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."

Multiuser multitouch tabletop screen?

[MindStalker]

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..

Re:What I'd really like to see

[gEvil (beta)]

Ummm, instaed of having four machines sharing one screen, wouldn't it make more sense for the game to be reworked to take advantage of one output device and four input devices instead?

DiamondTouch uses a different method

[dlleigh]

The Qprox devices use a switched capacitor technique invented by James Clerk Maxwell in the late 19th century He dubbed it the "method of intermittent currents" and it can usefully measure capacitances in the sub-picofarad range.

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 [merl.com] for more information.