Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Wii-mote Mino-wity Wii-port

I saw a link to the webpage of this guy, Johnny Chung Lee, while reading my tri-weekly dose of profane humor at penny-arcade.com. In it, he describes how he's used the Nintendo Wii's controller to create different input devices, for instance, tracking the fingertips a la Minority Report, albeit in 2-D. It's pretty rudimentary, and actually somewhat elementary once you understand the basics of what he's working with, but considering the ease and and common availability of what he's talking about - he points out that there are more wiis out there than tablet PCs, making it one of the most common electronic input devices - it really makes me wonder why I'm still using a mouse and keyboard. Or at least a mouse.

He does note that he's planning on working on 3-D tracking using the "Wiimote" with the same principles ~ something that would mainly be constrained by the infrared camera's resolution, I assume. Anyway, it's fun watching his well-presented videos.

I'm embedding a youtube video where he uses the wii to track the head for a virtual-reality-type display.