big failure of a product with the same tech called the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro. Accelerometers are quite inexpensive at around only fifty cents each, so there is no reason that Wiimotes should cost any more than any other gamepad on the console front. (UPDATE: $60, ouch!). They also work quite well for tilt sensing.

Both of these technologies could move a mouse curser on the screen in any direction. The difference is that the accelerometers are not accurate enough be used for pointing alone (or play an FPS game with.), they only measure acceleration. The IR aspect however picks up this task for aiming on the screen. When you put these two technologies together, for example in Red Steel, the IR tech is being used to aim and, look with the Wiimote. But when you get to the sword parts of the game, the IR tech stops working and the accelerometers now detect the direction you move your hand to swing the sword. Those of you fortunate enough to have played it may have noticed that in Red Steel you could only slash the sword in eight directions, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, there was a screen explaining this in the game. I'm not so sure that true free-hand 1:1 sword fighting is even possible with just accelerometers, except as seen in Star Wars Trilogy arcade light saber fighting, by tilting only. We'll see.

While the IR tech can aim relatively well, it is not as pixel-perfect accurate as a mouse. This means that FPS games will not likely be better played with the Wiimote than a mouse for accuracy, though being able to point and shoot at an enemy may still be better overall. And while the accelerometers can detect motion, it cannot tell exactly where the controller is in 3D space nor exactly how much you have moved it. This means you will not be able to control the next Fight Night on Wii by punching like a real boxer in real time. Alas, virtual realty has not arrived to this extent just yet.

(UPDATE: Or has it? On May 11th (the day I was asking Nintendo® all of these questions at E3!) a new alliance with PixArt Imaging Incorporation was announced that will provide "sensor tracking for Wii Controller". "PixArt's Multi-Object Tracking™ engine (MOT sensor™) technology can track multiple objects in an unbelievably quick and responsive way. As a result, Nintendo® can enable its new gaming controller to interact with people by tracking the movement of the Wii Remote.")

I am not saying that the Wii will not be awesome, I still believe that Nintendo will win this console war. But it is clear that the Wiimote cannot 'detect its exact location and orientation in 3D space' with 'pixel-perfect accuracy' with the technology it was using at E3.

UPDATE: "The Wii controller hides beneath its glossy exterior a number of cutting-edge technologies. The peripheral uses an accelerometer and a gyrometer to measure motion and tilt, and likewise utilizes both infrared and Bluetooth technology to interact with a sensor bar (placed near a television) and ultimately to send information to the Wii console." And on technology difference between the nunchuck attachment as opposed to the Wiimote: "It's pretty simple, really. The nunchuck features motion sensory capability, but it lacks the Wii-mote's added pointer precision."- IGN

UPDATE 2: Nintendo's official Wii site has opened with more info on the controller. They confirm the use of accelerometers in the Nunchuck: "The Nunchuk controller and the accelerometer contained within it are the next leap in gaming." That being said, they also state that: "Both the Wii Remote and Nunchuk controllers include a three-axis motion sensor." This would lead one to believe that both the Wiimote and the Nunchuck use the same sensors, confirmed as accelerometers.

They also have a visual breakdown of the different functions of the Wiimote controller, notice that the "Wave" and the "Point" are two separate functions. Also of interest is the use of the word "Wave" to describe the movement portion of the controller, the way the sword-swinging worked at E3 could best be described as reading fast waving movements rather than true freehand control.

(If you find anything in this article to be inaccurate, please email me and I will correct it.) Jeremy Kopchak

X-Arcade™ Gaming Gear