Fun and Tracking with The Nintendo Wii Remote
If you've been on the hunt for a Nintendo Wii system this holiday season, along with what seems to be the entire free world, but have given up your quest due to lack of availability, perhaps this will give you some additional motivation. Without any hands-on experience with the system, you may have more easily dismissed the Wii as just another game console with an innovative controller twist that has merely become a fad of sorts. Johnny Chung Lee, on the other hand, will show you just how innovative Wiimote technology really is and why millions have flocked to the hot new Nintendo game console. In reality, you'll see why the Wii console and more importantly, the Wii Remote, is actually a technological breakthrough.
"...Nintendo has sold over 13 million Wii game consoles. This significantly exceeds the number of Tablet PCs in use today according to even the most generous estimates of Tablet PC sales. This makes the Wii Remote one of the most common computer input devices in the world. It also happens to be one of the most sophisticated. It contains a 1024x768 infrared camera with built-in hardware blob tracking of up to 4 points at 100Hz. This significantly out performs any PC "webcam" available today. It also contains a +/-3g 8-bit 3-axis accelerometer also operating at 100Hz and an expansion port for even more capability."
"...Nintendo has sold over 13 million Wii game consoles. This significantly exceeds the number of Tablet PCs in use today according to even the most generous estimates of Tablet PC sales. This makes the Wii Remote one of the most common computer input devices in the world. It also happens to be one of the most sophisticated. It contains a 1024x768 infrared camera with built-in hardware blob tracking of up to 4 points at 100Hz. This significantly out performs any PC "webcam" available today. It also contains a +/-3g 8-bit 3-axis accelerometer also operating at 100Hz and an expansion port for even more capability."
"Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space..."
Now wouldn't it have been nice to see this all coming back in about July of '06 or even April of this year?
Buy on the rumor, sell on the news as they say. Oh well... no early retirements in our future here it seems.
