[Brandon F]

Not trying to incite a flamewar, a friend asked this over the weekend and I really didn't know. Barring Motion+, is the Sixaxis more capable of tracking accurate motion movements than the accelerometers in the Wiimote?

Probably not enough pure Sixaxis gaming to gauge(motorstorm vs. Mario Kart?), but someone might know the technical specifics. Again, just sort of a curiosity.

[Gbeav]

Seems slicker when done properly. Warhawk is smooth as butter when flying and Killzone 2 uses the small changes very well with sniping. The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

[schlew]

I seriously doubt it, but I don't want to take a stand on such a technical issue. I'm sure someone out there will invalidate everything I had to say.

I will make mention of how impressive Sixaxis can be, as it's used extensively in Linger in Shadows. I was very amazed in how well it detected movement. Not tipping the controller, but just moving the controller left to right and up and side. It was nuts.

[ShockingAlberto]

Seems slicker when done properly. Warhawk is smooth as butter when flying and Killzone 2 uses the small changes very well with sniping. The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

The sensor should have nothing to do with tilting, though.

[TheSonicRetard]

Seems slicker when done properly. Warhawk is smooth as butter when flying and Killzone 2 uses the small changes very well with sniping. The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

The sensor doesn't ever come into the equation when talking about games like ExciteTruck.

[Threi]

Sixaxis is about on par with the Nunchuk when it comes to motion-sensing capability.

Truthfully though it doesn't need more than that due to the form-factor of the controller.

However that form-factor needs to go.

So to answer the thread: No.

Seems slicker when done properly. Warhawk is smooth as butter when flying and Killzone 2 uses the small changes very well with sniping. The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

The distance from the sensor has no barring on the motion-sensing capabilities of the controller.


But that gives a nice window into the future of this thread, where people will be arguing (and agreeing to those people) based on false assumptions, just like a KB/M vs gamepad thread.

[Ysiadmihi]

The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

Uh, what?

[magash]

Seems slicker when done properly. Warhawk is smooth as butter when flying and Killzone 2 uses the small changes very well with sniping. The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

The hell?

[Jethro]

/insert Warhawk gif from sonys e3 conference 2006.

[Aru]

They seem equal.

[Y2Kev]

I'm willing to bet the technology is the same/similar in both parts and implementation...it's probably software calibration that anyone here would be commenting on.

[mm04]

I don't know, but I think making a dragon in flight do a U-turn would be the truest test.

[schlew]

Seems slicker when done properly. Warhawk is smooth as butter when flying and Killzone 2 uses the small changes very well with sniping. The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

But you can't compare the two when you're talking about using the senser bar (which would be the remotes pointer), as the Sixaxis and Wii remote should only be compared when it comes to using their accelerometers.

[Majora]

I reckon they're probably about equal in terms of accuracy. However the shape of the controllers means the wii remote is much more versatile and comfortable to hold imo. You couldn't do something like Kororinpa on the PS3 for example because you have to til the remote entirely on its side in some levels.

[Cataferal]

The wiimote just suffers because of the distance to the sensor.

I don't think you quite understand how the Wii-mote's motion control works...

[Gbeav]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit.

Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D

Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

[TheSonicRetard]

I don't think you quite understand how the Wii-mote works...

A lot of people don't. Despite the popularity of using 2 candles as your sensor bar, a large number of people still think the sensor bar is sending data to the wii.

[Majora]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

The sensor bar is purely for the pointer controls.

But the way you were talking in your first post was as if you had compared the two, whereas your second post implies you haven't.

[Wario64]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

What the hell, have you even played the Wii?

[SecretBonusPoint]

Flower felt like the first type motion control has been done right, to me.

[TheSonicRetard]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

The sensor bar is nothing more than 2 infrared LEDs which serve as a stationary point for the wii. The wiimote has a small camera built into the front of it which picks up infrared light, so when you point the wiimote at the sensor bar, it sees the 2 LEDs. using trigonometry (arc tangent, arc sin, arc cos) you can figure out the rotation of the wiimote from the position the 2 LEDs appear on the wiimotes camera. This is why you can have pinpoint precision when you twist the wiimote while it's looking at the screen, but when you turn it sideways (like in excite truck) the twisting seems sloppy and not as accurate - because it's using accelerometers to determine the angle of the rotation of the remote at that point.

EDIT: If you're really curious, I can go into more detail.

[Threi]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

The sensor bar is merely two sources of infrared light, which is picked up by the wiimote (which is an infrared camera) and uses the distance, rotation, and size of the two points to create a position on the screen for which you are pointing.

It is for the pointer only, not the motion sensing.

For anyone going to post in this thread:

POINTER IS NOT MOTION SENSING.

[ksamedi]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

people are fast.

[Gbeav]

What the hell, have you even played the Wii?

Yes, I owned one.

I found that the closer I was to the sensor bar the less the cursor shook when pointing and moving the wiimote. When I first set up my Wii I noticed that it was smoother right in front of the bar than sitting farther back on my couch. I play TW on a friends wii from very far back and the cursor flys all over when setting up a new game.

Am I wrong here?

[Vark]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

Edit: beaten to it.

[Y2Kev]

You're not talking about motion sensing. You're talking about IR tracking.

[GodofWine]

I think the sixaxis is more accurate...but the Wiimote is just a better design (obviously) for playing a lot of motion control games.

[Threi]

I thought the sensor bar needs to pick something up for it to work. I figured the farther away you are the greater the signal would move because of distance to the sensor bar. You know angular velocity shit. Guess I was wrong by how I am getting jumped on :D Okay giant brain people of Gaf, what does the sensor bar do?

The sensor bar is just infrared light sources. The Wiimote is an infrared camera. It has nothing to do with motion sensing.

Fun fact: you can achieve the same results with two candles.

[womfalcs3]

You're not talking about motion sensing. You're talking about IR tracking.

Which is a method to sense the motion of the controller.

[Vark]

Yes, I owned one. I found that the closer I was to the sensor bar the less the cursor shook when pointing and moving the wiimote. When I first set up my Wii I noticed that it was smoother right in front of the bar than sitting farther back on my couch. I play TW on a friends wii from very far back and the cursor flys all over when setting up a new game. Am I wrong here?

The farther you are away, the smaller the dots get to the camera. There's a sensitivity setting in the menu for jacking it back up. If there's a strong light source near the tv it can f' with the camera and make it jittery as well.

[TheSonicRetard]

Yes, I owned one. I found that the closer I was to the sensor bar the less the cursor shook when pointing and moving the wiimote. When I first set up my Wii I noticed that it was smoother right in front of the bar than sitting farther back on my couch. I play TW on a friends wii from very far back and the cursor flys all over when setting up a new game. Am I wrong here?

Well, in that sense you're right (IR light only travels so far) but this can be remedied by either getting a more powerful sensor bar or adjusting the sensitivity level of the wiimote camera.

However thats not motion controls. There is a whole OTHER set of mechanisms within the wiimote, called accelerometers, which measure movement. These measure distance RELATIVELY, while the camera measures distance ABSOLUTELY. The pointer isn't motion controls. I'll say it again - the pointer isn't motion controls.

We're talking about when the wiimote is turned sideways, like in mario kart, or excitetruck, or sonic and the secret rings. You notice how when you tilt the controller, your character moves? That has absolutely nothing to do with the sensor bar - your wiimote camera isn't even facing the screen.

We're comparing accelerometer control in the SIXAXIS vs the wiimote.

[AlphaTwo00]

Yes, I owned one. I found that the closer I was to the sensor bar the less the cursor shook when pointing and moving the wiimote. When I first set up my Wii I noticed that it was smoother right in front of the bar than sitting farther back on my couch. I play TW on a friends wii from very far back and the cursor flys all over when setting up a new game. Am I wrong here?

That's the pointer, which is IR. Tilt does not use that part at all, and is something that the Sixaxis doesn't have.

EDIT: What TheSonicRetard just said.

[pakkit]

The Wiimote is more accurate, but I think the Sixaxis plays more "smoothly." ExciteBot's motion sensing is phenomenal, as is BoomBlox and WiiSports.

[TheSonicRetard]

The farther you are away, the smaller the dots get to the camera. There's a sensitivity setting in the menu for jacking it back up. If there's a strong light source near the tv it can f' with the camera and make it jittery as well.

This isn't actually true. The dots don't get smaller, the light simply doesn't reach the camera. Distance is tracked by measuring how closely the two dots appear to the camera. The actual dots (which are, again, just 2 sets of 3 IR LEDS) never change size according to the wiimote.

[Threi]

Yes, I owned one. I found that the closer I was to the sensor bar the less the cursor shook when pointing and moving the wiimote. When I first set up my Wii I noticed that it was smoother right in front of the bar than sitting farther back on my couch. I play TW on a friends wii from very far back and the cursor flys all over when setting up a new game. Am I wrong here?

yes you are wrong there.


*edit*

oh dang i was beaten how did i let that slip

[Meier]

Sixaxis is an absolute nightmare to control. A nightmare. There is a reason it is never utilized now or there is the option to avoid it in every instance.

[RavenFox]

Not trying to incite a flamewar, a friend asked this over the weekend and I really didn't know. Barring Motion+, is the Sixaxis more capable of tracking accurate motion movements than the accelerometers in the Wiimote? Probably not enough pure Sixaxis gaming to gauge(motorstorm vs. Mario Kart?), but someone might know the technical specifics. Again, just sort of a curiosity.

Flower alone proves the sixaxis isn't a tacked on tech. Really it felt very well done. Organic if I may.

Sixaxis is an absolute nightmare to control. A nightmare. There is a reason it is never utilized now or there is the option to avoid it in every instance.

Ucharted gtfo gif

[Diablohead]

This isn't actually true. The dots don't get smaller, the light simply doesn't reach the camera. Distance is tracked by measuring how closely the two dots appear to the camera. The actual dots (which are, again, just 2 sets of 3 IR LEDS) never change size according to the wiimote.

It must have at least a little impact, for example:


2 foot away:

o..........o



8 foot away:

o....o

[TheSonicRetard]

Also, to throw my own two cents in here, both the wiimote and the SIXAXIS are just as accurate as one another. There's little to no difference in the technology. The main culprit here lies within the SDK distributed. Nintendo spent millions of dollars creating a robust, easy to use SDK designed to make it easy to interpret accelerometer control. Sony, by contrast, did not, and the main reason people say they feel different (despite having near-identical technology) comes down to the software involved.

Developers have admitted that they received updated motion-control SDKs as early as a week before the E3 when sony unveiled it. Thats why early games like Lair have particularly awful motion controls. Thats also why stuff like glovepie doesn't feel quite as accurate as the actual wii itself, despite using the exact same hardware.

[jman2050]

Which is a method to sense the motion of the controller.

You can maybe use it to infer motion programatically if you make certain assumptions, but the only actual information that is captured by the IR camera is its distance from the infrared sensors on the sensor bar.

[Meier]

Flower alone proves the sixaxis isn't a tacked on tech. Really it felt very well done. Organic if I may.

Flower was a pretty nice implementation of it, I'll give you that.

[Durante]

POINTER IS NOT MOTION SENSING.

Thank you. In terms of actual motion sensing, Wiimote, nunchuck and sixaxis are more or less equivalent.

[TheSonicRetard]

It must have at least a little impact, for example: 2 foot away: o..........o 8 foot away: o....o

Uh, thats what I said. The wii measures distance by tracking how close together the two dots are, not how big they are. Light doesn't work like that.

[Flunkie]

One word:

Flower

[Like the hat?]

even though i am a nintendo fanboy all the way, i still think that the sixaxis motion sensing seems much smoother, at least in my experiences.

[Rash]

The Sixaxis would probably match the Wii nunchuk's accelerometer, but that's about it.

And lol at those people who keep confusing IR with motion-sensing/tilt.

Interestingly enough, though people seem to associate "waggle" with the Wii, the controller's use of IR has actually been the best-used component so far.

[Hellsing321]

Which is a method to sense the motion of the controller.

There doesn't have to be any motion from the remote to move the pointer on screen. Set the remote down and move the sensor bar in front of it. The cursor will still move on screen.

[Diablohead]

Uh, thats what I said. The wii measures distance by tracking how close together the two dots are, not how big they are. Light doesn't work like that.

Forget it i'm too tired to bother.

[TheSonicRetard]

The Sixaxis would probably match the Wii nunchuk's accelerometer, but that's about it. And lol at those people who keep confusing IR with motion-sensing/tilt. Interestingly enough, though people seem to associate "waggle" with the Wii, the controller's use of IR has actually been the best-used component so far.

I agree. The wiimotes real strength is that it preforms like a 3D mouse, not that it measures gestures. However, the latter is far more marketable.

[jman2050]

It must have at least a little impact, for example: 2 foot away: o..........o 8 foot away: o....o

Objects appear closer to one another the farther away they are from a point of view. This is what we call "perspective"

It is also true that objects appear smaller, but (and this may be misinformation on my part, so sorry in advance) I don't think the IR camera could measure the "size" of an infrared light source, whatever that may be.