You can even do it with a regular webcam and some IR lights - check out the forums at http://nuigroup.com/
I recently built my own touch table from scratch - some IR lights point at a perspex surface, and an old projector back projects onto the perspex to provide a picture to interact with. The webcam has a small IR filter attached to the front, and this cuts out the regular lights.
When my fingers touch the surface, they create hotspots that are tracked (known as Diffuse Illumination).
You can also put the lights along the side of the perspex, and create a surface that uses FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection).
So there are two ways of achieving similar results to Surface. If you are interested, check out nuigroup - everyone is very helpful if you run into any problems
I remember getting the Japanese edition of Metal Gear Solid at it's time of release, then waiting nearly a full year for the European version to appear...
It is not only that the games are released later; sometimes they don't even make it the Europe at all.
During the PSX era, there were a large number of pretty good Squaresoft games such as Einhander, Chrono Chross and Legend of Mana, that were not released because the market in Europe was not considered important enough.
If you had a modded PSX, then you could import these games at vastly inflated prices, which a lot of people balked at doing (I saw Chrono Cross for close to $100 one time). This certainly helped grow the market for pirated PSX games.
Go take a look in Israel; IIRC, the US Govt place a limit on the detail level that could be displayed for Israel, something like 2km, which would only be increased if a competing service from outside the US went to a higher resolution. I roughly found where my apartment might be though.
At 31"09'41.35N and 34"43'41.20E there seems to be some censorship going on maybe?
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You can even do it with a regular webcam and some IR lights - check out the forums at http://nuigroup.com/ I recently built my own touch table from scratch - some IR lights point at a perspex surface, and an old projector back projects onto the perspex to provide a picture to interact with. The webcam has a small IR filter attached to the front, and this cuts out the regular lights. When my fingers touch the surface, they create hotspots that are tracked (known as Diffuse Illumination). You can also put the lights along the side of the perspex, and create a surface that uses FTIR (frustrated total internal reflection). So there are two ways of achieving similar results to Surface. If you are interested, check out nuigroup - everyone is very helpful if you run into any problems
I remember getting the Japanese edition of Metal Gear Solid at it's time of release, then waiting nearly a full year for the European version to appear... It is not only that the games are released later; sometimes they don't even make it the Europe at all. During the PSX era, there were a large number of pretty good Squaresoft games such as Einhander, Chrono Chross and Legend of Mana, that were not released because the market in Europe was not considered important enough. If you had a modded PSX, then you could import these games at vastly inflated prices, which a lot of people balked at doing (I saw Chrono Cross for close to $100 one time). This certainly helped grow the market for pirated PSX games.
Go take a look in Israel; IIRC, the US Govt place a limit on the detail level that could be displayed for Israel, something like 2km, which would only be increased if a competing service from outside the US went to a higher resolution. I roughly found where my apartment might be though. At 31"09'41.35N and 34"43'41.20E there seems to be some censorship going on maybe?