Wiimote used in Buckyball Bowling, other educational simulations

Seriously, is there anything the Wiimote can't do? Just when you thought the world had exhausted all possibilities for Nintendo's oh-so-versatile controller, along comes the crew at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to prove otherwise. Programmed to operate with BigBen -- PSC's 4,000 processor, 21-teraflop Cray XT3 supercomputing system -- the Wiimote was seen controlling a round of Buckyball Bowling, which just might be the nerdiest (that's a compliment, ya know) title for a game to date. Additionally, it was suggested that the WiiMD technology could eventually "offer scientists an easily usable tool to gain insight into simulations," and moreover, provide "an entertaining educational outreach tool to help interest students in biology, chemistry and physics." Man, lecturing is so last year.

[Via EarthTimes]

[mushrooshi @ Dec 5th 2007 8:35AM]

They should have used Carbon Nanotubes for the pins!

[Rich White @ Dec 5th 2007 9:00AM]

LOL - no way .. this is way cooler - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVFsxev-2sk


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[MARSHAK @ Dec 5th 2007 12:20PM]

stuff like that kinda scares and amuses me. i can use windows and ubuntu far better than any of my relatives (never had mac exposure, nothing against it) but what about my kids? are they going to be able to use these interfaces far better than I can? probably. at 20 years old i seem to be 'set in my ways' with XP. kinda interesting....

[superfresh @ Dec 5th 2007 9:11AM]

So what? Maybe you haven't heard, but PlayStation 3 controllers can both make a dragon fly, PLUS...wait for it...vibrate.

[Dave @ Dec 5th 2007 1:49PM]

http://kotaku.com/gaming/notag/ps3-pushes-foldinghome-to-world-record-317151.php

[superfresh @ Dec 6th 2007 12:09AM]

...from that site...

"I end up letting my PS3 fold for days at a time...it may as well be doing something."

[Jonathan Bergeron @ Dec 5th 2007 9:24AM]

I'll bet the Wiimote can't make me breakfast or drive me to work.

[Chad @ Dec 5th 2007 10:06AM]

You can also use the wiimote with flash games.

[unreal mccoy @ Dec 5th 2007 11:05AM]

That girl is SO SAD....

[allaina @ Dec 5th 2007 11:26AM]

you know, all the other uses for the wiimote might be more impressive than the wii itself. and i'm saying that as a faithful nintendo fan, and the proud owner of a wii.


i'm always happy to see people applying technology to useful areas. even if nintendo isn't the one making the wiimote accessible as a lecture and simulation tool in the educational sense, i think every new story i read about other people doing just that really makes me happy that nintendo decided to innovate on the controller and game design.

it's funny how video game design and innovation has done so much for other realms of science. or, maybe not 'done so much' just yet, but, from the looks of things, it will.

[lassi @ Dec 5th 2007 11:32AM]

wii is a console ENTIRELY done around the controller.

they COULD have released the controller as an add on for gamecube, but would have had hard time selling so old console probably(wii games don't look that much better than gamecube games, most of the time they look like gamecube games....).


however, it's not the first controller with motion sensors.. it's just the first hyped and popular.

[allaina @ Dec 5th 2007 11:37AM]

i'm well aware that it's not the first controller with motion sensors, and i'm pretty sure i didn't say anything about it being such.


so, before you drop knowledge on me, please read my comment and understand that the gist of it isn't drooling awe over how 'revolutionary' the wii is. because you know what? it's not. it's a great innovation, and it's been needed for a long time. but it was just a blending of a lot of old ideas put together in the right place, at the right time, and by the right people.


i merely said that i was happily impressed by how many other people have used it in so many great ways, and how impressive it was to know that it's helping in areas like science and education.


thanks for the irrelevant information, though. it was... nice of you?

[TrueDis @ Dec 5th 2007 12:31PM]

This is awesome. Holy shit do I love Buckyballs.

[Kassnadra @ Dec 5th 2007 2:04PM]

I'm confused as to why a supercomputer is needed for a bowling game that looks like it could run on a pre-atari system.

[rapier @ Dec 5th 2007 7:11PM]

This isn't a simulation of large objects using some sort of primitive physics model but looking at atomic level interactions between molecules. The nature of the simulation actually requires some pretty hardcore math and a lot of computational resources.

If you follow tke link you'll find a bit more detail and "The resulting technology, called WiiMD, merges the WiiMote with MD, a powerful computational method to track forces among atoms in molecules as they move." and "Other WiiMD demonstrations involved using the WiiMote to unfold a small protein and to move a small sugar molecule through a protein channel."

Disclosure: I work at this place though not on this project.

[Vexorg @ Dec 5th 2007 3:08PM]

But everyone knows that the supercomputer they're using on the back end is really just two mainframes duct-taped together.

[Jordan Soyke @ Dec 5th 2007 7:36PM]

Actually its running on a Cray XT3. Unlike a video-game, this uses accurate physics. We can get the bucky-ball simulation to run on an 8 core Xeon Workstation with 4GB of ram if we want to tho.