A Different Kind of Tabletop Gaming - Possible Applications
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Mitsubishi’s engineers showed off a wide range of applications for the technology in a recent demo. For example, the table could be used to display satellite images of a region before and after it was hit with a natural disaster (the engineers showed the region of the December 2004 Asian tsunami, but it could just as easily have been, say, New Orleans before and after Katrina). Emergency workers planning relief for the area could draw fingers across it to show possible delivery paths for aid.
Another demonstration turned the table into a giant virtual Scrabble board. Letters could be selected and dragged into position simply by touching the screen and sliding a finger across it. Other board games could work just as easily, and make life a lot easier for folks who like to play games involving lots of pieces and set up (just think of all the time saved dealing out cards or building a wall in mah jongg). And no more lost pieces!
How about planning the family vacation? This kind of table would make it a snap. Connect the computer to the Internet, fire up a good map mash-up, and get everyone involved. Nobody needs to jostle anyone else to try to get control of the computer, and everyone can have some kind of input.
One really cool application of the technology involved combining it with voice recognition software. In this case, engineers demonstrated a video game in which images of tanks rolled across a landscape on the tabletop display. The players controlled the tanks by tapping on the tabletop and giving commands verbally. Now that’s something that sounds like real excitement for all those weekend Pattons out there!
Of course, if you put a table like that to war gaming use, you want to make sure it will stand up to “battlefield” damage. Not to worry. Near the end of Mitsubishi’s video demonstrating the table, someone “accidentally” spills nearly a whole can of soda on top of it! And it went right on working as if nothing had happened.
Speaking of the video, it’s apparent from the way Mitsubishi showed it off that the company expects it to get its largest following in the enterprise. There were many depictions of several people grouped around the table, opening, closing, and interacting with the kinds of applications you’d expect to see in an office setting. In an interview with the Associated Press, Masakazu Furuichi, the company’s chief engineer, described the table as “a futuristic way to use a computer without a keyboard or a mouse. It’s simple to use for everybody, including older people and others who aren’t very used to handling computers.”
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