Is it really worth it?!

[VIKINGS]

Hello World,

A few days ago I decided I've been missing out long enough on the novelty that is the Wii and it's awesome motion controls, so I decided to buy one.
I went hunting on the second hand/deal websites from my country and I put together a list of the stuff I need to get(controllers, the console itself, accessories, etc.). Tomorrow I was gonna to start phoning the different sellers and start grabbing the items.

But tonight(just an hour or 2 ago) I found out about the dolphin emulator while searching youtube for basic tips/tricks/tutorials on using your "new" Wii console. Strange how that happened, but you know how youtube goes when you start jumping from video to video, you sometimes end up in weird places....  

At first this seemed really awesome: it would cost less(not by much but still, just get the sensor bar, controllers and pretty much done), I could get better graphics and best(for me) it would finally solve the problem of "How to watch youtube(or other media) and play the Wii at the same time on the same screen?"(I can't stress how important this last one is for me and my gaming habits), etc.

So I figured this might be a much better option and(full of enthusiasm) I basically registered to this forum to ask a single question:
"How do I know which controls to use? On the couple of videos I saw on youtube people first configure the controls in the emulator then fire up the game. But I want(at first at least) to play the games the way they where originally meant to be played. If a game was originally made to be played with nunchuck and remote for example, then that's how I wanna play it, not with a controller or mouse&keyboard or whatever other crazy stuff the emulator allows me to do."

And that's when my world came crashing down, I register and what do I see?! Tons of posts of people who have control problems(example1 specially that last post from leolam, example2, example3) and WTF is THIS dolphin doesn't support motion plus?!?!  :crying:


Let me reiterate, in case it wasn't clear, all the pros I listed above that emulation brings are awesome(specially that youtube one) but for me the most important thing when talking about the Wii(unlike other consoles that I would emulate instantly without giving it a second thought) are the controls, specially all the motion stuff!!! If those don't work properly then there is no point...

So after reading this wall of text(sorry about that but it's really important to me that you get the whole picture) what advice do you have for me? Do you still recommend/is it really worth it using dolphin over the actual console? Can you address those posts I linked? Any other thoughts?


Thank you very much, can't wait to see what you guys have to say.

[KHg8m3r]

Well, to legally run games in Dolphin you need to dump the games you personally own using a Wii (can be anyone's console who gives you permission to hack their console).

As for what you do after that, good news! If you have a real Wiimote (with motionplus)/nunchuck and a bluetooth adapter in your computer, then as soon as they fix the current bug in Dolphin, it would be the same as how it's supposed to be played on the Wii.

[Megapsychotron]

To add to above, you can also use a Mayflash Dolphin bar like many of us do. It simply works and supports motionplus wiimotes. But don't use generic Wiimotes. For GameCube games, I use the Mayflash GameCube Wii U adapter.

Dolphin is very much worth it, in most situations it's better than a real Wii (my opinion). Keep in mind you ate going to want a fast CPU and decent GPU for full speed and 1080p or above.

[mimimi]

Dolphin is not going to be cheaper, because you still need to own the games, and most likely a wii too, for ripping the discs. And then you'll want either a Dolphinbar or a good bluetooth adapter(using the passthrough mode) for your wiimotes.

But if you really have an AMD Athlon II x4 630 2800Mhz, you are not going to get very far. Some games will work nicely, and others won't. Some games start to run well with a cpu that is literally 3 times as fast!

[JMC47]

Well, to legally run games in Dolphin you need to dump the games you personally own using a Wii (can be anyone's console who gives you permission to hack their console).

As for what you do after that, good news! If you have a real Wiimote (with motionplus)/nunchuck and a bluetooth adapter in your computer, then as soon as they fix the current bug in Dolphin, it would be the same as how it's supposed to be played on the Wii.

Uhhh, what Bluetooth Passthrough bug? Or do you mean the non-Bluetooth Passthrough path. Motion+ works perfectly on passthrough.

[degasus]

[snip]

and WTF is THIS dolphin doesn't support motion plus?!?!  :crying:

[snip]

but for me the most important thing when talking about the Wii(unlike other consoles that I would emulate instantly without giving it a second thought) are the controls, specially all the motion stuff!!!

[snip]

That is exactly the point why we don't want to support EMULATING motion plus. Passthrough of a real wiimote with motion plus works fine, but emulating all axis of it will get out of hands pretty fast.

[VIKINGS]

Yeah KHg8m3r, let's not get into the legality of running games on it. For the purposes of this discution let's just assume I already own all the Wii games. So what exactly is this bug you're talking about? And when is it supposed to get fixed? I'd like to start playing in the next couple of days...


Can't really get a dolphin bar in my country Megapsychotron, Mayflash or otherwise. If I go the emulator route the best I could find is this wireless sensor bar. I have no idea what brand it is, would have to ask the seller. So, do you think that would work properly guys?
And what do you mean when you say "don't use generic wiimotes"? I plan to buy a combo pack of original wii remote+nunchuck, the black versions, with motion+ inside.

My current processor is irrelevant mimimi as I'm gonna start upgrading my pc very shortly(2-3 months tops) and the new processor that I'm gonna get initially(to use until I save up for an i7) is gonna be a Intel Kaby Lake Pentium Dual-Core G4560 at 3.5Ghz. That should be enough as that processor basically has the same performance as an i3, right?
I'm more worried about my video card at the moment, since this one is gonna take me longer to upgrade. Right now I have a Sapphire Radeon HD7870 XT WITH BOOST 2GB DDR5 256-bit, is it gonna be enough to run the game properly(by properly I mean steady 60fps at preferably 1080p, can be without antialliasing I don't care about that one)?

JMC47 and degasus so what you guys are saying is that Wii remotes/nunchucks and motion+ is supported by dolphin but it's just not emulated, instead you use the real thing, right? I had no idea what you guys where talking about when you where saying Bluetooth Passthrough so I googled it. While I'm still a bit fuzzy on the details and how exactly it works some very worrisome things did jump out at me.
I'm just gonna quote those snippets, anyone who wants to read the full article can go here :

[color=#333333]Note that your experience will vary [/color][color=#333333]greatly[/color][color=#333333] depending on how your Bluetooth adapter reacts to the feature. During testing, ~12 Bluetooth adapters were tested between several users, and three of them failed altogether, two more had serious issues, and others had limitations in terms of connectivity and audio.[/color]

and

[color=#333333]The [/color][color=#333333]best[/color][color=#333333] experience anyone got was by soldering a replacement Wii Bluetooth adapter to a USB cable and using that.[/color]

Couple of things to be said about that:

1. I DON'T want to have to solder anything! I mean really...?

2. While the online store that I purchase new stuff from(yes I would get a brand new bluetooth adapter) is very nice and allows you to return stuff even without giving a reason and while I am a Gold level customer there(been purchasing stuff from them for years), I feel that even they are gonna have a breaking point. If I have to go through 2-3 adapters until I find the right one it shouldn't be a problem, but I can't literally go through their ENTIRE catalog and keep returning stuff cause at one point even they are gonna be like "Cmon dude, seriously?!".  If you think you know one that will 100% work then you can/please go through their offer here see if they have it and point it out.

3. Since I've never actually owned/used a Wii how am I even ever gonna know if the bluetooth adapter I end up with is performing as well as it should/could(performing as well as the real thing)?


P.S. Couple of other things on my mind:



4. If I do go this route and buy a bluetooth adapter and also purchase that wireless sensor bar that I linked, since the bar is wirelss I assume that's gonna need bluetooth too? At that point how am I gonna manage which device connects to which bluetooth?


5. Should I be worried about interference? I mean I'm gonna have those 2 bluetooths running around, sensor bar on top of the monitor(if I can even get it mounted, ultra-slim/thin monitor), right next to the monitor is the pc(yeah I keep it up on the table next to the monitor), right on top of the pc sits a wireless router, there's also a smartphone in the room somewhere, then you add the Wii remote....
So should I be worried about all these signals bouncing about and interfering with one another?

[leolam]

There's not really anything we can do if you choose a bad adapter. You can do it, just like you can run Dolphin on slow PCs, you just won't get the most out of it.

[JosJuice]

Can't really get a dolphin bar in my country Megapsychotron, Mayflash or otherwise. If I go the emulator route the best I could find is this wireless sensor bar. I have no idea what brand it is, would have to ask the seller. So, do you think that would work properly guys?

Any sensor bar generally works fine. What you need to keep in mind is that Mayflash DolphinBars have integrated Bluetooth adapters (that aren't compatible with Dolphin's Bluethooth passthrough), while other sensor bars (they aren't called DolphinBars) don't have any integrated Bluetooth adapters.

And what do you mean when you say "don't use generic wiimotes"? I plan to buy a combo pack of original wii remote+nunchuck, the black versions, with motion+ inside.

"Don't use generic Wiimotes" means "only use Wiimotes that are produced by Nintendo".

JMC47 and degasus so what you guys are saying is that Wii remotes/nunchucks and motion+ is supported by dolphin but it's just not emulated, instead you use the real thing, right?

Yes. (There is Wii Remote emulation and Nunchuk emulation, but no MotionPlus emulation. Real controllers of all those types work.)

4. If I do go this route and buy a bluetooth adapter and also purchase that wireless sensor bar that I linked, since the bar is wirelss I assume that's gonna need bluetooth too? At that point how am I gonna manage which device connects to which bluetooth?

The only thing a sensor bar does (excluding Mayflash DolphinBars) is receiving power from somewhere and using that power to light up IR LEDs. That a sensor bar is "wireless" just means that it gets its power from batteries instead of a wire. It does not use Bluetooth in any way.

[VIKINGS]

The only thing a sensor bar does (excluding Mayflash DolphinBars) is receiving power from somewhere and using that power to light up IR LEDs. That a sensor bar is "wireless" just means that it gets its power from batteries instead of a wire. It does not use Bluetooth in any way.

Loool, you mean that the original Wii bar that ships with the console and connects to it, that's all it does with that connection, draws power from the console? They don't exchange any other information?

Ok, well I like your answers to my questions JosJustice, they soothe me a bit. But there is still one(big) issue left, and that is the bluetooth adapter...
I checked the list here and couldn't find any of the adapters(that are green in all categories, those are the only ones that interest me) anywhere in my country, not on second hand sites nor on "first hand" ones. Well, I did manage to find one Intel AC 7260 on a site, but first of all that's not really an adapter it's a network card and second of all it's for laptops, so yeah.... that doesn't really help me.
I also managed to find this but something tells me that has nothing to do with what we're talking about here, right?


Now I did manage to find a person who sells IOGEAR GBU421 at a decent price on ebay, but(here come the problems with ordering from outside) he's from the US so I'm pretty certain he's not gonna ship it all the way to Romania, and even if by some miracle he agrees to I doubt that the shipping costs are gonna be acceptable for my pockets.


So while I wait on his response could you guys please help me with some suggestions of what to pick from the stuff that is available here?
Check out these sites: 1    2     3   and let me know what you think please/have you heard of any of those working properly?