Fun Stuff Videos

20 ft Touchscreen Fleet Commander Multi Player Star Wars Game


From

If you think that the games you are playing on the iPad are cool, wait till you see this real-time Star Wars adaptation game played by multiple players simultaneously on a 20 ft touchscreen.

Besides the obvious fun factor, think of the implications for future digital cameras which would, in all probability, be without mechanical controls (sorry, folks, retro will be in museum and only those lucky few with foresight enough to snag one will have bragging rights) and controlled solely by touchscreen user interface. I’m not sure how the technology in this video will be adapted to digital camera touchscreens but I can see that the ability to specify multiple commands on the screen simultaneously may open up new possibilities for novel user interface controls.

Say you want to take a panning shot, one of the more challenging shot: touch on the screen the subject you want the camera to track plus touch where you want the camera to fire when the subject reaches that point. Or, drag the histogram to the right or left and let the camera adjust its settings accordingly. Or, touch one point to have the camera focus there (as we have now); touch two points to have both points in focus (camera adjusts aperture for appropriate depth of field). Zoom (and we are here talking optical zom) using finger gestures. The touchscreen of the future will not be saddled with the limitations we have today but will open up a whole new way to control and operate an electronic device. Ten years from now, will we look fondly back at the iPhone and iPad as “retro”?

Developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) by MS graduate candidate Arthur Nishimoto, “Fleet Commander” explores how a real-time interactive strategy game that would typically rely on complex keyboard commands and mouse interactions be transferred into a multi-user, multi-touch environment.

Originally designed for use with TacTile, a 52-inch multi-touch LCD tabletop display, “Fleet Commander” game play has been ported to EVL’s 20-foot wide multi-touch LCD wall, Cyber-Commons.

“Fleet Commander” uses Processing, an open source programming language.

For more information see http://sites.google.com/site/arthurnishimoto/fleet-commander

Video Directed and Edited by Jon Chambers

source dvice