Wii Controller Love Thread

[Kotatsu Neko]

I love the power button. Really, switching off the console without moving an inch from your chair is absolute comfort, you can always eject the disk when you go to the bathroom or take something to drink. Or just leave it in the tray and turn the console on by pressing again the wonderful power button the day after.

I take it you don't have an Xbox 360....?

[Tig]

I think that distance from sensor bar is main problem with those who are complaining about lag and accuracy. But yeah, sensor bar doesn't receive signal well from over 4.5 metres distance, which can be rather problematic for some setups. Interestingly enough, I tried candle trick about week ago and it nearly *tripled* distance from which wiimote's pointer still worked precisely. Maybe you could do your own sensor bar with better leds?

I read somewhere that there are already third-party sensor bars in the works, which will feature much stronger IR lights than the ones in Nintendo's own solution. I've seen mention of a wireless alternative as well.

To be honest I would be very surprised indeed if a 3rd party sensor bar doesn't appear in shops soon, considering how ridculously simple it is to replicate the technology. And this thread shows that the demand for a better sensor bar is pretty widespread.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Is there a lot of lag when using the pointer for games or the home menu? I don't have a Wii but I played Red Steel for the first time recently and there was tremendous lag while pointing that it didn't even feel like I was pointing with the cursor at all, it felt more like I was guiding it.

Red Steel is particularly laggy, but I suspect that's mostly down to the low frame rate the game tends to run at. It's much snappier in the Wii dashboard and in Trauma Center, but the dash suffers from terrible jitter and general scruffiness. Trauma Center has the smoothest motion by far that I've seen.

[retrend]

If the problems with range are simply down to the strength of the LEDs in the sensor bar, then Nintendo fail quite a lot.