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Warcraft III on a Table-Top
ParadyNexus writes "IGN recently posted an interesting article featuringWarcraft III on an interactive digital table. From the article 'Possible uses of the technology range from tactical map manipulation and business collaboration to parlor games, but we see a real future in gaming. An intern at MERL was able to get WarCraft III running on one of the prototypes and shot a video of the DiamondTouch and a voice recognition system in action.' Photos and answers to commonly asked questions and a video showing multi user interaction can be found online."
Wow. For those who didn't read this apparently a small current is sent through your chair so that the table can recognize who is touching it and can accept many touches at the same time. Thus allowing for multiple users in a game like warcraft or any number of other purposes. I want one.. Now..
Is a multi player game table where at least 4 PC's share a large table stop screen, so as to be able to play anything from WoW to Axes and Allies. Diplomacy, anyone?
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
This will surely evolve into a complex holographic tabletop, which will project glowing 3D plans of maps and structures, allowing the players to figure out if it's a trap.
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While it's kind of cool, the one thing that disappointed me is that it was based on projection and not a screen. Regardless of the costs and technical challenge it may cause, projection over a backlit LCD screen has the big disadvantage of having undisplayed areas (where your shadow is) and although it doesn't seem like a problem in the demonstartion video, I see it as limitating the comfort of this whole thing.
You just got troll'd!
The interesting thing is that Mitsubishi has found a way for more than one person to interact with the table and be distinguished as such. It looks like they have found a way to distinguish your "Personal Ground" and measure the rate of drain on the grid from the diferent users.
The rest is really just old-hat that can be done with stock electronics from Digikey and a projector.
Not that I would know how to implement the HID drivers but the table top is just a grid of wires reporting X and Y through, what might as well be, stock IC's.
For those who want to know more look at the tech docs for these products http://www.qprox.com/products/index.php
Just in case you think this is completely new:
9 23853181774
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
DiamondTouch uses capacitive coupling, but has a very different sensor architecture. It is closer to a radio receiver with a synchronous demodulator. See the following MERL technical report for more information.
From http://paradynexus.blogspot.com/ I've been recently reading some forums commenting on work that I did at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories. Most of them are postive (there's usually a couple 'If your system could play some game I'd wet my pants' type comments) . A few conspiracy theorists seem to think that my demo is too good to be true - and someone calls me to task on my Warcraft skills.
First, I'd like to dispel the myth: this work is NOT fake, if you'd like to see exactly how we built this system please read our research paper. When you look under the hood you'll see that this system is really just a simple conversion of gestures and speech to standard keyboard and mouse commands.
Second, people commenting about how this system is not as good as a keyboard and a mouse are totally missing the point of this research. It's not about being more efficient than a keyboard and mouse but rather this work is about making actions public so that others can
double check to ensure the best outcomes.
Many things in life are not like WarCraft III where you can die and play again. Think about safety critical applications such as real life military command and control or air traffic control. Here the collaborative decisions have a direct impact on people's lives. By making actions public on the tabletop others can monitor your activity and ensure that you are doing the right thing.
Warcraft III is really designed as an example of a military command and control situation rather than a replacement for the keyboard and the mouse in the game.
This reminded me of the Minority Report Movie where the computer interface was gestural.
The differences are that Minority Report had a vertical, transparent display, not a table top but this tabletop version is definitely something different than the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, pointer) interface. The two hand select was very nice. Another feature I liked was that the voice command system did not seem to get confused when he was commenting on the steps he was taking as opposed to giving the system instructions.