Interesting stuff...

[nigel_ht]

This is pretty cool...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

What does this have to do with WorldWind? Why nothing at all...not one single thing. Nada, nien, zilch.

[patmurris]

Coolissim indeed
I thought about doing something similar on an iPod Touch, using the accelerometer, to look at a 3D object from above or the sides depending how you incline the device. But that would certainly not beat the Johnny Lee demo with the Wii remote. Real fine work he did!

[James_In_Utah]

Originally Posted by nigel_ht

This is pretty cool...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

What does this have to do with WorldWind? Why nothing at all...not one single thing. Nada, nien, zilch.

Be sure and let us know when you get it working! I'd love to see air traffic realtime in 3D...

[nigel_ht]

Use * to turn on head tracking.

You should have the IR LEDs within view when you turn it on because I calibrate head position when you turn on headtracking.

Not all error checks are in place. You CAN end up under the earth or spun upside down or some other oddness in some cases.

YouTube Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI1sC_G412E

[patmurris]

Woa!!! Excelent work Nigel. Can you list the hardware you used to do that - like do you need a full Wii box or just the IR accessories?

BTW: i guess someone could achieve similar results with just a webcam and head tracking software on the video stream... certainly more complicated though.

[nigel_ht]

Originally Posted by patmurris

Woa!!! Excelent work Nigel. Can you list the hardware you used to do that - like do you need a full Wii box or just the IR accessories?

BTW: i guess someone could achieve similar results with just a webcam and head tracking software on the video stream... certainly more complicated though.

You just need the Wiimote and two IR LEDs. The easiest place to find two IR LEDs if you have a Wii is the sensor bar. Otherwise you can just wire up to IR LEDs to the safety glasses like in Johnny's video...

I borrowed my brother in law's Wii...purely for this project of course.

You can just use a web cam but then you need to do the following:

Remove the IR filter on the webcam
Add a visible light filter
Find blob tracking software you like.

For the $45 or so for a wii mote the hardware solution seems much nicer since you get up to 4 IR blobs tracked automagically for you by the wiimote. That's probably good enough for most gestures.

[James_In_Utah]

Way cool! So what is the interface for the Wii remote to the computer? USB? Very nice! I have to get some of that!
James

[nigel_ht]

Originally Posted by James_In_Utah

Way cool! So what is the interface for the Wii remote to the computer? USB? Very nice! I have to get some of that!
James

Bluetooth. Which is great if you have one since no wires.

I have the wiimote, vista and everything ready to try it. Could you please tell us how did you integrate Johnny Lee's DesktopVR with World Wind?

[nigel_ht]

You need to install the following:

DirectX SDK
Visual Studio Express C#
WorldWind 1.4

Then download the source code for WorldWind from our source code repository at http://sourceforge.net/projects/nasa-exp/

Instructions are here: http://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=69528

You want the SVN repository, not the CVS one.

Open the solution and run it. It should be enabled on startup and you should be able to just hit "*" to enable head tracking.

If it isn't automatically loaded, you need to load the WiiMote plug-in by hand (there's a pull down in the top menu). It's called...uh...heh...WiimoteHeadTracking I think. Not near my dev machine at the moment but its the only plug-in with wiimote in the name.

The source code is in there for the head tracking. I don't have an airplane demo at the moment but I'll add that for the next version. There may be bugs...I did just throw it together in a couple days.

What I did was change the WW camera code to allow for negative tilt and for swivel. Then added head tilt and swivel to the base tilt and swivel values. Zoom is somewhat implemented but should change based on altitiude rather than a fixed zoom value which is too small to notice.

I develop on XP so I dunno if there are any Vista build issues with World Wind.

Follow Johnny's direction to get bluetooth and the wii working together. If you can run his demo's you can run this. I actually use a later version of the wiimotelib than he does so bluetooth compatibility is better.