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."

What I'd really like to see

[Scott Lockwood]

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?

Re:Multiuser multitouch tabletop screen?

[Rude Turnip]

If everyone is sharing the same table, won't you be able to see each others' placements?

boardgames & ragdoll kung fu

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be pretty useful for boardgames, but other then that i see it being very gimmicky. I find it odd that there are pretty much no games that take advantage of something as simple as 2 computer mice, but they come up with this interactive tabletop which really offers the exact same type of interaction that 2 mice would allow.

ragdoll kung fu (http://www.ragdollkungfu.com/ [ragdollkungfu.com]) is the only game I can think of that actually uses 2 mice, and i think that game would be amazing on this device.

Projection?

[4D6963]

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.

Capacitive Touch

[N_Piper]

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 [qprox.com]