Combiform!

[DWH]

So, this week was SIGGRAPH week (the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques), and as such I was treated to at least a little of the latest and greatest of what's happening in computer graphics. Sadly, I was limited by two things: having to go to work at 2pm every day, and only having a basic conference pass, but really, the second was highly informed by the first- all the cool talks tended to be after I had to be at work already. :/

Still! I was grateful one of my friends had a spare Basic pass, unlike the Exhibit Hall pass I could get through work, because it let me into my favourite area of the conference: Emerging Technologies. E-Tech is sometimes full of the most random-ass crap, since it's all experimental, but there's always a few really cool things in there. My pick for the coolest thing in E-Tech this year is a game called Combiform.



The idea is that instead of interacting with images on a screen, you'll be interacting with the other players. The controllers are also the console- to build the full console, all four controllers connect through magnets:



There are apparently a bunch of different games you can play, but the game I tested was called "Switch." The premise is simple: All four controllers start connected. Two controllers turn blue, the other two turn purple. The two purple controllers have to switch places, and the blue controllers cannot lose contact while this happens. It starts off with a pretty long time limit, but the time limit gets shorter as you go on. It's really simple in concept, but is actually super fun to play.

This isn't yet available to the masses, but they are planning on starting a Kickstarter project to get funding soon. I know I'm going to be kicking in some money for them, because that game is pretty cool, and I'd love to have it in my collection. They're winning awards for it, so hopefully they'll get it up and running and on sale for all of us to play!

There were other neat things in there, but a lot of it isn't anywhere near practicality or usefulness at the consumer level, or even at the Giant VFX House Level (yes, your glasses-less 3D projections are cool! No, I don't want to even think about storing the data from your 27 CAMERAS at my facility. We were annoyed enough about the bloating from regular 3D, which is only two eyes. Just imagine, trying to track 27 eyes through the entire production pipeline. *shudder*).

So that's your dose of Spiffy New Technology, brought to you by the fine folks at SIGGRAPH.

[Neko]

It looks cool! It's almost like a techie version of Simon and BopIt. Spacial games like that drive me crazy.

[rowan]

That sounds awesome! My husband went to SIGGRAPH a couple years in a row and always talked about the new cool things. Too bad we can't get his current company to send him.