Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I've said this before, and I guess since it's brought up I'll say it again! Wii Motion Plus emulation was done aaallll wrong in the old fork. The "press a button to do a gesture" model that emulated wiimote has only works for games that use extremely primitive motion controls (aka move the wii mote to engage the swing sword action in twilight princess wii). And since lots of games were lazy tons of wii games fall into that category! But for any game that genuinely uses the full possibilities of motion controls, combining multiple axis in complex movements (like wii sports), that just falls apart. And motion plus was optional, so only games that wanted even MORE complex motions than the wii remote alone could provide opted for motion plus, soooo. It just doesn't work.

It just isn't possible to play wii motion plus titles on a keyboard or traditional (non-motion) gamepad and have anything remotely like the original experience. Any future wii motion plus emulation really needs to just expose raw axis of the wii remote plus to allow mapping other motion-capable devices to it. Using other motion capable devices, like a DS4 or steam controller or VR controllers, would work pretty well.

The incorrect approach of the old builds is also responsible for the insane UI they had. Trying to map complex actions that blend 13 analog axis to single button presses means you could have effectively need *thousands* of choices! The simpler approach of just exposing axis for motion controller mapping would just work without an obtuse UI, and work for any game.

Of course the solution to Wii MotionPlus is all wrong. These custom builds are way to annoying and instable to use with MotionPlus. That's why it should be done right the next time . Assuming there is a next attempt eventually at some point. Even support for controllers such as the DS4 would be nice. But hey, it is just a thread to point out what is missing and I gladly contribute by pointing out the most annoying features to work with .

There are licencing issues with linking Dolphin against any existing VR controller APIs right now, so even experimenting is fairly pointless, but OpenXR is due really soon and that should solve that issue and provide a single target for a zillion different motion controllers, so I expect a real implementation once that happens.

Really didn't want to get into a discussion about what approach to WM+ emulation is the best or anything like that. I meant if there was anything technically lacking (e.g. the WM+ builds don't implement some random hardware register, or they don't implement a specific part of the WM+ communication protocol with the Wii, etc). I'd like to know if the WM+ builds are hacky from a UI and software design, or if they're specifically missing key technical parts of emulating a WM+ (or both). Basically, I'm not looking to see if it was emulated well, but rather if it's been emulated as we understand the hardware.

Sorry for being so picky. I know some of you of might be like "why does it matter?". I'd like the list to be as exact as possible. So instead of just adding WM+ to the list, I can add something like "Full/Complete WM+ (Implement some-random-component/feature)".

Well, the fact is no maintained emulator supports emulated WM+, so it's not preserved. Full stop.

Yes, but that's not enough info for my purposes

Shonumi Wrote:I'd like to know if the WM+ builds are hacky from a UI and software design, or if they're specifically missing key technical parts of emulating a WM+ (or both). Basically, I'm not looking to see if it was emulated well, but rather if it's been emulated as we understand the hardware.

That's kind of what I was talking about? It wasn't meant to replicate the original experience; no matter how it was configured, it was impossible to play the games anything like they were intended. As such, motion plus titles were not preserved by that method.

Yes, but I'm kind of asking for more than that. Nitty-gritty details, like if there's a technical area that isn't emulated. So far all of these limitations look like the cause of UI design and input method, not something like "we don't know how the Z-axis input correctly gets translated". I understand that the WM+ isn't sufficiently emulated to be considered preserved, but I need to know the kind of distinction I just pointed out. It may seem small, but it's kind of a big deal, as the list is supposed to be exact and specific. Just adding "WM+" to the list isn't enough for my case.

Still on context of Wii USB accessories, there's the Your Shape USB camera (which can be passed through but not emulated) and also the Udraw Tablet (registers as a Wiimote extension --can be "passed through" with a real Wiimote but it's also not emulated at all)...

There is also:

Wii Balance Board

The "Active Heart Rate Monitor" used by EA Sports Active titles.

The Cyberbike

The Ride controller used by Tony Hawk titles

And perhaps, dance mats, though they may just map to controller inputs.