As with all aspects of the entertainment industry, technology has completely disrupted the online casino sector within a very short period of time.
While the most popular online casinos just a few short years ago offered little more than a basic, 8-bit card-playing format, things have moved on since then.
While casinos have been experimenting with VR technology, 4D playing experiences, and cryptocurrencies, there is one technological change that has spread across the entire industry – live casino. Live casino adopted relatively basic technology to offer a completely different casino gaming experience – one that makes the whole thing just as immersive and realistic as if you were on the casino floor of Caesar’s Palace.
While live casino continues to be one of the most popular forms of e-gaming among audiences of all shapes and sizes, few people actually understand how it works. If you want to learn more about the technology behind this emerging and disruptive form of online gaming.
Live Casino: The Basics
The reasoning behind this is that it allows the player to feel like they are in a real casino, while enjoying the thrill of experiencing all of the action in real-time. Furthermore, some players find it more trustworthy than purely e-casino gaming, although the win rates are virtually identical in both live casino and virtual casino. If you want to learn more about live casino you can visit www.bestcasino.uk.
Filming and Streaming
The most important piece of technology that enables live casino isn’t as advanced as you might think. A high-quality video camera is the central piece of equipment, while a reliable Internet connection is another. Black, poker, and roulette dealers are filmed in a studio designed to resemble a real-life casino floor, with players choosing to connect to these dealers via a live stream.
While the list of necessary tech might not be exhaustive, a lot of effort goes on behind the scenes to ensure a smooth live casino experience. The action is generally choreographed by an experience director, who will be managing the scene from a nearby control room to ensure the experience feels as authentic as possible. The biggest online casinos will also use multiple cameras from different angles, Hollywood style, to make the experience of playing online roulette feel just like being in a movie.
The director may also monitor the live chat between the dealer and the player to make sure all is running smoothly. A lot of effort, especially in the form of equipment testing, goes into making sure that the live stream is absolutely perfect, as even being a single second delayed can completely ruin the experience for the player. It’s a competitive, time-intensive offering that only the biggest online casinos can usually afford to pull off.
Optical Character Recognition
Have you ever been clocked by a speed camera that was monitoring your car? If so, then you’ve already had an experience with a central piece of live casino technology. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is embedded into the live stream to digitally recognise all of the characters on the cards that are dealt. This way the online casino will instantly know if you’ve been dealt a Royal Flush or have been the dealer at blackjack.
This technology is also used in live roulette, but to a lesser extent. Rather, most live roulette games involve the use of sensors in the roulette wheel, which monitor which number the ball lands on and feeds it back to the server. This way the player can enjoy 100% accuracy and payouts in real time. All of the data from this technology is generally fed into a Game Control Unit (GCU) that digitises all of the information from a game, helping bridge that gap between the digital and the physical.
Security and Payouts
Like other types of online casino, live casino gaming involves the highest level of e-payment security to ensure that winners can enjoy peace of mind when it comes to their jackpots. Payment platforms are usually heavily encrypted to prevent inception by hackers, while there are a number of authentication measures in place to prevent fraud.
The live stream itself will also be protected and encrypted, ensuring that you and the dealer are the only ones involved. Online casinos tend to go to huge lengths to ensure security, as they know that this is more likely to attract and retain customers.
How the live casino sector will develop over the next few years remains a mystery, but if one thing is certain, it’s that this is a part of the entertainment industry that is more eager to embrace new technologies than most.
