At this year’s Penny Arcade PAX convention, Wizards of the Coast, makers of the Magic: The Gathering Card game, set up an awesome interactive installation at their booth that let wannabe wizards live out one of their many, many fantasies: blasting imaginary fireballs.
Created by a company called M1 Interactive, the setup relied on a Kinect to track the actions of attendees and instantly translate their motions to a computer generated fireball moving across a large projection screen. All of the fire and spatial sound effects were generated by a real-time physics engine, making the simulation seem all the more believable. And as far as dramatic finishes go, it sure beats picking cards up off a table. [Vimeo via Albotas]