MOTO preps multi-touch Blackjack table
updated 12:00 pm EST, Tue November 17, 2009
MOTO hopes to bring multi-touch tech to casinos
MOTO Development Group on Tuesday showed off its first round multi-touch casino gaming table prototype at the Global Gaming Expo 2010 in Las Vegas. Similar in concept to the Microsoft Surface, the touch table has Blackjack and Texas Hold ‘Em poker games built into it. The table has one large integrated touchscreen that supports multi-touch inputs from many players.
MOTO believes its resistive touch system is ideal for card gaming, as it replaces physical tokens, chips, cards and game pieces, letting users get straight to the game and skip setting up, counting chips or keeping track of all the rules. The Blackjack card game demonstrated on the MOTO gaming tablet was written in Java and uses open source graphics library called Processing.
Users can deal out the virtual cards by sliding them to each player, or automating the task. The cards are placed face down, but can be flipped when users cup their hand and slide it across the surface, shielding the cards from other players. Showing cards is done by raising the cupped hand. Bets are placed by dragging virtual chips into the center of the table.
There is no indication of when gamblers can expect to see MOTO's surface gaming in casinos, but the company says it needs to resolve security and human learning curve issues before this happens.
