Jeff Mission writes to say he’s been working on a new project that couples the Wii remote with generative visuals — all built in free software. Like it, but think it could go further? It’s free, so have a go (soon, at least). Jeff writes:
Chris Korda, developer of the open-source VJ softwares Whorld and FFRend, and I have been working on a project to control real-time, generative geometric visuals with the ever-popular Nintendo Wiimote. We dubbed the project WiiWhorld.
I am pleased to announce that the first proper WiiWhorld demo video is now available online:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bw1bHVPHk_g
Swirly colors, techno, dancing, and lots of smiling faces! Anyway, I think it does a decent job of capturing people having fun playing with our little digital toy.
The video was cobbled together from about 90 minutes of party footage shot a couple months ago. We set up our rig and invited people to play around, with a minimum of instruction. It was great fun to watch people play around, figure it out, and then teach new techniques to one another.
As for the project itself, it requires a Wiimote and a bluetooth-enabled computer. All the software involved (GlovePIE, Whorld, and FFRend) is 100% free, making this (we hope) a project that others can adopt and expand in the future, at minimal cost. We hope to publish more detailed information soon, so that others can try WiiWhorld for themselves.
Please give it a look, leave comments and ratings, and pass it on!
The project is apparently brand new — and Jeff says more web content and videos and documentation and such are all coming soon.
And yes, GlovePIE, Whorld, and FFRend are all free and open-source Windows apps. (And you thought Linux had all the fun.) beatfix (aka Jeff) suggested them and got our Windows free apps round-up going:
VisualJockey Goes Freeware; Free Windows and Cross-Platform VJ – Visualist Round-Up
Anyone who wants to get us rolling on a similar Mac or Linux list, drop us a line.