Virtual Wii-ality

The Nintendo Wii, although it dominated the console wars against the X-Box 360 and PlayStation 3, was still criticized by some people for its "inferior" hardware. Others commended the Wii developers for the innovative integration of motion tracking into gameplay, having gamers wave their arms to control what goes on. From what I've heard, rumours have flown around that the Wii's hardware is actually more powerful than they are letting on. I was a bit skeptical about that particular statement until I saw this:

A fellow by the name of Johnny Chung Lee has been experimenting with the Nintendo Wii's infared components. The way that the Wii's motion tracking technology works, put simply, is an infared camera reading signals of infared light. What Lee has done is use the Wii's infared sensor bar and the the Nintendo Wii-Mote the other way around to create the illusion of a 3-dimensional room.

Lee was able to do this by synching his Wii-Mote with his PC, which actually isn't too difficult. But I'd imagine that it also wouldn't be too difficult for Wii game developers to integrate this kind of head tracking technology into upcoming Wii games. I personally think that Nintendo is intentionally holding back, waiting for Microsoft and Sony to really get the upper hand in their sales...and then BAM! "We've got virtual reality games, beat that suckas!"

Of course that's just my conspiracy theorist opinion. Either way, this is some seriously cool stuff and if games like this actually start to pop up for the Wii sometime in the near future, I may have to break my resolution to stop buying new game consoles.

Anyway, Lee's got some other awesome projects using the Wii-Mote technology, you can check it all out at http://johnnylee.net.

I'm off to plunder craiglist and kijiji for hot deals on a Wii...wow if I had a nickel for every time I said that...

-Joe