Here’s a video demo of an amazing prototype table-top touch-panel named DiamondTouch, made by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL). By touching the screen, you complete a circuit that sends a signal containing the touch’s X/Y location to the table and the computer. That means a cable has to be connected to each players’ chair, or possibly to their clothing. Quite a hassle, but that also brings the exciting possibility of multiple simultaneous touches.
Another notable feature is the speech recognition that is demonstrated in the video, although I can’t imagine myself talking to a table non-stop for the whole duration of a 4v4 game.
Now if the MERL team could show us a video of a real game of WarCraft on the DiamondTouch and played with skill, I would probably wet my pants.
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April 3rd, 2006 at 8:23 pm
WOW.. that is awesome. I an’t wait to get my hands on one of those. It’s probably not going to be very cheap. They could probably use it in real life to fight wars with robots. Imagine the possibilities.
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Definitely a scam. Whole thing is a projection from the ceiling. Look at the guy’s arms & hands. Somebody else is operating the game.
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:09 pm
you can hear mouse clicks if he says “here”
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:26 pm
[Comment ID #1893 Will Be Quoted Here]
It’s been a while since I’ve played wcIII, but I believe that is the sound the game makes when you execute a command.
April 3rd, 2006 at 11:30 pm
[Comment ID #1892 Will Be Quoted Here]
Now if you even looked at the diagram above, it would be clear that it IS a projection. They aren’t even trying to hide that fact.
I bet you called scam when you were first shown the internet.
April 4th, 2006 at 6:52 am
This thing is cool, but no way near up to the standard of this touchscreen thing, seriously, check this one out..
http://www.shoutwire.com/viewstory/4996/Crazy_Multi_Input_Touch_Screen
April 4th, 2006 at 7:37 am
[Comment ID #1892 Will Be Quoted Here]
its clear that the cursor never moves during the video … go buy yourself a pair of glasses
[Comment ID #1893 Will Be Quoted Here]
if someone was clicking a mouse in such noisy video, we probably wouldn’t hear it XD
April 4th, 2006 at 8:34 am
dude, if you see the picture above explaining it all, you can see that it really is a projector. It’s a touch table, nothing more, but an AWESOME one at that. Thumbs up! [LOOK AT DIAGRAM BELOW VIDEO SCREEN.]
April 4th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
The only things useful with this thing is the voice commands, but you dont need the table thing to do that.
he also said that “it’s quite difficult to do this with a mouse” when he was marking an area with his hand. This is total bollocks, this is actually easier with a mose so thou this might look cool it really has no use…
…but who knows, I think it’s great that ppl try out now tecnology to improve things.
April 5th, 2006 at 2:49 am
Voice recognition is the way to go. Why more games don’t have it now is beyond me because quite obv they can get the thing working real well atm.
April 5th, 2006 at 9:35 am
LMAO!!!
EVERYTIME he puts his hand over the “screen” you can see a image on his arm…..SO PROJECTOR..i mean come on i play xbox with a projector the image isnt soo sharp but this one is kinda obvious..
NICE TRY GUYS… THIS ONE IS HILARIOUS
April 5th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Andy, are you an idiot?
He doesn’t hide the fact that it’s a projector — as a matter of fact it’s part of the technological diagram that is located just below the video clip.
…you people who don’t think this is real are actual morons…
April 5th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
I saw this kind of thing about three years ago at Waikato University, the surface they were using had intenal mesh similar to a PDA screen, but this demo is way off the mark, you can already get touchscreen LCD’s that could be adapted to this much easier
April 5th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
[Comment ID #1910 Will Be Quoted Here]
Ever tought about projecting an image ‘on’ a touchscreen?
The screen and game can easily be synchronised with the software they create there.
April 5th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
wow…. i didnt realize how many retards we have in our wonderfull country. Yes it is Projector, but he doesn’t hide the fact that its projector. He’s basically made the table into a giant touchpad. Thats all…. I agree that a much more advance touch pad then those we are use too on a laptop.
Another way of discribing this is that they have designed a touch screen technology with touch pad technology
April 5th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Ever heard of Philips’ Entertaible? It’s sort of the same concept, only it’s truly a touchscreen and it supports multiple users at the same time…
http://www.research.philips.com/initiatives/entertaible/index.html
April 6th, 2006 at 2:08 am
“he also said that “it’s quite difficult to do this with a mouse†when he was marking an area with his hand. This is total bollocks, this is actually easier with a mose so thou this might look cool it really has no use…”
Uh… no. Watch again and note what he was doing. You can drag a box with the mouse, but he was selecting BOTH sides of the selection box at once, not just the start and stop points. The usefulness of having that way is that you can easily selct the group on the move, without having to reset your mouse starting location if a unit moves outside the box. Seems silly until you’ve used it in an online RTS game. It makes a difference. The technology they’re using is pretty damn impressive.
April 6th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
[Comment ID #1893 Will Be Quoted Here]
Sorry, but the pointer doesn’t seem to move, it just gets to the touched at once. This way it can’t be a mouse.
Then another dumb thing said, about the projection: why can’t it be a projection? It can also be a touch-panel with a projector above it, instead of a touch-panel with a monitor underneath it….
April 6th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
really cool this table
April 7th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Hi, my name is Edward Tse and I am one of the authors of this work. If you’d like to view some more details videos of our work please visit http://www.edwardtse.com
April 7th, 2006 at 3:51 am
[Comment ID #1895 Will Be Quoted Here]
I totaly agree, it’s got scam written all over it. towards the end you can see the cursor moving to areas on the map before the guy touches the table. totaly, 100% not real. Good effort tho.
Not only that, in WC3, Orcs don’t build farms, the build burrows…
April 7th, 2006 at 5:05 pm
[Comment ID #1931 Will Be Quoted Here]
“Farm” is the overall name of the buildings that provide food in WC3, and it’s less dificult to remember only “farm” instead of all the words in different races.
And the cursor does move before he pushes, but that’s because it changes from a normal (hand) cursor to an ‘attack’ cursor. I still don’t see why it would be a scam.
You should also see this: http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/27/mitsubishi-randd-rocks-warcraft-iii-with-new-diamondtouch-table/
April 8th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Hi, my name is Edward Tse and I am one of the authors of this work. If you’d like to view some more detailed videos of Warcraft III and Google Earth please visit http://www.edwardtse.com
April 13th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
[Comment ID #1899 Will Be Quoted Here]
It’s the same…
April 15th, 2006 at 10:25 am
Oh man. This is the coolest thing I found today. I hope that I have one.
April 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Edward,
Only the masochistic would want to use this long term..imagine waving your arms for 2 hrs everytime you play Warcraft!
One reason why we’re still using the mouse is cos all it needs is MINIMAL = less tiring movement to control everything. The above concept is fun but perhaps you guys need to overhaul it if it’s to see widespread usage.
April 19th, 2006 at 2:31 am
Bernium, i’d actually not mind using my arms to play warcraft 3, i play the game a bit as is, and trust me, its some times boring only using a mouse, i mean yes its much more effecient for enery and control, but hell i’d want to have a tad bit of exceersise in it, i mean, stretching your arm as you play games, sorta fun when you think about it, and then your using speech also to control most of your units, think about it, its working for excersise and verbal use, even though the verbal use is a bit simplistic i wouldn’t mind putting the extra effort to have some fun, and too you doubters, of course theres a damn projector, its a prototype not a masterpeice, give it a bit and an lcd will come through, and to the clicking, i play the game it clicks when you do (don’t ask why, it seems a bit pointless to me) and last but not least, when you switch cursor from select or to move or to attack or anything else, it jumps a small fraction, nothing big but a bit, so stop trying to put it out as a scam, why would this guy waste his and our time, buy a video camera, and create a video jsut to waste our time, personnaly if it was a scam it’d probably look at lot worse, and the people wouldn’t respect there creation as they did.
looking good, keep up the work
April 23rd, 2006 at 9:07 am
wow.. really cool. it might be very expensive if this product is sold in the market now.
June 27th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Nah it may be a projection but i have used these type of devices before…….basically it works on orientation………..when setting the device up on that surface which would be touch sensitve……u orentate the screen…..setting postions and all that………..then u are good to go…………..it’s similar to a thing called a smart board……..maybe not as advanced……….i would like to see how they see up the software for that game eg when they use a voice command did they use that command to relate basically to shortcut keys………for example attack = whatever shortcut key in war 3 which i think is A
so basically that is done by a third party program outside of war 3……….This basically says when i say attack this means press alt a or something along them lines……………..>>
but not a scam the technology is easily there
July 7th, 2006 at 7:29 am
mitsubishi is too much of a reliable and well-known corparation to lie about something like this
if they did itd be all over the tech news
theyd be scarred for life
January 10th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
I totaly agree, it’s got scam written all over it. towards the end you can see the cursor moving to areas on the map before the guy touches the table.
April 1st, 2007 at 5:58 am
I have seen a touch table which was large format, touch-screen display that is driven by a 1600 x 1200 resolution LCD projector.The screen itself is matte, white powder-coated, 1/2-inch think honeycomb aluminum surface. Its’ function is to provide real-time Collaborative GIS………however its also great one……….from MERL………..& the name is fantastic..Diamond touch.sweet
April 15th, 2007 at 7:35 am
look i dont find any thing wrong with this thing but i really want it so lets throw away the mouse and keyboard and buy this new thing whos with me so to all you peaple who dont think this thing is awsome then just stop posting comments becuase we dont care
September 25th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Too much effort, too wordy, gimme a mouse.