Freesome - Pete Hobson

Flii, as a desktop application which allows a Nintendo wii controller, or "wiimote" to be fully accessed from a flash movie. This allows the full range of 3D movement to be utilized from within flash.

Flii is very different to the flash integration method developed by Mario Klingemann Mario's solution is for accessing the Wiimote buttons from within a flash movie running in the wii web browser. Flii however, requires a standard computer with a bluetooth port, and enables access to the full 3 axis movement of the wiimote and nun-chuck.

Flii, is based on wiimote framework for OSX, and as such can only be run so far on a mac, this will be expanded to include windows based machines in time. In fact at present Flii is just at a proof of concept stage (i wouldn't even call it a 0.0.1 release :), and there is still a lot of work to be done. As such im not uploading any binaries right now. If your interested in this project then there's a fair chance you may want to help in some way, so please contact me directly.

My hopes for Flii are to provide a simple environment for developers to experiment with the new possibilities offered with Nintendos invention. In time hopefully this will lead to a better understanding of how best a 3D controller can be used to provide new and innovate user experiences. Ultimately it would be great if Flii can become a fertile breading ground for quickly prototyping control ideas for actual Wil games, without the cost of a Wii development kit.

In using Flash, I hope to create the most immediate and accesable gateway possible, as flash through its rich Actionscript scripting language, provides a wonderfully rapid environment to experiment with ideas. It is my plan to closely integrate the new Actionscript 3D API, Papervision which although currently in beta is showing the promise of really delivering a useable and beautifully speedy flash 3D experience.

Im very interested in hearing from anybody interested in getting involved with the project, I could do with assistance in the following areas

Windows: The wiimote api's are implemented on windows, help is needed to write a c based wrapper for them.
HAXE, Neko, and SWHX: The bridging between the OS and flash is implemented in SWHX, there's still a lot about these technologies i don't know.
FLEX - The front end UI will suit a Flex application.
Actionscript And/or Math - Developing good libraries for gesture recognition will be incredibly useful.

Otherwise, if you just want to get hold of the application , watch this space.

Flii in action. As yet not much to see. The Blue circle responds to motion form the wiimote, moving left and right while growing or shrinking based on forward/backward motion

This is a dump from the osx terminal, showing the Neko traces. notice at 3.34:11.107 the wiimote is discovered and then begins transmitting its positional data.