PAX Prime 2010 (Photos)

Below are a handful of photos from PAX Prime.  This shows the table build we demoed as well as the lighting we were under.

The new table design does fantastic under bright, indirect sunlight.  The only time we encountered a real issue was when the sun was setting on Friday and we had these lovely golden rays casting patterns across my demo surface.  Interestingly, after a lot of tweaking on Friday night, we did not have a single moment on Saturday or Sunday where the performance changed due to lighting.  I did make minor adjustments to the CCV threshold value around noon, but literally, the change was from a value of 54 to 64 -- already high.

We were on Sky Bridge which meant that we were on a large bridge platform under an arch of glass and steel.  This meant great lighting for showing off hardwood furniture, and what should have been horrible lighting for an IR multitouch table.  However, the most recent version of CCV (1.4a; thanks Amit!) meant a reconfiguration of my settings.  The new settings worked so ridiculously well that I only mentioned light sensitivity as something to watch out for if you took one home.

This was our (Geek Chic) very well lit booth

Here is where the Locus sat.  Well lit, with some filtering.

Look Ma, no flash.  The natural light had me nervous at first.

On Friday, we moved the blind around to block the sunset.  We did not need do this on Saturday or Sunday after I reconfigured the sensitivity.

Unfortunately the customer facing side got a lot of glare from the Atrium overhead.  As possible I had the customers pop around for a look at what a normal view would be like.

PAX Prime 2010 (Videos)

Wow and wow.  PAX Prime was very different then PAX East.  I was an attendee at PAX East and this time an exhibitor attached to Geek Chic, but even with the obvious differences in role, PAX Prime was vast and spacious and had the level of good feeling that I'd hoped to have found at PAX East.

I meet a lot of great people and showed the table to as many of them as I could.  The technology and the over all design were very well received with the (quickly becoming) usual question of alternate form factor was asked many a time.

I was surprised to see how many people didn't touch the system.  Even after learning that the system was a multitouch display, they were awed and asked lots of questions which I explained or demoed, but few felt that they should just reach in and touch the table.

This was not true of the other exhibitors.  They were not shy at all and the following videos are of the Runic Games folk playing their own game on the table.

And our second! A full blown interview no less.

Okay, so the ball has been rolling and here's the skinny.  My wife, a close friend of ours, and I have started a company to surround the work on the table.  We are called Mesa Mundi Inc. (website to come), and are working toward selling completed MT builds using both projectors and/or LCD screens.  Currently we are finishing our dev cycle for the first iteration of the product as well as resolving final pricing.

The video below took place before the formation of Mesa Mundi.  At the time (last week) I was planning to simply place these screen systems into Geek Chic products and bill them as such.  Now this is mostly still the plan.  Geek Chic makes awesome heirloom quality, hand crafted wooden furniture.  The Locus is a housing for the MT stuff I've been working on and together we have an amazing gaming product.  So, without further adieu (or caveats), I present to you  the video by Third Orange:

And the first of the videos has come in...

 

I'll admit to getting a little punchy after several days of demoing.  This is an excellent example.  Of course I'm not actually showing multi-touch here, just single touch events to show lighting effects and movement based in Map Tools.

However, this is a good example of the lighting quality of the screen after I realized the brightness on the projector was turned -all- the way down for the first 3 days of the Con.  Ugh!

Images from Gencon

I was so busy at Gencon demoing that I forgot to take video and barely took any photos.  Below are my only samples from the table as presented.   I'll finish my Gencon narrative as soon as possible.

Steam Punk and Multi-Touch Gaming Tables --- Oh! My!

 

The kids loved playing with the screen saver on the table.  I was running MS Surface Lagoon.

This was taken quickly while the crowd was still at bay talking to a Felicia Day cos-player.

As expected, someone in the (Do you want to date my) Avatar costume drew more of a crowd then a multi-touch gaming surface!  Her staff actually had a plasma ball at the top, it was awesome!

Return from Gencon 2010

I've just gotten back from Gencon 2010 and all I can really say is wow!  The response from the community to my multi-touch table was amazing.

I presented my multi-touch screen and software pack with Geek Chic from their booth.  They built a lovely enclosure (all of Geek Chic's tables are super awesome) and we put the whole thing together on Wednesday before the show.

I'll admit to severe nervousness regarding the table actually fitting the enclosure prior to the show.  The owner of Geek Chic and I had been talking on and off for a couple of months about build and specs, but I was concerned that I might have gotten something wrong or sent the wrong info.  And when I saw the box the Locus (the awesome name they came up with for the combined table) shipped in, I was even more concerned.  It was thin.  To thin.

Fortunately, Geek Chic knows exactly what they're doing and we took out the parts from the box, assembled the table and had roughly 1/2 and inch of extra room for guts of the table.  This lead to some confusion at first because the projection was too large.  After determining the source of the problem I grabbed some scrap and we propped up the projector resulting in much success.

The next hurdle was getting the darn thing to aligned right.  There was some damage to my mirror assembly by AirTran's baggage personnel.  This led to a twist in the video which I had to untwist by adjusting the mirror placement.

Finally, with all the initial kinks worked out, I was able to present the table at in all it's 42" of multi-touch goodness.

Then the convention center turned up the lights in the Dealer Room.  Oh Noes!

Actually the table did wonderfully under the super bright lights.  We had some heating problems but a kind fellow from another booth (Thanks Adrian and thank you to your lovely wife who's name I have forgotten, as well) lent us the use of a fan!

The single fan worked perfectly.  We were able to keep the whole setup cool with only the occasional overheat here or there afterward.   Sunday, I moved the fan into a better position and survived the whole day without incident.

-- More to come tomorrow --

Another long pause.

I'm linking to a design document which I put together for a project I'm working on with GeekChic, a really cool game table designer and fabricator.


Please feel free to check it out and comment.