dark10x said:
As it stands, the Wii input system seems like an alternative to pressing a button rather than actually bringing your movements into a game world. It LOOKS innovative and fresh, but the reality seems rather different.
Even if the pointer ability is "only" used for gestures in a game, that doesn't mean that buttons might as well have been used.
1. Gestures are much more memorable than pressing some random button.
2. Gestures are equally "far away". Unlike a button, no gesture are harder to reach than others. They are all right there at your fingertips.
3. It's possible to pack many more gestures into the same space than buttons. Just with the four straight and the four diagonal line gestures you have eight very quickly accessible "buttons".
jgkspsx said:
The sensor bar *is* just like a mouse mat -- it don't detect (or "sense") nothing, it's just a set of infrared beacons for the wiimote's camera to sense. This is apparently used in conjunction with timing of the wireless connection to detect position in 3D space. This kind of detection is fairly fragile, though, so don't expect too much of it.
Why should it be more fragile than an optical mouse that looks at the shifting patterns of the mouse pad, a pattern that aren't always optimal for that purpose?
Looking at two razor sharp points of light, is much better than what a mouse has to deal with.