A 3D Camera and a Sandbox Demonstrate Amazing Possibility for Arcade Gameplay

Advances in 3D cameras have made possible new ways to play familiar games. Like TANKED! , an arcade-style warfare game that uses a sandbox, projector and Intel® RealSense™ camera to create a dynamic terrain users can battle atop. Or Puck Club, an air hockey game that can be projected on any flat surface and controlled with hand gestures.

Motherboard spoke with the Intel® Software Innovators behind these projects—Nathan Greiner and Alex Schuster , the President and Interactive Software Developer, respectively, of Design Mill, Inc.—about their work with 3D cameras and what cool applications we might see in the future.

Motherboard: Tell me about what you've been working on lately.

Nathan: We're building a mixed reality gaming platform. One of the first games we came up with is called TANKED!, which allows us to use sand in a sandbox that we can move around to dynamically generate terrain in real-time that affects gameplay. On top of that we use joystick controllers. So it's a mash between old and new: Old-school controls with this crazy, amazing new technology that Intel has developed, and now we're developing with.

Alex: Right now we have two versions of the game: TANKED! (2 player) and the updated Super TANKED! (2 to 4 players). They're throwbacks to early tank battle games, like Atari's "Tank." It's classic arcade-style gameplay with joysticks and buttons, and it's also hands-on dynamic terrain building that utilizes sand. We'll be showing Super TANKED! at South By Southwest this month.

MB: So walk me through how the game works.

Alex: Players first build their own battlefield using the sand. Then they select their target, and attack the enemy. The higher a tank is on a hill or mountain, the farther the tank can shoot. Throughout the game, mines are placed underneath the sand, and each side of the table has to work together to deactivate them before it's too late and they explode. This creates a unique battlefield every time the game is played.

With our background working with the military on augmented sandtables and 3D visualization, TANKED! became a natural fit for us to develop something both fun and still somewhat in our wheelhouse. We also wanted to make a game that was familiar, so that new players did not have to worry too much about the rules of the game, and can instead focus on the cool new technology the game uses.

MB: What kinds of equipment do you need to play?

Nathan: The components of the system are an Intel RealSense camera, a projector, and some kind of compute node.

MB: And what kind of hardware and software are you using?

Alex: Right now we're using a 6th generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor. It's all new technology, so we had to get a feel for it, but the SDK that Intel provides has easy-to-use examples, and pretty thorough documentation, so getting it up and running wasn't actually too bad. It helped us to get the ball rolling quickly. We're looking to integrate a micro-computer within the projector and RealSense, kind of an all-in-one unit.

MB: How long have you been working with Intel and RealSense cameras?

Nathan: We got involved in May 2015. I ran into Intel at a trade show and they pointed me toward the developer group. I got hooked up with an Intel® RealSense™ Evangelist and the rest was history. We had been working with depth-sensing cameras for a couple of years before that. Once the technology from Intel became available, we converted all of our projects over to that. Being involved in such an innovative group has really driven us to create amazing new things.

MB: What other projects are you working on?

Nathan: We developed an air hockey game that only uses your hand as a controller. So it's full gesture-enabled gaming. We have the sensor above the table with a projector, and you can use this on any flat surface, so if you wanted to play air hockey at home on your kitchen table, you could.

Alex: So as opposed to an interactive sandbox, now we have created interactive tabletop gaming. We wanted to show people how exciting interactive tabletop gaming can be without the burden of playing a game type that's unfamiliar. Air hockey is an easy game to pick up, and it's super cool to see it played right on top of a standard table.

MB: Where do you see this technology going in, say, 3 years?

Nathan: Ah, the three year plan. It's blowing our minds as we develop these use cases. Again, our technology, we're integrating a projector with a RealSense. In industrial use cases, it's really unlimited in terms of automating work instruction; it can show you the next step and the step after. And on the consumer side, this will be integrated into your home, so you'll be able to basically have an assistant that will help you cook or change your tire.

We're releasing a development kit for the community which will allow anyone that wants to develop these interactive experiences with our interpretive projector to get involved in an ecosystem that we believe is going to be developing very quickly.

MB: Tell me more about this developer kit.

Alex: We're creating developer kits for the Torch© Interpretive Projector System™ which will allow other developers to create interactive tabletop and sandbox games, applications and more.

Beyond gaming, just imagine a Torch hanging above a kitchen counter overlaying recipes and instructions directly onto the surface. If you're hands are covered in flour or food, that's fine, because you can use gesture control to step through the recipe. Or maybe you have a cut of beef, and the projector recognizes the positioning and overlays cut lines for proper butchering. Perhaps you have all the ingredients prepped and out on the counter, and the projector highlights which item to use next. This is just a few examples in just one space.

Imagining the possibilities of this technology in the hands of creative developers is why we are working hard to provide the tools to do this. We are targeting late 2016 to release our initial dev kits, and are taking pre-orders starting March 14th.

The Intel® Developer Zone offers tools and how-to information to enable cross-platform app development through platform and technology information, code samples, and peer expertise in order to help developers innovate and succeed. Join communities for the Internet of Things, Android*, Intel® RealSense™ Technology, Modern Code and Game Dev to download tools, access dev kits, share ideas with like-minded developers, and participate in hackathons, contests, roadshows, and local events.