Gamertell

A long time ago board games were all the rage.

People used to sit around a table and spend hours throwing the dice, spinning wheels and flipping cards while moving the little pieces around a board. With the appearance of video games, for many people the focus changed from a table to the TV and now several of those board games are a thing of the past (or ironically turned into video games).

Now, thanks to a couple of Canadian researchers, board games may be making a come back.

Roel Vertegaal and Eric Akaoka, of Queen’s University, are developing a way to make interactive board games in a whole new way. By using a projector and a motion tracking camera they can create interactive playing cards that react to motion and their position in relation to other cards. An image is projected on the cards and the camera tracks their motion so when they are in the right position, like next to another card, the images on both cards interact.

One example shows a group of soldiers on a card moving to the one next to it and attacking the soldiers there, while another example shows an awesome animation where an object is poured from one card to another.

According to the researchers, the images displayed on the cards could be created with e-ink or even by using Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays so that they could be used anywhere without the need for a projector.

This technology is one of the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time and it could totally revive board games including Risk or Monopoly or even more traditional games including chess or backgammon.

This is in its earliest stages and it’s already impressive, so I can’t wait to see what other clever uses they can come up with. I guess we’re finally a step closer to getting the awesome game played on the Millenium Falcon.

Read [The Vancouver Sun] Also Read [CNET] Site [Human Media lab]