Nintendo: Natal and PS3 Wand are Technology not Fun

Actually, and this will sound very silly, you're actually reinforcing my point, sure you cant argue physics, but can argue how they are used in your reasoning. How do you measure A in physics? By doing F/M (F=AM so offcourse F/M= A). The wiimote can not know A if does not sense any form of F. There is no other feasible way, The Wiimote does indeed not know where it is in a 3D space sans the sensor bar, but that thing doesn't come into play when playing Wiitennis and stuff. I think the Wiimote sees M as its own weight and keeps it constant. Since the device doing the motionsensing is the device you're also moving, other variables do indeed cancel each other out because the Wiimote becomes it's own self-contained physics object. This doesn't apply to camera's because they track the objects that you move, they're not the object in question.

I say this because of if you click further on the wiki page to actual page of the acceloremeter, they mention that the Wiimote can sense up to 3g. now g's is another way of saying that a force is working on an object relative to the object's weight. And then i remembered, the accelerometer consist of microscopic "hairs" inside sensortubes (I think, this was posted somewhere, shallow google search hasn't come up with anything yet). So if you swing the Wii-mote, the counter-force (another Newton law, every force creates at the same time a equal counter-force) that works on the Wiimote makes these hairs move and such the Wiimote knows the force, the direction and the acceleration. But it also means the Wiimote has an maximum limit to the amount of force it can detect. Possibly also, the Wiimote could not work in low and zoro-gravity environments.

Now before anyone asks. Camera's track motion. They track acceleration and speed by using 3D coördinates. These coördinates tells them the distance and they also know the time travelled, the rest is simpel math (distance/time= speed, speed/time= acceleration). So yes it does know A, but it has no way to know what M or F is, both not being constant in the context of using the camera.
If the PS3 wands indeed have accelerometers built in, the PS3 wands are actually superior to the Wiimotion Plus and sensor bar combo. If not, then the PS3 wands are still better (a bit) at 3D-movement tracking ( i like that block building demo they showed at Sony, it woke up my duplo building days as a child ^^)but somewhat less (also a bit) accurate in motion-sensing.
I think Nintendo probably wanted to combine both but chose the most efficient and price-quality solution at the time. Sony however can profit from three years of extra development (and price-lowering) in technology.

And Natal...does anyone actually know how Natal works...like really?

Man i feel like back in physics class in high-school...

Quite a few ways, not least is displacement over time over time. This has the advantage of being an observation of the moving object and hence not worrying about air resistance or force at all. That's how a purely camera-based system like Natal or PS-Eye would work.


That's very true, but the way the sensor works and the way the Wii Remote gets that information is quite different. The sensor works on the momentum of a known weight affecting the capacitance between the weight and the outside of the tube.

In actual fact, the sensor just picks up changes in the value of an electrical quantity, not force, not acceleration or any other "physical" quantity. The controller on the sensor converts that to an acceleration value and feeds that out to the Wii Remote.


Actually, g is the symbol for the value of the physical constant of acceleration due to the Earth's gravity, usually expressed as 9.8m/s/s (or 32.2 ft/s/s). It's not the force of gravity, that would be measured in Newtons, not m/s/s.


Yeah, it's an advanced version of the Eye-Toy/PS-Eye approach that also uses a depth sensor apparently based on "an infrared projector combined with a monochrome CMOS sensor" which enables accurate 3D tracking. Then the "custom processor running proprietary software" works out position, speed and acceleration, etc.


Me too! :-)

Man, these controllers are sophisticated these days! The question remains though, it seems the Wiimote still can sense certain differences in force applied to it (so many demo's seems to confirm this, WiiTap shows this off at an even very low-force level) up to a certain maximum. What i can gather what you are saying. These sensor hairs inside the Wiimote have a certain resistance, depending on the momentum going on , these hairs touch more of the tube and such send more electrical signals making the Wiimote "sense" higher accerelation levels. So it doesn't really know what force is being exerted on it, but knows differences trough differences in momentum. So it actually uses (but doesn't really sense it) counter-force and newton's law of slowness (i don't know what the proper english saying for it is, but it's the principle that has kept the earth plunging into the sun for these billions of years, or why you're body moves left while you are turning right with your car). It's fantastic!


I think the guys on the site meant G-forces (the ones you get from breaking really hard), not actually g (as it indeed, it refers to gravity, stupid me)


Gaming forums would be a lot nicer if everyone did it this way ^^

@sahave Wii Internet and I can watch anything on my wii. I just need to find it on the web.

Even so some aspects of Natal have yet to be fully witnessed by a non Microsoft representative. We have yet to see scanning done in real time. It is possible what we have seen at E3 was real though; because the eye toy already incorporated a gameplay similar to the demo seen with the balls. But I began doing some research on the subject. On the Milo video, what could have easily been scripted; we have yet to see this in real time. If this was so called operational why not show it in real time. I even tried this with Dora the Explorer. I watched a small clip, then began rehearsing movements and and a script. I even tricked my cousin into doing this with the wii and youtube. I simply maximized the screen to fit the length of youtube screen with in my tv screen. I played wii i learned the video with wii fit with the soccer game and pretended to move around and smack the ball with my hand. I fooled my cousin into thinking wii's could track bodily movements; of course he hadn't played a wii before. I even made him think you could use voice control to select and use head nods. The trailer they showed could have been easily scripted. Some aspects are not that far fetched. When the boy scanned the board notice that his fingers cover some of the upper left corner, although when the board appears on the screen there are no cut outs. The karate game when the kid finishes his body doesn't fully pivot but the karate man does. This same anomaly happens again when the mother and daughter play soccer when the daughter scores the mom imedietly places her hands on her head but the player in the game doesn't and when the daughter celebrates it doesn't show you how the in game character reacts to her sudden movements and her around the room victory dance. In the skate board game the in game skateboarder rides along side a small hill involuntarily, which makes you wonder how much control you truly have. When the girl checks out her dress her hand is placed on her hip, but in real life both hands stay at about a 10-30 degree angle. Did anyone else notice that when that kudo guy was moving it looked like all his bones broke? Now you are asking me why would X Box do this, but it's simply. The wanted to divert attention and try to gain all this yay factor. It could be just a simple market ploy that will fall harder than a brick. With everyone copying nintendo I even heard of Nintendo using body movements to incorporate games. Like using a head nod to select commands which i talked about earlier. I hoped you enjoyed my hatred towards PS3 and 360.(Just for biting idead like a bad sitcom episode).

Try using the trick I did on unsaspecting people. It works!

I think in these cases, the Wii is just picking up small but sudden changes in the value from one of the accelerometers. Obviously, the smaller the force applied, the smaller the resultant acceleration, but even if the controller is resting on your knee, you'll get some "bounce" that will affect the sensor.

I think even Natal could sense this sort of thing, but you'd have to exaggerate the movement a bit. Look at the video where they family is playing a quiz game. Obviously the video is faked or an advertising "ideal" situation, but the principle is there. The amount of movement you'd require depends on the resolution of Natal's sensors.


I think you're getting at Conservation of Momentum. And don't worry about your English, if it's not your first language you're expressing yourself very well. Certainly better than I can in another language.

Conservation of momentum is what keeps the accelerometer's weight going in the same direction for a while after the body of the sensor has started moving in another direction. That affects the capacitance in the sensor and enables it to detect the motion.


G-forces are still accelerations ("The g-force of an object is its acceleration relative to free-fall"). You're experiencing the acceleration in a new direction due to Conservation of momentum keeping your body moving in the "old" direction. G=force is measured in g.


Wouldn't they just? It's always nice to have a conversation like this rather than a screaming argument, which many people seem to devolve to quite quickly. :-)