Wii Internet Channel Homebrew

I know it seems like I only post blogs here about once every six months. To see all my active blogging, be sure to check out my group at http://my.opera.com/wiioperasdk/blog/ where I try to post about my Nintendo-related projects for the Opera browser frequently.

For the record: I have a 2005 Prius, and I think Al Gore's global warming is a bunch of crap that government uses to gain more control over the unsuspecting populace. (Son of a meteorologist) Still, here's something I calculated a little while back for those looking at fuel savings of the current models of the Prius:

In typical driving, the Prius gets about 50MPG, and the standard sedan gets about 25MPG.

This means a Prius uses about 2,000gal of gas for every 100,000mi driven, and a sedan uses about 4,000gal for every 100,000miles driven. Thus, over a sedan, the Prius saves about 2,000gal of gas per 100,000mi. Depending on where you live, the savings could be between $8,000 and $10,000 per 100,000miles at current gas prices. Most people nowadays keep their cars well over 100,000mi and sometimes as long as 200,000mi. If one keeps a Prius for the latter, that's where the gas savings really start to shine. The lower-end models of the Prius start at around $22,000, so if gas prices held steady (but realistically will keep going up), the net price of the car would be $2,000-$6,000. Add in the tax breaks that our good friends in the government give, and it looks even better. When you compare a Prius and a sedan that both have high-efficiency air filters and properly-inflated tires, that 25MPG difference in fuel efficiency broadens even more. I'm currently getting about 53MPG with a $50 permanent air filter that pays itself back quickly over replacing a $15 one every six months.

Aside from all the monetary savings, there's no denying that the US needs to stop tossing money at the terrorists' coffers for oil and that air pollution is a very real problem. So this all comes down to a win-win-win situation!

Solid State refers to any type of storage that requires no moving parts. Hard drives, optical drives, and disk drives, all require moving parts; thus, they are not solid state. Examples of solid state storage would be flash memory and ROM, which typically use much less power than hard drives. The N64 was the last console to use Solid State.

In the computer world, there is a term called "Moore's Law". It's not really a law at all but an observation made a few decades ago that the press blew out of proportion (as they do with everything). This observation said something along the lines of "every 18 months, density of computer components doubles". For the past 30 years, this has been roughly true with hard disks, RAM, processors, and most other components.

Yet, over the past decade, one component has been doubling in density about every four months! This technology is flash memory (in NAND or another flavor). I remember a year ago when I bought a 1GB SD card on sale at radio shack for $85US. Now they are practically giving them away. In 2000 I bought an 8MB MemoryStick for about $50US. Two years later I got a 256MB one cheaper.

The Wii, as we know, uses 512MB of flash memory internally and can handle SD cards up to 2GB (or 4GB for some models). It is inevitable that Nintendo will have to "flash" the OS eventually to allow more storage capacity for SD cards if the console can handle them, because 4GB (and not being able to read directly from them) just doesn't cut it for some people with the download service infrastructure coming into play.

Below I have create a table that shows estimated comparisons between buying a hard disk or a flash card now and into the future do show that in a few years, flash memory will overtake hard disks in capacity, pricewise, if they continue to grow the current rate. I will use USB thumb drives and PC external hard disks as a comparison:

$100        HD      Flash
Aug 2007    300GB   8GB
Dec 2007    360GB   16GB
Apr 2008    425GB   32GB
Aug 2008    500GB   64GB
Dec 2008    600GB   128GB
Apr 2009    710GB   256GB
Aug 2009    850GB   512GB
Dec 2009    1TB     1TB
Apr 2010    1.2TB   2TB
Aug 2010    1.4TB   4TB
Dec 2010    1.7TB   8TB

Based on this estimation, flash memory can potentially match hard disk capacity and price by the end of 2009. Relating this to consoles, this is still very well in the realm of the current generation. Also, flash memory will surpass the capacities of both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD in a year. Could this mean the future of gaming will be cartridges once again (as the DS cards are) or downloads to flash memory?

Here's an early screenshot of my newest Wii Opera SDK project for the Internet Channel.

http://files.myopera.com/geekrecon/albums/287925/starfox.jpg

And early version is at http://hullbreachonline.com/wii/spacefox2p.html (Wii-only link)

Features at the moment include:
-Senses Z Motion for roll
-Senses distance from screen for boost/brake
-Displays map locations
-Displays power

Obvious upcoming features include:
-Weapons
-Items
-Scenery
-Win stats
-Motion based on the cursor

Let me know what you think!