Friday, February 22, 2008

Head Tracking Actually Coming to Wii!


Remember when we brought you the video of tech genius Johnny Lee turning a Wiimote into a head tracking system to awesome effect? If not, hit the jump for that video and then get excited, because unlike the trillion other homebrew gaming innovations that never make it into an actual product, Joystiq says head tracking IS COMING. The only bad news is that it's coming in the form of Steven Spielberg's action puzzler Boom Blox, where I can't imagine it will be useful for anything more than a cool parlor trick. But hey, a published game is a published game, Spielberg is Spielberg, and soon some smart company will realize the tech is viable and it would make any first person shooter a must buy. Oh yes. We're almost there.

Hit the jump for that video and thoughts on the announcement from head tracking pioneer Johnny Lee...

On his blog, Johnny Lee had this to say about the announcement:
Reward the developers who decided this was worth including and send a signal to EA and the greater game development community that this is a desired step forward in the evolution of game play technology.

I'm proud. If this pans out, it'll be only 5 months between the initial research prototype to integration into a major product release. Sweet!

Just in case you are wondering: No, I don't get any royalties or benefits for the use of this technique in games. Personally, I'm much happier impacting the state of technology on such a large scale in such a short period of time rather than struggling to transform it into personal financial gain. In terms of my original intent behind creating the head-tracking demo, it has already been a wild success beyond my highest expectations.

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