Wii hack maestro Johnny Lee at TED
Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 9:47am by JackTED was last month, but this video of Wii savant Johnny Lee went up last week/over the weekend. It’s cool stuff, but the really neat part is how inexpensive the setup is–especially compared to the thousands professionals spend on similar technology. Like Lee says in the video, you pay a mere fraction of the cost of a “real” rig and get 80% of the functionality. If that means a poor schmuck like me can play 3D head tracking games on the cheap, that’s fine by me.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Thats awesome. i really liked the safety glasses part.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:39 am
“you pay a mere fraction of the cost of a “real” rig and get 80% of the functionality.”
Im pretty sure he was referring to the touchscreen thing not headtracking (Which btw i wouldn’t classify as 80 percent but as 200 since it supports multi-touch which most touchscreen do NOT) Anyway im happy to see Lee getting a real audience, and real feedback other then that of random geeks giving 5 stars to his youtube vids.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I love how the dude wrote “Hell” on accident.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:25 am
This guy is awesome. Nintendo should engage him as a guest director for a game of the second demo he gave. That has got some really good potential and hopefully is part a of the next gen era (or even this gen)…
April 14th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Glitch, he was indeed referring to the touchscreen. I’m guessing part of that %20 left over is that you need to adjust your position so the “camera” can see the LED (instead of just writing as you’d normally do). Also, I don’t think “hell!” was an accident.
It was funny to see the cameraman get really excited with recording the virtual 3D display.
Glad to see his work’s getting even more attention and recognition, I agree it’d be awesome to see games that actually implement this. Sure you run into the trouble of needing at least 2 wiimotes (one for the display and another for playing) but most everyone has at least 2 remotes anyway and that would certainly make one peripheral (the LED glasses) that’d be worth the cost for those too lazy to make them.
Anyone care to guess which EA game will feature this easter egg?
April 14th, 2008 at 11:41 am
@Liraco
Boom Blox is my guess. Seems like a great fit.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Wow.. Just wow… That is pretty awesome. One thing though, is this really going to be possible, especially the 3d screen idea from the second half. moving a cursor with the wiimote is one thing but making the entire environment move? I doubt that’s possible with the horsepower within the wii. Then again, Nintendo say they don’t believe that the industry needs just more power to fuel HD graphics, they may think otherwise if they needed them to pull of things like this. If this were released majorly in a gaming system
April 14th, 2008 at 11:44 am
(oops pressed submit too soon..)
it would go down in history as the most innovative piece of technology, like, ever. It makes 3d gaming really possible (as far as the user could tell anyway)
April 14th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Move the environment like he did using glasses is computationally cheap. The problem is that only one player benefits from it. It is good for single player play, but not that good for offline multiplayer games.
Best!!
April 14th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
its good to see Lee, the inventor, getting recognition for his work rather than it being snapped up by some intimidating large-scale company
April 14th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
NINTENDO is getting MAJOR geek appeal…
I agree with everyone: Lee deserves the recognition…
His other… Hum… “Hack-inventions” are pretty cool as well…
April 14th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Nintendo should HIRE this guy, not just pay him to speak!!!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
It would be neat if he gets a special thanks in the credits of Boom Blox. I was hoping somebody on that dev team would recognize him for the inspiration, so this video was great to see.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Wow this guy should have patened this. If he did hed be rich when a new software company wants a highly inovative and cheap way to mass produce a touchscren or when next gen companies are thinking of new ways to make video games. Maybe even with the current generation of software and hardware if the EA easter egg works well then maybe Nintendo will make a peripharel like this.