Things are going well for my daughter in gifted nerd school. She had a great deal of anxiety about changing schools, to the extent that she was transferring her anxiety to other issues like burglars coming in the house and killing us all or the Earth burning up due to global warming. Shit got real dark for her. Most the anxiety was over not making new friends. She's usually pretty good at making friends but whatever. She made friends with some kids who like to play the Pokemon card game, so I bought her starter packs. Is Pokemon a cool card game? It came after I was a kid, and really have no idea. I've got a spare flat screen TV sitting around so I'm thinking about turning it into a virtual pinball cabinet. Virtual pinball is pretty amazing, check out some YouTube of it. I hope to get the software working by next week and if I can get that working I'll buy some hardware (buttons and a plunger plugged into a makeshift box with a USB control hub). Hopefully the week after that I can start building a cabinet. I'm going to have to find a few monitors at Goodwill for the back display. I hope to get solenoids to simulate the bumpers and some kind of head tracker to make it do 3d as i move around, I should probably buy a tilt sensor as well. I project 3 months so I guess it will take me 5 months to get it all up and running. If you buy coffee, do this for me, know what size you want and wether you would like room or not when you order. If you want an alternative milk, tell the poor soul before they start your drink. Have your money ready (you know you have to pay, so stop acting like this phase is such a fucking surprise). I hear many people bitch about how slow service is at coffee shops but I'm guessing many people should be complaining to a mirror. I'm four strong Belgium's in and have cracked open a bottle of white port wine. I haven't been able to get a proper drunk on for weeks but tonight the spirit has over taken me. Huzzah!
Outside of her gifted nerd school? No, not really. Inside? Tough to tell! If there are people she wants to spend time with, and those people play it...Then I guess it's a cool card game for her! If you can find an old Kinect (Microsoft's retort to the Wii), they actually have pretty good body movement tracking software. Might be your best commercial option without spending thousands. Enjoy the libations, keep us updated on that cabinet :)Is Pokemon a cool card game?
some kind of head tracker
A web cam with head tracking will get you most of the way there. The web cam method only give perspective in a plane while a kinetic will add a z axis to the perspective change. I'm a long way from implementing head tracking so it isn't much of a worry. I suppose I'll keep my eye out for web cams and kinetic's while I check Good Will for a back plate and for matrix monitor.