Controlling movement with a Wii Balance Board

New video showing the Wii Balance Board being used while sitting down:




Infinimitsu, I posted a link to some of the videos on Reddit. I'm still not 100% sure how the whole site there works, but hopefully I did it all correctly. You probably have a better idea how to use the site then I do, so feel free to make a proper thread on there.

WhoisRich I credited you as GreyCubeTube on Reddit before I saw your posting about preferring to have your other sites listed instead. I'm sorry about that. I don't see a way for me to change my original posting on there now. I hope that's alright man.

Thanks for the info about disconnecting the Balance Board. Yea, it seems like the battery life lasts a long time when not in use. I had it paired up and sitting unused for a while. When I came back to it, the board was still good to go with no issues.

Good video, I like the idea of using the board just for actions like sprint and crouch, will be trying that out on some of my regular games :)

This+Hydra+Rift seems to be the most complete consumer-friendly package I've seen so far if, say, Oculus developed their own versions of these input devices or at least partnered up with those companies for a packaged deal.

Speaking as a consumer with not much money, I could see buying the Rift, something like the Hydra, and this balance board to get a very compelling immersive experience without breaking the bank or making me and my living room look like something out of a cheesy 90s sci-fi movie. The setup would be pretty all-purpose and this board might help alleviate motion sickness issues when combined with positional tracking. I also like that it can be used sitting or standing, as depending on how long my day was, I might want to do one instead of the other.

I'm not going to buy a hefty machine that has to be put together and take up half of my room. I'm not going to want to jog in place while a camera measures my knees every time I want to move either. This board seems to strike a good balance!

"whoisrich" wrote:
I recently got my Rift and have been trying out games using the balance board. Using it while standing is difficult as the lack of position tracking means that when you lean forward, your view does not also lean, which creates an effect that I can only describe as running while very drunk.

Have you seen the Rift + Head mounted Hydra to add positional head tracking?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj6ERrbovBw

Related reddit post: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1bq19b/another_positional_tracking_demo_with_razer_hydra/

Also, I just made a post on Reddit to hopefully drum up interest and further discussion on this topic. Check it out here: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1ezv9j/virtuix_omni_vs_wii_balance_board/

would it be possible to jump by lifting your feet off the board?

It really is kind of crazy to think that we can play around with this kind of tech. I don't think I would want to buy a walking machine to use with my gaming. I'm guessing it would take up alot of space, and it would most likely cost enough to put me off to the idea. But who knows, it might be pretty cool and worthwhile at some point. But for now, I really do think that having a Balance Board like device might be the best way to get added immersion for VR type gaming. Cheap, small, and versatile.

Also, someone was talking about sitting on the balance board on your seat, and I hadn't thought of that. I should try it out.

I haven't had much chance to mess with this too much, but one thing I was wishing the app had was the ability to save game profiles so that you didn't have to change the settings each time you play a different game. Also, would it be possible to add the ability to map board controls to gamepad joystick commands, which are usually between -1 and 1 for x and y? It would be possible to output the weight sensor data to an x and y value by adding the front two pads then subtracting the back two pads then dividing that value by half of the total value of all pads, eg:

joy1 y = ((FL + FR) - (BL + BR)) / ((FL + FR + BL + BR) / 2)
joy1 x = ((FR + BR) - (FL + BL)) / ((FL + FR + BL + BR) / 2)

This could be used for the left joystick of a normal gamepad for forward, back, left strafe, right strafe.

For turning you could map the x axis of the right analog stick to the Wii Board diagonals using the following:

joy2 x = ((FL + BR) - (FR + BL)) / ((FL + FR + BL + BR) / 2)

You would be mapping the x and y functions for the left stick as well as the x function of the right stick for any dual analog stick controller which gives you all of the necessary in game movements.

What do you think?

As a dirty work around for the lack of game profiles, the settings file is based on the file name, so copy and have like a WiiBalanceWalker_HL2.exe and WiiBalanceWalker_TF2.exe for different settings.

Joystick emulation I can add in, already have code from another project, the only issue is that joystick support on most games is terrible unless it's an official xbox controller.

Thank you for the tip on the settings workaround. I'll definitely use it if I have a game that needs major tweaking of the default values.

As far as the joystick emulation, would anything from this project help?:

http://code.google.com/p/x360ce/

Version 0.4 now available:



Download the latest version

- Fixed 'Do Nothing' actually doing mouse movements, oops!
- Added option to have your balance act as a virtual Joystick.

For games like HL2 running the default Joystick.cfg should work, for other games that only support the XBox 360 controller, you will need to setup the x360ce program to relay the virtual joystick axis.