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Comment by polpo | Hacker News Reader

It's projection and the gameboard is a retroreflector. Their about page goes into pretty good detail about how it works: https://www.tiltfive.com/the-system

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If it's a retro-reflector, how's all the footage on the site showing that images are appearing outside the retroreflective area and on top of the tracking markers?

Because the footage isn't "real" and isn't through the lens from the perspective of the player. Actual through-the-lens video I've seen is constrained to the retroreflective surface. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKjr__J-ego

I suppose there's a chance that something that is within the confines of the play mat from the player's perspective could appear outside of it to a theoretical outside observer, so they made their marketing reels have stuff appearing outside of the retroreflective mat.

I was wondering about that too...

It appears that they have two boards: a flat board where the images are limited to the reflective area, and a bent board (which has a flap that lifts up at an angle) so that you can get an actual 3d visual...for 3 out of 4 players (the image is still limited to the reflective area, but the reflective area is now 3d instead of just a flat plane).

Oh interesting - I was trying to find that part of their site but could only find them going into depth about how the glasses were AR. That's pretty awesome.

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