playing with your Wiimote MotionPlus like a light gun

[terminento]

Guess waht I got for my brithday! A friend bought me a Mayflash Dolphinbar! (Thanks, Jel! <3)
I tried it for a bit, and it was pretty much plug and play. Set it to mode 2 (but I ended up not plugging the nunchuck after all), and all games worked like a charm: Star Wars Trilogy was pretty fun (and you can use de D-pad on the wiimote for the duels!), so was The Ocean Hunter, and The Lost World became a much more engaging experience than just playing it with a mouse.
I then tried it with Model 2 emu 1.1 and my personal favourite: Virtua Cop 2, and it was working great as well! Also tried it with the House of the Dead, so satisfying, man...
It also worked perfectly in MAME with games such as Area 51 or Lethal Enforcers. For Jurassic Park and Alien 3 The Gun I had to tinker with the settings a bit (those games used analog guns)

I didn't run into any issues with the thing itself, it already came with the newest firmware in it, left click was mapped to the trigger and right click to A button (at least in mode 2), so I had no issues playing Virtua Cop. (But keep in mind that I didn't remap anything, so even for model 3 I was putting credits and pressing player 1 start with my wireless keyboard on my lap. Shouldn't be an issue to map those to buttons 1 & 2, though.

While on windows, the cursor gets a little jittery (so you still need the mouse to navigate), but not that much: I expected it to be more jumpy, like the cursor on the original wii menu with the last update, which removed cursor smoothing, but the dolphinbar was pretty stable overall and the jitter was not noticeable at all while playing, you'll never have a sense of lack of precission, and I was turning zombie heads into pulp effortlessly in HOTD.

The bar itself makes it feels like turning all the lightgun, mouse based games in your PC into wii, HD versions of the titles (and makes me wonder why didn't Sega go big time and release them all lightgun games on the wii. I can understand in the case of license based games, but a physical release of Virtua Cop 1 & 2, The Ocean Hunter, and the very first House of the Dead would have been great to have, as they are a blast to play with a wiimote.

I haven't tried Rambo: The Videogame with it yet (I'd have to re-install it, might do later), so I don't know if it'll work with it (though I'm guessing it will, as it is a pointer based game. BTW, such a pity that everybody hates the game, I think it's a veeery funny lightgun game! I had a blast with it!).

The bar doesn't work with fps games (I didn't even try, but those games use a relative coordinates system rather than an absolute one, otherwise how are you going to take a 360 degree turn?. Also, I know from a dolphin blog article that in those games the camera kinda enters "party hard" mode).

I also haven't tried it with the PC versions of THOTD 2, 3 or Overkill. I have 2 and 3 for the wii, so while the PC version of 3 gets better framerate and resolution, I'd still have to install it and feels like a hassle compared to just popping the disk in the console, and the PC version of THOTD2 has more Z-fighting issues than the wii one with no gain in resolution. Overkill (the typing of the dead overkill has the light gun game in it from the get go as a bonus), while being like the ps3 version with the better graphics, well, I think people were too mesmerized by the extended use of the word "fuck" to realize it's not an actually fun or engaging game: I think the enemies lack variety, and they all line up in the center of the screen more often than not, so it gets boring pretty quickly, both in Wii and PC, so I don't think I'll be re-installing it anytime soon, but I might, later on, to check if it works.

I haven't tried it with other emulators just yet, but might try the point-blank series in a psx emu, and I have already used a mouse to play lightgun games in pcsx2 in the past, so it should work just fine (although my PC is too slow and I remember Vampire Night ran like molasses in it).

I tried it for it's original intent with Dolphin 3.5 (sorry, can't run the latest versions, both because of using an x86 OS and because I'm pretty positive it would run slow as hell), with New Super Mario Bros Wii (SM Galaxy runs too slow in my PC), and once set to mode 4, the emulator recognized it no problem: even the tilting worked great, it was like playing on an actual wii. But I don't think I'll be using it much for that purpose, rather than light gun games.

Overall, a funny piece of hardware, and very recommended if you like playing the Lost World a lot.

[Conversus W. Vans]

Guess waht I got for my brithday! A friend bought me a Mayflash Dolphinbar! (Thanks, Jel! <3)
I tried it for a bit, and it was pretty much plug and play. Set it to mode 2 (but I ended up not plugging the nunchuck after all), and all games worked like a charm: Star Wars Trilogy was pretty fun (and you can use de D-pad on the wiimote for the duels!), so was The Ocean Hunter, and The Lost World became a much more engaging experience than just playing it with a mouse.
I then tried it with Model 2 emu 1.1 and my personal favourite: Virtua Cop 2, and it was working great as well! Also tried it with the House of the Dead, so satisfying, man...
It also worked perfectly in MAME with games such as Area 51 or Lethal Enforcers. For Jurassic Park and Alien 3 The Gun I had to tinker with the settings a bit (those games used analog guns)

I didn't run into any issues with the thing itself, it already came with the newest firmware in it, left click was mapped to the trigger and right click to A button (at least in mode 2), so I had no issues playing Virtua Cop. (But keep in mind that I didn't remap anything, so even for model 3 I was putting credits and pressing player 1 start with my wireless keyboard on my lap. Shouldn't be an issue to map those to buttons 1 & 2, though.

While on windows, the cursor gets a little jittery (so you still need the mouse to navigate), but not that much: I expected it to be more jumpy, like the cursor on the original wii menu with the last update, which removed cursor smoothing, but the dolphinbar was pretty stable overall and the jitter was not noticeable at all while playing, you'll never have a sense of lack of precission, and I was turning zombie heads into pulp effortlessly in HOTD.

The bar itself makes it feels like turning all the lightgun, mouse based games in your PC into wii, HD versions of the titles (and makes me wonder why didn't Sega go big time and release them all lightgun games on the wii. I can understand in the case of license based games, but a physical release of Virtua Cop 1 & 2, The Ocean Hunter, and the very first House of the Dead would have been great to have, as they are a blast to play with a wiimote.

I haven't tried Rambo: The Videogame with it yet (I'd have to re-install it, might do later), so I don't know if it'll work with it (though I'm guessing it will, as it is a pointer based game. BTW, such a pity that everybody hates the game, I think it's a veeery funny lightgun game! I had a blast with it!).

The bar doesn't work with fps games (I didn't even try, but those games use a relative coordinates system rather than an absolute one, otherwise how are you going to take a 360 degree turn?. Also, I know from a dolphin blog article that in those games the camera kinda enters "party hard" mode).

I also haven't tried it with the PC versions of THOTD 2, 3 or Overkill. I have 2 and 3 for the wii, so while the PC version of 3 gets better framerate and resolution, I'd still have to install it and feels like a hassle compared to just popping the disk in the console, and the PC version of THOTD2 has more Z-fighting issues than the wii one with no gain in resolution. Overkill (the typing of the dead overkill has the light gun game in it from the get go as a bonus), while being like the ps3 version with the better graphics, well, I think people were too mesmerized by the extended use of the word "fuck" to realize it's not an actually fun or engaging game: I think the enemies lack variety, and they all line up in the center of the screen more often than not, so it gets boring pretty quickly, both in Wii and PC, so I don't think I'll be re-installing it anytime soon, but I might, later on, to check if it works.

I haven't tried it with other emulators just yet, but might try the point-blank series in a psx emu, and I have already used a mouse to play lightgun games in pcsx2 in the past, so it should work just fine (although my PC is too slow and I remember Vampire Night ran like molasses in it).

I tried it for it's original intent with Dolphin 3.5 (sorry, can't run the latest versions, both because of using an x86 OS and because I'm pretty positive it would run slow as hell), with New Super Mario Bros Wii (SM Galaxy runs too slow in my PC), and once set to mode 4, the emulator recognized it no problem: even the tilting worked great, it was like playing on an actual wii. But I don't think I'll be using it much for that purpose, rather than light gun games.

Overall, a funny piece of hardware, and very recommended if you like playing the Lost World a lot.

Glad you like your sensor bar, dude! I myself am a big fan of light gun games, but House of the Dead 1 is probably my #1 favorite arcade game. I just love blasting the zombies in the head and going for the high score. Not to mention, the graphics are just outstanding for Model 2.

Speaking into light guns, I'm thinking into buying an Arcade Guns kit (a single black gun) if I can get money together. The build quality looks pretty nice (unlike the EMS Topgun III and such).

[terminento]

What I heard most people wanting to mount a cabinet are using right now the most are Aimtrak light guns, but those are pretty expensive.

[Conversus W. Vans]

Another thing: I actually went to a flea market today and found a Wiimote for pretty cheap (and a red/blue [possibly 3rd party] nunchuk). Additionally, I ordered the Mayflash Sensor Bar off Amazon for fairly cheap. My only concern is -- do you need to have Motion Plus on your Wiimote to get it to function as a mouse? Just concerned.

[terminento]

I actually am using a regular WiiMote controller with no motion-plus and it works perfectly.
I left it synced to the dolphinbar and left my two wiimotion ones for use on my actual wii (I have three wiimotes, but I never managed to gather two other people to play, so...)

I would be more concerned about your wiimote being third party. The bar might have trouble with it, but it's a hit or miss. I hope you are lucky and it works with no issues. If not, I'm afraid you'll need an original wiimote, but you might find some cheap second handed ones.

I wish you luck

[Conversus W. Vans]

I just got the Dolphinbar today (yay!), but I am having some trouble trying to position it correctly with my laptop. Sometimes the mouse cursor goes way off at 3:00, making headshots in House of the Dead difficult. Terminento, I do not believe you are using a laptop, but does anyone know a good spot for better accuracy with the sensor bar on a laptop? Are there any good calibration tools I can use? Let me know.

[terminento]

If your wiimote has one of those rubber covers, try and remove it to rule it out as the issue: If it is a third party controller, it might not have the perfect shape, and it might be occluding the sensor camera at certain angles.

The plastic thing at the top of the wiimote might have gotten scratched or dirty too, which might explain why it only happens when pointing at three o'clock (scratches or dirt spots might be deflecting infrared light from the sensorbar). To rule it out, check the wiimote for deep scratches, and clean it with a soft cloth (maybe even use a little bit of windex) to remove any dirt or stains that might be causing issues. This is not that uncommon, specially when using the rubber covers, because people don't usually remove them to clean the controller, and dirt collects on the edges of the sensor camera because it is hard to reach with a cloth unless you remove the rubber cover.

Does the cursor going off thing happen as well when using a regular mouse?
Because I remember that the model 2 emulator didn't come pre-calibrated, and the cursor (even with the mouse) was way off and needed to be adjusted, and I vaguely remember that it wasn't in the obvious calibration menu in the test mode of the game, it was some other -not so intuitive- menu in a funky way which I can't recall.

If you don't have issues when using a regular mouse, then I'll ask the second obvious question. If you are playing on a laptop, are you sitting very close to it?
The wii (and thus, the wiimote) was never intended to be played up-close, it is designed to be played on a TV and from a distance. If you get too close to the sensor bar it can get funky and not detect the infrared LEDs properly. That applies for real Wii consoles too: I can't count how many times I've heard someone complain about how their wii sucks, only to go to their house and discover they were too close to the screen. Moving the chair back a couple of steps solved the issue.
I play on a desktop computer, yes, but I have it in the living room, so I have it hooked up to my TV via an HDMI cable. When I want to play with the sensor bar, I use my TV as the computer screen, place the sensor bar on the lower part, and play while sitting on my couch, around 2 meters (6 to 7 feet) away from my TV and my bar.

If you are using a laptop, you have the advantage of mobility: you can go to your living room, get an HDMI cable for a couple of bucks (and that's assuming you don't have one already), and hook your computer to your TV.

Also, take into account that by placing your bar on (or around) the laptop screen, well, the laptop itself might have LEDs and bright lights that might get detected by the wiimote and cause tracking errors. To rule it out, try placing the bar away from the screen and see if it does the same thing (Yes, aiming off-screen is counter-intuitive, but this is just a test)

Also, if you are playing in a brightly lit room, if the laptop has many reflective surfaces, or if the screen is reflecting the light coming from the lighbulbs ahead or from the windows, it might cause tracking errors (I remember how I had my window open this one time, and I was playing "metroid other M", in which you hold the controller sideways, and point towards the screen to aim in first person, and when I held the controller sideways I didn't totally cover the remote side with my hand, so it mistook the window for the sensor bar and started aiming by itself. I had to close the window blinds, LOL), so you'd want to dim the lights a bit, or turn them off altogether (I usually play in the dark most of the time)

I don't think it matters wheter you place the bar on top or bellow the screen: I have my wii bar on top of my TV, and I place the dolphinbar bellow the screen for the sake of convenience. Be warned, though (just in case you didn't notice) that the dolphinbar has a switch that you must flip wether you place it on top or bellow, maybe you forgot to flip the switch when changing the position of the bar. I never had to calibrate my bar: it was plug and play.

Lastly, you might want to consider your controller being the issue, if it is a third party one. If a friend of yours has a wii, you might want to try it there to see if the same thing happens.

So, to sum up, in order of probability:
-The wiimote cover (or any other object in the way) is partially occluding the wiimote sensor camera
-The wiimote itself is dirty or scratched
-You need to keep your distance: don't get too close to the bar
-The laptop has LEDs or is reflecting light that affects tracking
-You didn't flip the switch when changing the position of the bar
-The emulator itself isn't calibrated and the cursor is slightly off
-The wiimote is third party and has tracking issues regardless of the bar used

I hope I could be of help. Trying these things out (placing the bar away from the screen, turning the lights out...) is relatively fast and inexpensive. Please let me know if it worked.

[Conversus W. Vans]

If your wiimote has one of those rubber covers, try and remove it to rule it out as the issue: If it is a third party controller, it might not have the perfect shape, and it might be occluding the sensor camera at certain angles.

The plastic thing at the top of the wiimote might have gotten scratched or dirty too, which might explain why it only happens when pointing at three o'clock (scratches or dirt spots might be deflecting infrared light from the sensorbar). To rule it out, check the wiimote for deep scratches, and clean it with a soft cloth (maybe even use a little bit of windex) to remove any dirt or stains that might be causing issues. This is not that uncommon, specially when using the rubber covers, because people don't usually remove them to clean the controller, and dirt collects on the edges of the sensor camera because it is hard to reach with a cloth unless you remove the rubber cover.

Does the cursor going off thing happen as well when using a regular mouse?
Because I remember that the model 2 emulator didn't come pre-calibrated, and the cursor (even with the mouse) was way off and needed to be adjusted, and I vaguely remember that it wasn't in the obvious calibration menu in the test mode of the game, it was some other -not so intuitive- menu in a funky way which I can't recall.

If you don't have issues when using a regular mouse, then I'll ask the second obvious question. If you are playing on a laptop, are you sitting very close to it?
The wii (and thus, the wiimote) was never intended to be played up-close, it is designed to be played on a TV and from a distance. If you get too close to the sensor bar it can get funky and not detect the infrared LEDs properly. That applies for real Wii consoles too: I can't count how many times I've heard someone complain about how their wii sucks, only to go to their house and discover they were too close to the screen. Moving the chair back a couple of steps solved the issue.
I play on a desktop computer, yes, but I have it in the living room, so I have it hooked up to my TV via an HDMI cable. When I want to play with the sensor bar, I use my TV as the computer screen, place the sensor bar on the lower part, and play while sitting on my couch, around 2 meters (6 to 7 feet) away from my TV and my bar.

If you are using a laptop, you have the advantage of mobility: you can go to your living room, get an HDMI cable for a couple of bucks (and that's assuming you don't have one already), and hook your computer to your TV.

Also, take into account that by placing your bar on (or around) the laptop screen, well, the laptop itself might have LEDs and bright lights that might get detected by the wiimote and cause tracking errors. To rule it out, try placing the bar away from the screen and see if it does the same thing (Yes, aiming off-screen is counter-intuitive, but this is just a test)

Also, if you are playing in a brightly lit room, if the laptop has many reflective surfaces, or if the screen is reflecting the light coming from the lighbulbs ahead or from the windows, it might cause tracking errors (I remember how I had my window open this one time, and I was playing "metroid other M", in which you hold the controller sideways, and point towards the screen to aim in first person, and when I held the controller sideways I didn't totally cover the remote side with my hand, so it mistook the window for the sensor bar and started aiming by itself. I had to close the window blinds, LOL), so you'd want to dim the lights a bit, or turn them off altogether (I usually play in the dark most of the time)

I don't think it matters wheter you place the bar on top or bellow the screen: I have my wii bar on top of my TV, and I place the dolphinbar bellow the screen for the sake of convenience. Be warned, though (just in case you didn't notice) that the dolphinbar has a switch that you must flip wether you place it on top or bellow, maybe you forgot to flip the switch when changing the position of the bar. I never had to calibrate my bar: it was plug and play.

Lastly, you might want to consider your controller being the issue, if it is a third party one. If a friend of yours has a wii, you might want to try it there to see if the same thing happens.

So, to sum up, in order of probability:
-The wiimote cover (or any other object in the way) is partially occluding the wiimote sensor camera
-The wiimote itself is dirty or scratched
-You need to keep your distance: don't get too close to the bar
-The laptop has LEDs or is reflecting light that affects tracking
-You didn't flip the switch when changing the position of the bar
-The emulator itself isn't calibrated and the cursor is slightly off
-The wiimote is third party and has tracking issues regardless of the bar used

I hope I could be of help. Trying these things out (placing the bar away from the screen, turning the lights out...) is relatively fast and inexpensive.
Please let me know if it worked.

Very nice advice, man. Now I will admit I purposely turned the crosshair off in Model 2 Emulator to get a better arcade experience, but getting accuracy was still difficult. Sure that might have to do with the small 15.6" monitor itself. By backing up from the screen a little and turning on the crosshair, it feels really nice in your hand blasting the undead in the head. Might demonstrate it for a video on my YouTube channel eventually.

I'd also like to see if I could use the Wiimote for Harley-Davidson & LA Riders (tilting the handlebar with the Wiimote, and the nunchuck for accelerating/brakes). I know there's a licensed Harley-Davidson game on the Wii, but man... does it look atrocious. Makes me wish SEGA still had the licensing to port LA Riders or King of the Road to home consoles.

[terminento]

Very nice advice, man. Now I will admit I purposely turned the crosshair off in Model 2 Emulator to get a better arcade experience

I see... In that case, it might be trickier. Some wii shooters had this option, in which you had to calibrate your wiimote pointing at certain parts of the screen, so that it would behave more like a lightgun (otherwise it behaves like a pointer, and thus, it moves the same way regardless of the size of the screen, because it's based on your position relative to the sensorbar, not the part of the screen you are aiming to). I never used that because I like playing with a cursor on screen.
Maybe if you enter the calibration menu on the game itself, put your controller close to your face (like if you were aiming down iron sights) and try to take aim towards the spots that appear, you might get something closer to a real gun. I'd do that on a copy of the emus and files rather than the original itself if I were you, though (in order to have a backup in case aiming gets screwed up).

By backing up from the screen a little and turning on the crosshair, it feels really nice in your hand blasting the undead in the head. Might demonstrate it for a video on my YouTube channel eventually.

Oooooh!!! Please do!

I'd also like to see if I could use the Wiimote for Harley-Davidson & LA Riders (tilting the handlebar with the Wiimote, and the nunchuck for accelerating/brakes).

Unfortunatelly, it can't be done with the dolphinbar. Modes 1 and 2 emulate a mouse.
Mode 3 makes the wiimote behave like a direct input controller, but is intended to use the wii classic controller plugged instead of the nunchuck (lots of people love the classic controller and wanted to use it in PC games), and it doesn't recognize the tilting as inputs of any kind.
Mode 4 only works in Dolphin emu, although it recognizes all of the functions of the wiimote (I tilted it to turn those teeter-totter platforms in New Super Mario Bros), but unfortunately can't be used outside of the emulator (to my knowledge).

However, for something as precise as a bike racing game, I think the original wiimote gyroscope doesn't have precision enough to be comfortable (which is why the wiimotion plus was invented).
You don't happen to have a ps3 controller, do you? I know for sure that you can use the sixasis gyroscope using a untility called "DS3 Tool". Windows recognizes the tilting of the sixasis as an analogue input. But I don't know what the name of that input is so I wouldn't know what to write in the supermodel ini file, though.

For biking games, the ideal thing would be a handlebar controller, like this one, but I guess those are kinda expensive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNLAiJBe3SM

In any case, fret not: just with the mouse emulation alone you have a pletora of gun shooter games that can (and will) work for it, totally worth the investment on the bar itself. I even have a list and all. Could share it here if you may be interested.

[dan76]

I'd be interested in the list. Also, I've never installed the Dolphin emu but I'm wondering if Killer 7 would be playable as a light gun game? I'm not sure if there's a mouse input option or how the bar syncs with the dolphin emu.