El director de la compañía que ha creado estos accesorios respondió hace poco a las acusaciones de copiarse de Nintendo...
Está curioso, porque de paso describe cómo funciona el mando de Wii.
With Fusion, you’ve been accused on a number of forums of being ‘Nintendo copyists’ - what would you say to a gamer who accused you of this?
Harry Holmwood, Director de In2GamesR
“I can't say I'm surprised - Nintendo have a really loyal fanbase which is great - they're one of the best game developers in the world and deserve their reputation. My DS probably gets more use than any games console I've owned before - we're huge Nintendo fans.
“That said, we invented Gametrak six years ago - before Nintendo launched the Gamecube, let alone the Wii! Elliott and Steve were making tilt controllers back in the mid-90s, and looked at camera-type technologies before discounting them for the experiences we think gamers will really want in the long term. I'd never be so churlish as to suggest Nintendo copied us, but we were there first!
“The Wii remote is a neat idea... there's basically an infrared 'camera' in the handset which looks out for the infrared LEDs in the bar attached to your TV. When you're pointing at the screen, it's an elegant solution to giving the user an onscreen pointer, and can also determine the distance from the screen. Once you're not pointing at the screen, it obviously loses all that data. At that point, all it has is the 'accelerometer' which is a tilt sensor... accelerometers don't give you a 3D position, only information on the angle you're holding it at and, to a degree, acceleration. These are good for soft, slow controls (I remember playing WipeOut on PS1 with an 'Airpad' which was an early tilt pad, and it worked pretty well) but, as soon as you move them quickly, you lose the data as it all gets scrambled.
“We actually use a tilt chip in the Fusion to give us information about how you're holding the controller but it's the ultrasonics which is the really useful part: combining the two together gives something extremely powerful and intuitive.”
We heard (on the grapevine) that you’d received some veiled threats from Nintendo fanboys in particular. Is this for real?
Ha ha! Yes, one kind soul emailed us to say (and I quote) "I really hope your company burns to the ground and you are all homeless one day". The vast majority though have been from Sony and Microsoft 'supporters' delighted to be looking forward to a, to quote SPOnG, 'Wii Killer', for themselves. It's nice to know that 'platform passion' still lives on. I have fond memories of arguments along those lines when I was at school. By the way, the BBC Micro pissed all over the Spectrum.
Nintendo’s initial response (as well as those of its legions of fans) has been to dismiss Fusion as a serious contender. According to all of them Fusion, “...won’t have the software support that the Wii has.” Can you comment on this? Do you see Fusion as a potential ‘Wii-Killer’ in the long run or do you see it complementing Wii in some way?
“I think my last answer deals with that really. Software support from both ourselves and our partners will be fantastic. One aspect that is interesting to some publishers is the possibility of creating cross-platform games with motion sensing - so making a game compatible with Wii, but enhanced for systems supporting Fusion.
“Some have suggested that a cross-platform Wii/360/PS3 game is likely to be tricky because, in terms of graphical and processing power, the Wii is obviously not up there with the other 'next-gen' consoles - not that horsepower is the most important factor - the DS proves it's about imagination, not brute force.
“I can imagine, though, a situation where there are cross-platform PS2/Wii games. Obviously, there are 100 million PS2s out there, and I'm sure many of those owners would love to see some innovative games brought to their platform, without the need to go out and buy a whole new system. On the true next-gen consoles, Fusion will really shine. Personally, I want all the great graphics and polish of a next-gen game AND true 3D motion sensing, which we can deliver with Fusion on next-gen machines.”
Let's move onto talk about the Fusion technology - you say in your press announcement that 'It combines patent-pending ultrasonic and RF technologies with 3-axis accelerometers to track the precise absolute position and orientation in 3D space of almost any wireless accessory such as golf clubs, baseball bats, tennis racquets, and bowling balls'. Can you expand on this for us please? How would you describe the technology to a non-technical gamer, for example?
“Basically, the really clever bit is the ultrasonics. Anyone who's seen the original (wired) Gametrak will know that it can track a point in 3D space with great accuracy and speed, anywhere in a big area around the unit. That, for us, is the Holy Grail of motion sensing. Doing it without the wires is incredibly difficult - we have some of the cleverest hardware and software engineers in the world, and it took us more than two years to crack it. We could have settled for a 'second best' solution, but I'm incredibly chuffed that we stuck to our guns to be the only people to deliver true 3D wireless motion sensing.
“The way it works is simple in theory, but very difficult in practice. Basically, if you have a point in 3D space, and you know the distance from that point to three other known points, you can 'triangulate' (maths talk for 'work out') a 3D position – i.e. where the object actually is. We can work out the distance from the transmitter (what you hold in your hand) to each of four sensors (on the base unit) by measuring how long it takes to send a sound wave from the transmitter to each receiver.
“By working out the time taken, and multiplying it by the speed of sound, we get a distance. Three distance measurements gives us a triangle, and hence a 3D position. We use four sensors as it improves accuracy - it gives us four triangles rather than one to help determine our 3D position. Kind of like Minority Report, only with four little ultrasonic speaker things rather than three unconscious psychics! That's the theory.
“Actually, there are 26 claims in the Fusion patents - mainly they deal with all the stuff like interference, reflections off walls and furniture, dealing with any size room, even dealing with the fact that the speed of sound changes constantly with air temperature and pressure! All these things combine to make ultrasonic position sensing really hard to do - we almost gave up ourselves several times and had about five or six 'Eureka!' moments which allowed us to get there in the end. What we have now is a totally stable, fast, low-cost but highly accurate system which will work anywhere.”
El resto:
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