The second picture suggests that the Surface recognizes miniatures by a printed label that you slap on the bottom of the miniature: does this mean that you could play as a salt shaker or coffee mug instead of as a proprietary miniature you had to purchase or rent with the game?
Can you play without miniatures at all: with icons displayed by the surface?
And why does the surface show a square grid instead of what I remember as the standard D&D hexagonal grid (easily substituted by a the inside of a fast food burger wrapper)?
DnD 4.0 has a square grid. There is the option of incorporating a hexagonal one, but the rules are less restrictive in terms of diagonal movement and such.
Also, I can imagine a system like this that doesn't need any sort of recognition beyond tactile recognition if all you wanted to do was keep track of ones place in the game. I've thought of doing something similar for a game session just using photoshop layers.
The problem I foresee with this is that the devices for the most part aren't that big. They really seem to be made for three or four people at most to sit around at one time.
If you're interested in seeing the video they made showing the concept (which I think helps to explain some aspects of it), I embedded the video back in December (it's after the Daily Show clips): http://www.michaelcrane.net/oak/blog/som…
Can you play without miniatures at all: with icons displayed by the surface?
And why does the surface show a square grid instead of what I remember as the standard D&D hexagonal grid (easily substituted by a the inside of a fast food burger wrapper)?
DnD 4.0 has a square grid. There is the option of incorporating a hexagonal one, but the rules are less restrictive in terms of diagonal movement and such.
Also, I can imagine a system like this that doesn't need any sort of recognition beyond tactile recognition if all you wanted to do was keep track of ones place in the game. I've thought of doing something similar for a game session just using photoshop layers.
But it does look insanely awesome.
Wow.
Technology ... looking for a reason to exist ...
Maybe they could use it to show Maury on?
It's really just embarrassing how bad Microsoft 2 years ago looks compared to Apple today.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/02/10/han…
I hope we get to see this at PAX west this year.