Cool Gaming Table
Posted by Rob Herman at September 13th, 2006
This is pretty neat. I don’t know if I would go so far as to use it for exploring dungeons, but it would be cool for tactical RPG encounters. It could also be used to project various board games. For instance, you could write a script to randomly generate a Catan board, complete with number chits, and project that on the table, and be ready to go in seconds. But possibly the biggest advantage is that you could prototype a board game without ever having to touch cardboard! This isn’t a big deal for the first iteration, but when you start making changes…
(From Kill The Wizard First)
I have a old high-school overhead projector and an ancient transparent VGA TFT panel. I was trying to hack together a DIY projector on the cheap (I got both components for 10 bucks each), possibly for playing movies or SMB3. The setup functions; unfortunately, as with most TFTs, fast action gets the motion blur, making Mario speed runs unprobable and watching Spider-Man 2 impossible. Point is, both of these items could quite possibly be hacked into and excellent “light-box” table, projecting from below instead of above. Considering the TFT can (I believe) reach a resolution of 800×600, and be connected by VGA, this might not be such a bad setup. Consider the following scenario: an inexpensive, small, mini-itx PC is in the “light-box table”, connected to the LCD. The user can remotely connect from another computer, laptop, tablet, or pocketpc anywhere in the house. The user can then open a session with Photoshop, all UI elements removed. Then you can show or hide layers, use masking, etc. etc. On paper, this really does prove to be an incredible setup for modular board games and other gaming uses.