Hi. Hopefully you can help me with this
I was reading a recent Nintendo World Report Mailbag (November 12ths)
when I came upon this letter and its response: (My question is right after the letter and my question is based on this letter/response)
"To PlanetGameCube:
Hello. I'm a huge DS fan, but the Wii is slowly but surely winning me over. I have a few questions about the sensor bar that I hope some of you might be able to answer.
I have very poor vision; I have to play my consoles about 2 feet from my TV to see them well enough to play them. I'm wondering what the range of the sensor bar will be, because I believe I heard it would be at least 3 feet, which would seriously affect me. And does the sensor bar need to be exactly above or below the TV? Also, could it be possible to set the sensor bar behind the TV instead of above or below it? That way I could put it behind it, centered, about 3 or 4 feet away from me, but I'm not sure if the TV's insides would mess with the reception. Or, I could put it below the TV, on top of a stand next to my Wii, and point at it below. Would that work?
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.
Answer:
During my playtime with Zelda, I did a quick sensor bar test. The minimum distance away from the sensor bar that you'll need to be to prevent any controller issues looks as if it's about 2½ or 3 feet. Any closer, and it looks like the remote loses track of one of the bar's IR points and goes haywire. That only applies to games that need the bar to point at stuff, though, so if you want to play Excite Truck, there's no need to point at it. In fact, you probably don't even need the sensor bar once the game starts.
There is no restriction on where you place the sensor bar, other than the remote must see it. It cannot be hidden from view because the controller's pointing tech uses an infrared signal. ***Other than that, you can put it on the floor, against a wall, on the ceiling; just make sure that you point at the bar instead of the television***, and there are no strong light sources in the direction which you intend on pointing."
MY QUESTION:
I am in somewhat the same boat as the person asking the question in that, because of space restrictions I can't change, when I will be sitting in front of my TV, the wiimote will be less than 2 feet from the sensor bar.
That is probably too close
SO then I looked at the part of the answer I surrounded by ***s and thought I might try putting the sensor bar on the CEILING (which is a nice range of 5 feet from where the wiimote would be when I'm sitting down) or on the FLOOR, like the answer above suggested.
Now here is the fun part, although I think that doing one of those would make the POINTER part of the wiimote work fine, I'm a bit worried about what it would do to the motion sensing parts of the wiimote.
For example, if I were to put the sensor bar on the ceiling, I would have to hold the wiimote basically pointing straight up (with the buttons facing me) instead of the normal horizontal position (with the buttons facing straight up).
Now with a game that, for example, relates the moving of the wiimote in the horizontal position FORWARD to say, engage a zoomed in scope view for shooting (Red Steel I think), that means if I'm holding the wiimote pointing towards the ceiling, I'd have to move the wiimote TOWARDS the ceiling to engage the same feature, correct?
BUT will that work since where gravity is pulling is different on my wiimote than on a wiimote in the normal horizontal position? (on mine it would be pulling towards the back of the wiimote where the expansion connector is and in the horizontal position it would be puling towards the bottom where the battery compartment is)
If someone wanted to like temporarily stick their sensor bar to the celing to test this and make sure the motion sensitive moves work right while aiming the wiimote towards the celing, I'd be very grateful :-D (or heck maybe you could just get someone to hold it above you while you use the wiimote below it).
But in any case, anybody have a answer (or at least a educated guess)?
.