Skip to main content
Up and Coming
April 4, 2013

Controlling movement with a Wii Balance Board

9 Months ago my wife and I implemented the Wii Balance board in UDK to explore it's use as an input for character movement. This is what we came up with:




This one shows the variable speed a bit better:




We stopped developing it when we reached this point because we didn't feel that further development without a HMD would be fruitful.

Sensitivity can be increased significantly but it makes it really hard to see how it's working, it also makes stopping a little bit harder.

Once we get our Rift we will get back to this, well after we port it to Unity.

**update May 2**

We've done a bit more work on this after getting our Rift and it's actually very compelling! once we get some Unity build issues sorted we will be posting a Wiiboard enabled version of the Tuscany scene for the community to try out.


    131 replies

    Participant
    June 2, 2013
    You are a scholar and a gentleman, sir. Any way I can "buy you coffe"?: http://ko-fi.com/
    Participant
    June 4, 2013
    Nice! I'll have to check it out this week. Thanks for all the constant updates on the program too. That's great to see. I've got a Video here playing Team Fortress 2 with the Balance Board. And I should have another in a few days with the Balance Board being used as a seat with my Desk Chair.


    Participant
    June 5, 2013
    Alright here is the video using the Balance Board as a Seat. It works well, however you need a wide enough seat to use it like this. My chair was barely wide enough. It suffered a bit because of it. I did end up trying it on a larger chair, and the results were better.


    June 6, 2013
    Interesting. Wonder how it'll perform with a cushion on top of the board?
    Participant
    June 8, 2013
    "whoisrich" wrote:
    Thanks Aaebel, I had not seen that, cool :D

    v0.2 is now ready to go with many improvements:

    - Bluetooth management with permanent sync!
    - Actions can be customized.
    - Jumping support!
    - Better compatibility with official Wii board.
    - Made it clearer when actions are not enabled.

    Download latest version from:
    http://www.greycube.com/site/download.php?view.68

    - If you use the jumping option while standing up and using the rift,
    please film and upload to YouTube when you fall over.

    - Now with the options, I recommend people try flipping strafe and turn,
    as I actually found it quite natural to navigate.


    Wii Balance Walker is awesome! If it was a Unity Plugin that worked like this on Windows PCs, I would totally buy it.
    Participant
    June 8, 2013
    "whoisrich" wrote:
    Version 0.4 now available:

    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.


    Many, many thanks for your continued work on this! Just picked up a used Balance Board at GameStop yesterday for a mere $20 just for this. Super affordable alternative to something like the Omni. Though the functionality is of course a bit different, I actually see this as being far more practical.

    Don't have my Rift just yet, so my usage is a tad limited - but watching this with interest!
    - Reviews / Photography / Arts / Articles - Fan Art & Winamp Skins
    Participant
    June 8, 2013
    One more post - first attempt at it with Tuscany + Hydra + Balance Board went fairly swimmingly. Combined with the Rift for looking around, I think this'll prove to be a lot of fun. Tried standing then sitting, and personally, I much prefer sitting so far. Left / right was much harder while sitting, but I'm OK with that. Even used as little more than foot pedals, the current going rate for a used Balance Board is still a decent value.

    Think I'll wear shoes next time though - with just socks, my feet are feeling a little 'warm' from the little ridges on the board.
    - Reviews / Photography / Arts / Articles - Fan Art & Winamp Skins
    Participant
    June 9, 2013
    So I got a chance to download the new version of the Balance Walker program. Very cool. I haven't really played around with the joystick option, but that seems like it could be great.

    I did download new Bluetooth Stack software - The Toshiba Bluetooth Stack - From here:
    http://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/15160/

    This has made it about a hundred times easier for me to connect the Balance Board to the Walker program. Using the default Windows Bluetooth stack apparently really sucks. I would have to go through quite a process in the past, everytime I wanted to use the program. Being able to disconnect and reconnect alot easier has made me a happy camper.
    Participant
    June 10, 2013
    "dangeROSS" wrote:

    I did download new Bluetooth Stack software - The Toshiba Bluetooth Stack - From here:
    http://www.techspot.com/drivers/driver/file/information/15160/


    Thanks for this tip. I wrestled with 2 different BT dongles and 4 different stacks. It was the Toshiba stack that finally worked for me.
    Participant
    June 11, 2013
    Nice, glad it worked for you. The default Microsoft Bluetooth Stack was such a pain compared to the Toshiba one I'm using now. I sort of figured that Microsoft's version would be just as good as anything else out there, which is totally not the case.

    I was playing around with the balance board and some space flight games last night, I think it works pretty well for them too. I may try to do another video at some point.