When online casinos first started appearing about two decades ago they were pretty primitive. They were distinctly two dimensional and not very engaging, but as the phenomenon grew to be the multi-billion dollar global business that it is today operators have spared no expense in making it as immersive an experience as possible for players. One of the key ways that they have done this has been through the advent of live casino games. These are essentially a combination of real croupiers who use real cards and chips while also utilising an authentic roulette wheel in order to lead the game with the player in real time. This is all streamed via a camera in a live studio to a player’s computer or mobile device.
This is not a new idea of course as people have been visiting live dealer casinos in bricks and mortar venues for years, but it is a great way to bring the online gaming experience right into your living room. Of course, there are a few things that need to happen in order to make the whole thing work properly and it all comes down to some fairly sophisticated technology.
The croupiers who work in these studios are actually located in real casinos and the croupier software is interfaced with a piece of hardware that’s called a GCU (Game Control Unit). This is a very small device, not much bigger than a shoe box, which is responsible for encoding all the information for the video stream that goes out to the player. Every single table has its own GCU and without these devices the live casino wouldn’t be possible.
Another piece of the puzzle is the OCR software which converts all the physical transactions that take place between a croupier and the player into data. This is very similar to the OCR software that you’d see used in hospitals or car parks for example. This data is then processed and interpreted to make sure that the results of a particular game are correct.
As the industry has evolved it’s been found that the best games work with a high level of detail and so the live casino tables have been built with this in mind. As such, the games will be played in HD which helps to maintain this high level of detail and ensure that everything works as intended.
In addition to this, the games can be adjusted to suit different screen sizes. This means that you can play the game on a tablet or smartphone as well as on a PC. The software will automatically adjust the resolution of the game in order to maintain this level of detail.
The other thing that needs to happen for the live casino to function is that the operator needs to be regulated by an official body. This is so that players can be sure that they’re playing with a company that’s been independently verified and has all of the correct paperwork in place.