DISTANCE TABLETOP GAMING

Justin Gold

Patrick Lupiani

The Goal

Enhance the experience of traditional tabletop gaming over long distanceMake it as ‘natural’ feeling as possibleHigh levels of social InteractionMore than just a virtual version of a board

gameFun!

The Table

Based on the design of a collaborative product with MITRE

Multi-touch and gestural interface Real and virtual objects Networking Telepresence

The Vision

Extend the table to includeInteractable gaming widgets

○ Dice, spinners, etc.Structured interactionsAI based gaming

The Competition

Microsoft Surface E-Whiteboards Tablet Computers

We can do that plus…

Object scanning Cheaper than most other solutions Gestural tracking with Kinect includes

height data Did we mention the object scanning

Implementation

Libfreenect .NET/C# Extensive use of computer vision Finger/Hand Tracking Intended to be ported to the SDK

Bumps in the road

Base table took longer to implement Kinect resolution issues Limited hand tracking capabilities

No built in skeletons for hands Kinect is a resource hog Calibration to back projection Top Projection very light sensitive

If we knew then what we know now Program structure Kinect Issues

Depth limitationsRelative immaturity of the drivers

Wait for SDK

Where could it go…

Library of playable games Build-a-game framework More complex gaming structure

Tabletop RPG gamesTabletop war gamesCards

On with the show…

Demonstration of table