Comments on: OSCulator, Magic Bullet for Mac Alternative Controllers, Updated

By: Create Digital Music » iPhone/Touch Roundup: Control, Art, Snow Patrol, Visualizers, Recording, One for India

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 22:43:41 +0000

[...] worth noting that even if you don’t have an OSC-compatible app, you can use a tool like OSCulator (Mac) or GlovePIE (Windows) to use this as a [...]

By: Red

Red — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:50:18 +0000

Cam,

Thanks for the reply. I’ll have to experiment with the triggering in the new version.

Exactly what kind of filtering do you do in Kyma?

By: tomax

tomax — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:04:06 +0000

Cam, please continue to support 10.4 until Snow Leopard at least! i want to play with some Wiimotes and decide if my Buchla Lightning2 is inferior, or if i should continue using it (great for strikes, but not as flexible for other things, though Don’s “control language” is really cool… :)

By: Camille Troillard

Camille Troillard — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:20:36 +0000

Red, Peter,

About the Wiimote sensors :
In my opinion, they are actually quite sensitive. Technically, there are 9 bits of resolution (8 bits for the nunchuck).

I have to admit that triggering notes with the acceleration parameter of the Wiimote has been (still is?) a problem. There is a reason for that: the triggers for MIDI notes are not very compatible with the shape of the signal coming from the acceleration.

Also, the acceleration parameter (which is in a sense the overall value of the x, y, z values) is statically staying at 0.2 (which correspond to the constant gravity force applied to the accelerometers), and hardly reach 0,8 when you strike the Wiimote hard (you can go even further if you hit the thing like crazy). This makes the response function of the Wiimote rather special for note triggering.

The solution would be to provide a kind adjustment, or sensitivity to the independant Wiimote signals. But I think we could do the same for every osc signals, not only the Wiimote. Until now I have not found a good solution to modify the scale of float osc arguments, because I want to keep things simple and tidy. The way I see it would require a change in the user interface.

I think things are much better in this version (2.6) because I totally rewrote the triggering system, making it much more robust and consistent.

In Kyma, the interaction with the Wiimote is perfect. This is because we use a little program that filters the signals coming from OSCulator. I guess this is what Max users do as well.

In conclusion, it is indeed possible to play notes with the Wiimote, but the “MIDI Note” events present in OSCulator are primarily there to serve an external OSC application which sends adjusted values.

I hope this helps!
Thanks for your questions.

Best,
Cam

By: dead_red_eyes

dead_red_eyes — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:36:58 +0000

Same here Peter!

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:26:17 +0000

Well, I’m very much looking forward to the new gyro attachment that’s coming for this very reason …

By: dead_red_eyes

dead_red_eyes — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:14:40 +0000

Red, I helped beta test a Wii-remote sampler program and the Wii sensors were a bit off there too. The Wii remote itself is a lot more accurate than the nunchuck attachment.

By: Red

Red — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:13:59 +0000

Peter, it’s possible the difficulty in getting accurate velocity sensing strikes is due to the nature of the Wii’s accelerometers. Perhaps Cam, who I’m sure is more familiar with them, can comment.

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:05:12 +0000

@Red: Might that be related just to the nature of the Wii sensors themselves?

By: Red

Red — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:55:13 +0000

I haven’t yet checked out the new version but am looking forward to doing so.

In the past I tried to use OSCulator to interface with Wiimotes. One of my issues had to do with (lack of) accurate velocity sensitivity for “strikes” / note-ons. The other issue was that I would in some circumstances want the raw data available to the end program (Reaktor, usually), while other times I would want the gesture to register as a “strike” / note-on.

I wonder if either of these issues have been addressed in this release, or if there’s a way to do either or both of which I had not been previously apprised.