I don't know... four point seems plenty good enough for me with a rectangular screen. Nine point would be good if you were on something like a fish-eyed screen, but if it's a quadrilateral, four is all you really need for an accurate calibration.

That said, it does look impressive and just says "I'm more professional than you".

Hoaxjak/Wiweeyum
I was playing with ebeams with the Oz distributor today, I asked why they used a 9 point calibration. There helpful sales team had no idea, but in a later conversation unwittingly told me.

I add that I always thought the ebeam provided less functionality than other commercial IWB's. Infact for the price point (about $1000 for the mobile version) it actually performes above expectations. Although it is still 20x as expensive as the Wiimote IWB so we are still smiling smugly.

I assumed the ebeam worked on a IR-detection system similar to the Wiimote. infact it doesn't:

When an eBeam pen first touches the board it emits a flash of infra-red which is picked up on a sensor in the centre of the eBeam receiver. The pen when being used then emits a series of ultrasonic signals which can be heard as a slight ‘buzzing sound’; this signal is received on the poles of the receiver. The eBeam unit then calculates the difference in time between the two signals and triangulates the position of the stylus or marker sleeve on the pre-calibrated area. The principle is not too dissimilar to that of a child counting the difference in time between lightening and thunder to locate the centre of a storm.

So the nine calibrations are required to provide an accurate calibration as only four points would not provide enough data for triangulation of the ultrasonic signal. To take the locating thunder analogy: if lightening strikes and anyone in the area pointed to where they thought the lightening touched down, the sum of 9 people distributed across a large area will provide a more accurate location than just 4.

Because the Wiimote is a 2D flat surface that detects a IR-Source and that location is calibarted to another flat 2D surface 4 points is all that is needed. Even in keystone displays the algorythm stands accurate.

As I suggested in my earlier post, 9 points will actually diminish the quality of the calibration for the Wiimote.

benpaddlejones

I have personally used it, it is pretty spot on.





I guess if one is off then the overall calibration is not effect as much.  I know if I got one of the 4 wrong, I am in trouble on that corner of the board.

Too bad I will not be getting this in the old free version of smoothboard