Finding your regular old pool table a little boring? Perhaps it needs some flames. Not real ones, but animated flames that are projected onto its playing surface and follow the balls as they move. If you're not a pyromaniac, you could instead go for an effect where the balls appear to ripple water as they roll across the felt, or one where they displace liquid to reveal an image of your choice that's hidden underneath. If this sounds like your kind of thing, then you might be interested in Obscura Digital's CueLight Interactive Pool Table System.
CueLight is already in use at Las Vegas' Paradise Tower Penthouse, Hard Rock Hotel and CasinoTM, and at the Esquire SoHo apartment in New York.
The system incorporates an overhead-mounted projector, that shines a 1920 x 1080-pixel display onto a conventional pool table at 60 frames-per-second. Users choose between Fluid, Fire and Reveal modes with a handheld control unit. One would assume that an overhead camera is also used, to track the movements of the balls (Obscura hasn't gotten back to us on that one yet).
The whole thing is a little reminiscent of Queens University's experimental camera-and-projector-based Settlers of Catan game.
CueLight is available with or without a pool table, for an undisclosed price. You can see it in all its flaming, rippling, revealing glory in the video below.
Source: OhGizmo
Where would it stop. Next you will have advertisers advertising drinks on the table while you play so you can have a free game. Or worse make you pay for the game and bombard you with advertising.
No thanks.
Give me a break. This sounds like a fun way of livening up what can be a boring toy on your home game room. If you think of yourself as an expert (yeah, right), don\'t buy if. But don\'t slam a product that others might enjoy. You sound like those \"drunk idiots\" who think photography is only a true art in B&W, or that you must sniff, swirl and spit to be a true wine connoisseur.
Bull sh*t. I\'ve taken some awesome color photos around the world, I\'ve sampled many very good wines in several countries and only spit out one, because it had been stored improperly and turned. And I\'ve played pool for aver 40 years, and did pretty well in my younger years. This sounds like a really interested and artistic addition to my game room. Only a \"drunken fool\" would think otherwise.