Controlling movement with a Wii Balance Board

That makes a bit more sense of it.

The ordering of the ratios in particular looked a little strange.

(It's also unusual to have full pressure on some of the sensors and none whatsoever on the others.)

There are of course a lot of potential ratios you could take, so it's difficult to judge which are in use.
(Any two pairs of sensors can form an obvious ratio, but so can sets of 4 spit in pairs. - There are 6 ratios (and their inverses) for 2 pairs of sensors, plus at least 2 for sets of 4, and possibly even some methods to compare 1 sensor with the combined readings of 3 others.

Obviously, many of these combinations would be redundant though. - In terms of the final results of it all it's more or less equivalent to a 3 axis analog controller. - Forward and back, left and right, and the 'twist' are as much as you're really going to get out of it unambiguously, and a lot of things are merely different ways of representing the same thing.

Of course, since treating it this way you're dealing in ratios, there is actually still more than this you can sense. (Because as a ratio, 1 kg on the left of the board and 2 on the right is identical to 10 kg on the left and 20 on the right, or even 40 on the left and 80 on the right - As 'directions' these are all the same value. But you could still tell them apart as actual readings.)

Figuring out what to do with weight differences is a little more complicated though. I guess you could sort of detect if someone were to jump, and possibly even the effects of them ducking, or other such actions... But it would be pretty complicated to figure out how to do so reliably...

In hindsight the static screen values look confusing, I just wanted to show a movement result and was sitting at the time, but next one I will do standing.

If you are sitting, you could have triggers by pushing more weight while keeping the same ratio, however in my usage tests it would be uncomfortable to do so reliably.

I will definitely look into adding 'Jump' option for when you take your feet off :)

Lol. Just be careful with that 'jump' one...

It could potentially cause an accident or two... XD

Jumping on the wiiboard is really disorienting and generally a bad idea imo. You always land before your avatar and that loss of sync is very disorienting, not too mention you are jumping blind. Please be careful if you are going to try jumping on the wiiboard, doing that is just an accident waiting to happen.

My understanding of the commercial implementation of it (IE, Wii games) is that actually jumping on the board is something to be avoided.

There's plenty of weird things done with stepping onto or off of the board in various ways, and also there seem to be a few examples of... I don't know how to put it exactly...

It's not quite a jump, but you apply enough force to the board to affect the weight readings without actually physically losing contact with the board.

(I assume if you were to gently mimic the act of jumping, you'd probably initially register an increase in weight, followed by a decrease, before settling back to normal - Obviously there's a very high chance of balance changes too. The relative change presumably relates to the amount of force involved.)

I would imagine suddenly bending your knees would cause a spike in registered weight too. (Doing it on my bathroom scales just now saw an increase in the region of 5 kg or so...)

Good observations. I think that might be worth looking into, as long as we aren't actively encouraging people to jump on a raised board while they can not see their real surroundings I think it's worth exploring.

I think doing anything standing up while using the Rift is a risk, as something like the rollercoaster demo can throw off your sense of balance, or your mind might try stepping on virtual stairs that are not there. So if your going to stand up, you should have a support around you like in the Virtuix treadmill.

For the Wii board I am mainly interest in usage while sitting down, with the Hydra in your hands, and so jumping by lifting up your feet is more practical.

Wii Fit really discourages you from actually jumping. I was playing the skateboarding game, got a little excited, and I made a little hop instead of bobbling my knees like the instructions. The game gave me a really angry warning and made me start the game from the beginning again.

"DieKatzchen" wrote:
Wii Fit really discourages you from actually jumping. I was playing the skateboarding game, got a little excited, and I made a little hop instead of bobbling my knees like the instructions. The game gave me a really angry warning and made me start the game from the beginning again.

LOL! :lol:

Yes... Well, they also warn you not to stand on one wearing socks...

I don't know what the big deal is really... ;p

XD