As of soon, the site fechdeck.com will be no more. Going forward the FechDeck will be supported through github. There’s a new github repository at

https://github.com/jamesferwerda/FechDeck

that contains v2.0 of the instructions and spreadsheets as well as the image files for the card faces and backs.

At the moment physical FechDecks can still be purchased through Amazon or directly from me. Get them while supplies last! 😉

-Jim

My students and I have been working in the (new) area of tangible displays for several years. A paper describing our current state-of-the art has been published in Vision Research. Reference/link, abstract, and sample image below.

[J19] Ferwerda, J.A. (2014) ImpastoR: a realistic surface display system. Vision Research, doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2014.10.016.

Abstract: In this paper we describe our efforts to create a surface display system that produces realistic representations of real-world surfaces. Our system, based on a desktop PC with GPU hardware, LCD display, light and position sensors, and custom graphics software, supports the photometrically accurate and visually realistic real-time simulation and display of surfaces with complex color, gloss, and textural properties in real-world lighting environments, and allows users to interact with and manipulate these virtual surfaces as naturally as if they were real ones. We explain the system design, illustrate its capabilities, describe experiments we conducted to validate its fidelity, and discuss potential applications in material appearance research and computer-aided appearance design.

Figure 1: A real painting (left), and a representation rendered by our surface display system (right). The color, gloss, and texture properties of the painting are all rendered correctly for the real scene lighting, and the appearance of the surface changes appropriately with movement of the observer or display.