CueLight puts an animated spotlight on pool-playing

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.

Posted in: Games