FANTASY GROUNDS Goes 3D With TABLETOP CONNECT

Fantasy Grounds, the officially licensed D&D virtual tabletop software, has just acquired Tabletop Connect, a 3D virtual tabletop which was successfully Kickstarted a couple of years ago. "Tabletop Connect is a system-neutral 3D virtual tabletop that lets you connect with your friends to play role-playing games just like you’re around a real table. You play in a true 3D environment—with miniatures, terrain tiles, physics simulated dice, character sheets, and handouts—you can almost feel the dice in your hands." Already one of the big two VTTs (the other being Roll20), this looks like it'll take online virtual tabletop gaming to a whole new level.

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Here's the full press release:

I am pleased to announce that Tabletop Connect has been acquired by SmiteWorks USA, LLC, the developer of the industry leading Fantasy Grounds virtual tabletop. As part of this acquisition I will be joining the SmiteWorks team to accelerate the port of Fantasy Grounds to the Unity platform. "

Doug Davison, President and Co-Owner of SmiteWorks added, "We have a distinct vision of what virtual tabletops can and should look like over the coming years and how Smiteworks can accomplish those things with Fantasy Grounds. For that reason, we began porting the core engine for Fantasy Grounds to Unity so that we could streamline and enhance the experience for players and GM's alike and distribute it more easily across all platforms. We've been following the progress of Tabletop Connect since it launched on Kickstarter and we've been very impressed with what Carl has been able to produce as a one-man operation. He shares the same vision we do on many areas and brings a unique level of talent, passion and creativity that is very hard to find. After some great one-on-one discussions, we believe that together we can do more than we could working separately. Work has been progressing on the Unity rebuild for the last year and I am genuinely excited about how the addition of Carl to the team will allow us to speed up the completion of this project and provide additional enhancements to the resulting product. "

During the development of Tabletop Connect your feedback and support have been invaluable. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to the next generation of virtual tabletops and to deliver the experience that you deserve.

As a backer of Tabletop Connect, you should soon receive the details of the realignment to Fantasy Grounds and your options during this transition.

Sincerely, thanks again for all of your support and I look forward to you joining me on this exciting new adventure!

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Tabletop Connect is here. Fantasy Grounds is, of course, here.

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[Miladoon]

....

I've fiddled quite a bit with the Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 scenario builders, thinking that they would be a great way to make encounters more fun and interesting.

But it only meets use case #1; it utterly fails at use case #2. Trying to do anything "on the fly"---especially for indoor environments---is ridiculously hard.

NWN is what I used to create map tiles and tokens to use in PbP. Fun, but took a long time and was limited to original content or whatever the fandom uploaded.

 

[smiteworks]

Hey guys, just a quick note or two here. The interface for FG will continue to allow for 2d interfaces. Carl's first priorities are with helping us get fully moved over to Unity and then to help with the many different enhancements that have been asked for with 2D environments - tile mapping, layers, lighting, line of sight blocking, etc. The 3D stuff will be coming down the line shortly afterward (we hope) and will provide an additional option for DM's. For in-person games, we still often use a roll-out map and minis, sometimes we use tiles to lay out a map and every once in a while we roll out the Dwarven Forge 3d terrain. I could see some DM's almost exclusively using 3D assets and I could see other DM's using it for major or special scenarios but not for every encounter. Finally, there might be some who would never use it. The way we want to build things out should support all of those play style preferences.

 

[BlueDrake]

Thanks for the further clarifications, that's kind of what I was hoping for and expected would happen. Keep up the great work!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hey guys, just a quick note or two here. The interface for FG will continue to allow for 2d interfaces. Carl's first priorities are with helping us get fully moved over to Unity and then to help with the many different enhancements that have been asked for with 2D environments - tile mapping, layers, lighting, line of sight blocking, etc. The 3D stuff will be coming down the line shortly afterward (we hope) and will provide an additional option for DM's. For in-person games, we still often use a roll-out map and minis, sometimes we use tiles to lay out a map and every once in a while we roll out the Dwarven Forge 3d terrain. I could see some DM's almost exclusively using 3D assets and I could see other DM's using it for major or special scenarios but not for every encounter. Finally, there might be some who would never use it. The way we want to build things out should support all of those play style preferences.

Any plans to support Hololens?

 

[smiteworks]

I'm not sure yet about Hololens. It's super cool, and we might... but it's not on our immediate short list.

 

[Corpsetaker]

Looks to me like we would be spending more time setting things up and interacting with it than actually playing the game.

 

[Miladoon]

You are sitting at in your seat with your hololens controller on your head. You see a computer what do you do? Log into FG2

Hololens supported.

 

[Raloc]

Hate to burst the bubble on Hololens, but it has an unusably low FOV - 30x17.5. So only a tiny little window of your normal vision would have any 3D objects displayed, and they'd be cut off on a hard edge.

Also, it's confirmed by MS to be a hard physical limit - FOV won't be improving for a consumer version as long as they're using the same technique.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hate to burst the bubble on Hololens, but it has an unusably low FOV - 30x17.5. So only a tiny little window of your normal vision would have any 3D objects displayed, and they'd be cut off on a hard edge.

Also, it's confirmed by MS to be a hard physical limit - FOV won't be improving for a consumer version as long as they're using the same technique.

I don't know what those numbers mean, but I grew up wearing glasses, and glasses have a tiny FOV too. It's not really noticeable for me. I expect Hololens to feel similar.

Edit: okay, I found out what those numbers mean, and it is significantly smaller than glasses. More like a laptop held at arms' length. http://doc-ok.org/?p=1274, or like two Kindles put together at reading distance. Smaller than I expected, but large enough to be perfectly usable in a VTT scenario. I'm still excited for it.

 

[Raloc]

I don't know what those numbers mean, but I grew up wearing glasses, and glasses have a tiny FOV too. It's not really noticeable for me. I expect Hololens to feel similar.

Edit: okay, I found out what those numbers mean, and it is significantly smaller than glasses. More like a laptop held at arms' length. http://doc-ok.org/?p=1274, or like two Kindles put together at reading distance. Smaller than I expected, but large enough to be perfectly usable in a VTT scenario. I'm still excited for it.

Yeah, it's way smaller than you'd imagine. Personally I think it would be insanely distracting to have stuff disappearing out of the FOV constantly.

Also, the Hololens, IIRC, is going to cost ~$1500.

You'd be better off just buying a GearVR and slapping some cameras on it for passthrough.