When the Wii Came along in 2005 it was a huge leap forward in immersive gaming. It was such a leap that it was destroying the Xbox 360 & PS3 in sales. However it's not as big a leap forward as you may have thought, as most people who have used a Wii mote will have discover it's not as accurate as you would have liked, as it uses only a 3 axis sensing using an accelerometer and a gyro meter to measure motion and tilt, and likewise utilizes both infrared and Bluetooth technology to interact with a sensor bar to map its location in relation to the TV. This all together is an incredible piece of scientific equipment. But it has a large number of flaws. If your too close to the sensor bar the slightest left or right movement sends the crosshairs from one side of the screen to another with no accuracy. If your too far back or point the Wii mote too far to either side it loses track of its location. Now what would you say if I told you that a company had developed a more powerful motion control for gaming in 2001, but due to market research, the world was not deemed ready for such a leap. Instead the creators of this tool took it back to the drawing board and adapted for sporting uses and it became known as the iclub. The Company in question is MOTUS, and the iclub has become an industry standard in golfing instruction. It detects your motions in real time and relays that information back to the instructors who gets a display all your movements, weight dispersion, swing acceleration and deceleration, body rotation, swing angle, and more throughout each and every swing so they can quickly improve the users abilities much faster than just by simple watching. After the release of the Wii, MOTUS re examined the original ideas and combined them with lessons learnt from the iclub to create the new Darwin Control.
Unlike the Wii mote the Darwin is a multi platform controller and due for release for PC and other consoles in 2009 (date currently to be confirmed) as it has only just been passed on to games developers, that has a 6 axis sensor using the in house 6 (D)egrees (O)f (F)reedom technology that are the motions that represent real world movement broken into rotations and translations, 3DOF represent being able to rotate the controller and have it know what angle it's at, working with the other 3DOF the transitions which will detect its movement gives it true motion mapping in virtual space. Think of it as a GPS system that knows exactly where it is and what position it's in. Another huge advantage over all other motion control devises is that it is completely self contained and does not need external sensors like the Wii mote. The Darwin has a unique gaming feature straight out of the box as well, its best described as two Darwin's in one, it comes in 2 halves that can be used as a combined single unit (2 handed), a multi hand unit (one in each hand) or a basic 2 player unit 1 half for each player, that doesn't mean 2 player control 1 character it has a mode changer to allow for full 2player 2 character action.
The Darwin will revolutionise the idea of immersive gaming across the entire industry not just a single console. This combined with future potential of the product with revolutions many more industries as adaptations are made, already in the works is a medical training aid so that medical student can practice procedures in real space on a virtual patient with a Darwin controller and as a result improve their experience 10fold before they've ever cut some one up.
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