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Saw this shown at E3; thought I'd share (since there doesn't seem to be much buzz for it here):

http://www.epawn.fr/

Probably more appropriate for RPGs given its size, but its nice to see some of the "pie in the sky" ideas regarding digital battlefields come to fruition.

Cheers!

Anyone know the size? It looks a bit too small for most of our uses.

Could be good for running simulations and battle reports

Skinnereal wrote:Anyone know the size? It looks a bit too small for most of our uses.

Hi,

I'm ePawn's co-funder and we are targeting a 23" size for the ePawn Arena.

23" is large enough to display a significant amount of terrain/data and small enough to be portable and affordable.

I'll be very interested to get your feedback guys while we are finalizing our internal specifications before launching the industrial process.

Cheers,
Christophe.

To me, it seems like a very cool idea, but I honestly don't see it gaining terribly much traction. I'm reminded of the Penny Arcade comic that featured an iPad and four iPhones that could interface to play Scrabble. You can spend 2600 dollars to play a 10 dollar game.

I hope I'm wrong about that, and I would like to see this idea come to fruition and be successful.

My biggest concern would be price. It is a great idea, I would love to have one, but for the price one of those things would be, just not worth it.

However I would love to have one. It would make playing D&D so much easier. And with 23" it does seem like it would be just large enough to do mapping for RPGs without having to constantly be changing the... picture (I assume).

I would like more details on what exactly it does though. Seems like its just a digital map.

The targeted price is $400 for a 23" screen. This is more than a digital map: you can display any kind of interactive background as in any game.

Note also that with one single ePawn Arena you can have tenth of games (the same way that you have multiple application in your iPhone)

It's only a matter of time until gaming tables use this technology. It sure would speed up the game if the table rolled all the dice!

I remember several months back there was a post about a similar (looking) technology, that used magnetic tags to keep track of the figures stats and info (wounds!)--I too believe this will be the inevitable evolution of the tabletop war game; a prospect I find exciting.

Thought of something like this back in 07 but uses ceiling mounted projectors and tracking chips in the bases of models.

This way you can have full sized table tops with damage overlays, SFX and even conducting a battle using just the system as it auto-calcs the combat results.

Best of both digital and physical gaming as you get to use models and move them around but don't have the hassle of rolling lots of dice, measuring etc.

One can do an augmented reality version of this now if they so wished for a 'cheaper' option. I personally thought that GW should look to the future and innovate in this area.

Thanks for the update, Christophe.

If something like a ePawn can be made in table-top sizes, it'll be great for anything using a flat map.

This looks to be something that will find a whole host of uses, and once the production costs start dropping, I'm sure bigger versions might start appearing.

But, wargames are often 3d, with hills and terrain, which a 2d table would have trouble with.
By combining it with a normal screen, to zoom about the battlefield/map. That way a 3d object can be seen from a side view.

There are lots of tutorials about projectors and roleplaying, etc on the internet.
There are even some touch-screen type tables out there, using tables with projection underneath, and IR or conductive tabletops.

Jordan wrote:To me, it seems like a very cool idea, but I honestly don't see it gaining terribly much traction. I'm reminded of the Penny Arcade comic that featured an iPad and four iPhones that could interface to play Scrabble. You can spend 2600 dollars to play a 10 dollar game.

I hope I'm wrong about that, and I would like to see this idea come to fruition and be successful.

I dunno, lately I think playing warhammer would be more expensive

reminds me of this:

http://vimeo.com/6885648

I think this would be interesting for dungeon crawlers, space hulks and rpgs, specially if your minis are 15mm.

Would be crazy good if a software designer created a dungeon editor for any adventure also with sounds and small animations... Lots of potential for a alternative way to enjoy both worlds, even if in my case nothing beats a modeled dungeon.