Philips Entertaible

[deviantchild]

Now, this looks like it could be a fun concept http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/pictures/060104-entertaible-pict.html

Go GoogleNews and check out the various articles http://tinyurl.com/dtop8

 

[MrWibble]

Now, this looks like it could be a fun concept http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/pictures/060104-entertaible-pict.html

Go GoogleNews and check out the various articles http://tinyurl.com/dtop8

Those pictures look like it's getting kind of crowded around that thing. Good job I don't have any friends!

I think it looks like a cool idea, but I just know that if I had one it'd basically be unused for it's intended purpose, covered in random junk I can't be bothered to put away, and probably with circular marks all over it where I've spilt a drink.

I'm also not sure I want to have to plug my coffee table into the mains.

It'd be neat for playing at James Bond villain - just have a secret button you can press that turns the innocent looking display of kittens and puppies into a high-tech map with your plans for world domination laid out...

"Aha, Mr Bond, you have fallen into my fiendish trap! But before I shall kill you, listen as I lay out my evil plans in painful and unnecessary detail. Muaahahahaha!"

<ahem>

Sorry, don't know what came over me there...

 

[DeanoC]

Except given the UI of most CE devices, instead of your plans for world domination popping up, your'd get some embarassinly cute kittens.

James "So your plan for world domination involves a kitten with its eyes closed and a smile ?!?"
Evil Villian "NO NO, thats not it... where the map... no no not cuteoverload.com"

 

[flf]

What a perfectly cromulent waste of a fine flat-panel screen.

Can someone explain to me how a few dozen $10 parker brothers and milton-bradley games don't equal this?

(Plus, I don't care if the kid spills kool-aid on the monopoly money... can you imagine using this at a raucous party when the drinks are flowing freely? I think not.)

 

[MrWibble]

Except given the UI of most CE devices, instead of your plans for world domination popping up, your'd get some embarassinly cute kittens.

James "So your plan for world domination involves a kitten with its eyes closed and a smile ?!?"
Evil Villian "NO NO, thats not it... where the map... no no not cuteoverload.com"

I'm not even going to ask why you know that URL.

I was hoping the table would be like my Philips remote control and be pretty programmable - last person to port Mame to their coffee table is a loser!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Interesting idea. Is this a display to a 'standard' PC or does it have it's own custom OS etc?

 

[deviantchild]

What a perfectly cromulent waste of a fine flat-panel screen.

You're talking to someone who doesn't watch TV and doesn't care much for the movie experience beyond story content.

Can someone explain to me how a few dozen $10 parker brothers and milton-bradley games don't equal this?

Think of all the things you wished board games could do. Think big.


ps. I don't see this as a replacement for board games. Rather, a slightly new direction for videogames, for designers to play around with and work its potential; as is the Nintendo DS. And hopefully the Revolution will do the same with the aid of its controller.

 

[Andy]

Actually I'd love to see the possibilities with these types of tables, particularly around card games like Yugioh and Magic. Things like the ability to scan your cards in and see your creatures come to life and be more animated would be awesome!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Or Air hockey

 

[hughJ]

Actually I'd love to see the possibilities with these types of tables, particularly around card games like Yugioh and Magic. Things like the ability to scan your cards in and see your creatures come to life and be more animated would be awesome!

The Star Wars holographic chess game came to mind when you said that.

 

[MfA]

Pity cheap electronic paper still hasn't materialized ... that would be ideal for tabletop gaming.

 

[DudeMiester]

What about e-Paper?

 

[MuFu]

What about e-Paper?

That's what I immediately thought too. An 8x8 piece of e-Paper could make for some interesting games of Twister.

 

[pc999]

This seems very cool, I wonder about the price thought.

 

[MfA]

What about e-Paper?

As I said, it hasn't really materialized ... there's a couple of products starting to trickle out now, but you cannot buy cheap sheats of e-paper off the shelf just yet.

 

[Snyder]

As others have said before - something like this with eInk/ePaper/etc. would be really great. Especially for P&P-RPGs - Battleground, DM-steered automap...mmmh, the possibilities.

 

[MrWibble]

I see two other interesting possibilities here.

Firstly, if it has a video input, you could use it as a second screen for PS3 - solving the whole issue of "who has 2 TVs in their living room?"

Secondly, if Sony or Toshiba make one in competition we might be able to buy coffee tables with Cell CPUs - imagine the bragging rights on that one...

 

[odye]

I've been recently brainstorming this. The scenario is I have friends who used to have a regular tabletop gaming sessions(D&D), but now a few of us have moved away. So what we have now is the core group getting together and a couple of 'remote' players. The challenge is to integrate the remote players *without* disturbing the existing style of play(and must be cheap!)

The existing style of play is usually a grid-mat with dry-erase markers to draw on, and miniatures.

We are going to setup voicechat and multi-person vidconference, but I was looking for something that would allow the sharing of what was being drawn on the mat to the remote players (again, cheaply!) so the expensive whiteboards, even the cheap $500, is too costly.

The best I can come up with is one of the cheaper digitial pens, perhaps, that provide an absolute 2D position. Something that could be used to draw, and maybe also mark the positions of the miniatures as they are moved around. Probably place a PC monitor at the edge of the table to show the electronic representation, and for others to see when the remote players manipulate things the electronic representation.

The rest is gravy, like maybe automating some things like die rolls or the such, but most of that stuff works pretty good as is. The last thing we want is to be diginv through a bunch of clunky menus/etc.

So cheap and integrates well with the existing physical interfaces that enables remote participants to an existing physical group is the goal.

 

[odye]

A couple of other ideas I forgot to mention were some kind of optical solutions, such as a webcam that has been calibrated to the setup, but that tech still seems a little problematic, looking at things like ARToolkit.

But something like a cheap flatbed scanner might work, you can mark on it, might want to put a more opaque plastic cover on it for protection of the glass and contrast of the dry erase markers. You could make markers put on the bottom of the miniatures to track them combined with some software. The updates are periodic at the point.

Along the same lines, maybe some kind of pressure sensitve mat or magnetic maybe, with cheap rfid's on the bottom on miniatures for tracking then might also do. The Anoto digital paper is neat, but not sure how it could be cheaply and effectively applied here.

Just brain-dumping in case anyone else has some ideas/comments since the conversation had drifted that way, but I know its more of a topic for one of the tabletop gaming sites. But they Beyond3D crowd is so smart, I figured it might be worth the try here.

 

[Fox5]

You're talking to someone who doesn't watch TV and doesn't care much for the movie experience beyond story content.



Think of all the things you wished board games could do. Think big.


ps. I don't see this as a replacement for board games. Rather, a slightly new direction for videogames, for designers to play around with and work its potential; as is the Nintendo DS. And hopefully the Revolution will do the same with the aid of its controller.

Bah, Mario Party already did the virtual board game experience, do we really need something that represents a board game even more accurately and without cool controllers?

Things like the ability to scan your cards in and see your creatures come to life and be more animated would be awesome!

I always thought the e-reader for the gba would do this, but unfortunately it didn't.

As I said, it hasn't really materialized ... there's a couple of products starting to trickle out now, but you cannot buy cheap sheats of e-paper off the shelf just yet.

Isn't e-paper black and white only? BTW, is that $100 MIT laptop using an e-paper display?