Ask HN: Camera / software recommendations for board games via video conference

by akrauss on 3/17/2020, 3:04:57 PM with 2 comments
Given the special circumstances, we have a demand for kids playing board games with their grandparents over Skype/Zoom etc. A simple webcam attached to a music stand works for games like chess, but for things with a larger board the resolution is not sufficient. Ideally, I would want high pixel resolution, but the time resolution (fps) can be rather low. But Skype/Zoom does not seem to be optimized for this use case.

Does anyone have experience with such a setup? I am looking for both hardware and software ideas.

  • by jaegerpicker on 3/17/2020, 3:08:34 PM

    One alternative to a camera set up might be, tabletop simulator. It's a board game software remote play app on Steam. It has a ton of games set up for it and has low system requirements. It's not hard to set up either though everyone would need to be comfortable installing software.

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator...

  • by smallduck on 3/19/2020, 12:13:46 AM

    There will someday be games supporting TiltFive AR (tiltfive.com) that will be a great for this use case.

    For something like chess, for example, the player on each end could have physical pieces, something that would work well for non-gamers/techies.