How real is a Live Casino: a look at the technology that powers the experience

Live casino games have revolutionised the online casino. Rather than relying on traditional RNG technologies, live casino games now see human dealers play and handle almost every aspect of the game. This has made the worlds of both online and real life casinos never seem so close, but in order for a true authentic casino experience to be delivered, live casinos require a whole host of technologies to ensure that every game can be played in a real and genuine way. 

Live streaming provides the foundations of live casino games

In order to create a flawless live casino stream, online casinos have set up multiple high definition cameras to ensure that every action that takes place within a game is captured. A simple stream is not all that is required, in order to be authentic and to keep the games fair, casinos need the live streams to be of the very highest quality.

To work alongside the streams, an online casino will often use the very latest and sophisticated video compression technologies to ensure a smooth broadcast can be enjoyed by all who are playing. To provide an authentic experience, glitches simply can’t happen and these steps help ensure that won’t happen.

The casino may not be all it appears

When playing live games like roulette and blackjack it looks like the dealers are located right in the heart of the casino floor. The reality is actually quite different.

As the popularity of live casinos continues to soar, there simply isn’t enough space for games to be played in a real casino environment, therefore casinos have moved their live casino operations to studios that have been purposely built for live casino broadcasting.

Able to push the technology to its fullest capacity, these studios provide plenty of space for a whole host of different games to take place and also ensure that a casino can stock it full of all the required hi-tech visual and audio equipment.

Although some players would love to be interacting and players within a real casino environment, by taking place in a studio, the games that are delivered and broadcast are as authentic as possible.

Without a Game Control Unit nothing can happen 

It could be argued that the most important element of live casino technology is the Game Control Unit. You may know it as a GCU. 

A GCU is something you would barely recognise, it is often very small but they small things come in mighty sizes and without a GCU, the whole live casino experience would fall down. The GCU breaks down everything that is happening in the game and produces all of the outputs that are required. 

Let’s use live blackjack as an example. 

As well as recognising all of the different starting bets that are placed, the GCU triggers when a response is needed. In the case of blackjack, it would report back to the dealer if a player has chosen to take a card or stand on their hand, it would also flag when a player has busted out. 

The Game Control Unit (GCU) is able to take the action that the player has decided to take and feed this back to the dealer. The GCU will also reveal at the end of the hand what player has been successful so that the dealer knows who held a winning hand and who held a losing one. 

The GCU might be the smallest piece of tech in the casino but the role it needs to perform is certainly mighty. 

Don’t forget about Optical Camera Recognition

Whilst the GCU may be the star of the live casino show, a live casino stream wouldn’t be legitimate or provide the authentic experience without optical camera recognition technology. 

Otherwise known as OCR, OCR technology is what detects what is on the table. For example if cards are dealt or chips are placed, all of this movement is tracked by OCR.

Operating at thousands of frames per second, any movement is detected and it ensures that nothing is jerky and that all of the action on the table is presented back to the players in a smooth and clear way. 

Without it, the high class broadcasting experience that every live casino strives for just wouldn’t be possible without OCR technology being present. 

RNG’s still have a role to play 

The role of Random Number Generators still have an essential role to play in live casinos.

Random Number Generators ensure that games are kept fair and legitimate and often when it comes to shuffling packs in games such as blackjack, three card poker or baccarat, this is done by RNG’s to ensure that everything is kept as fair as it possibly can be. RNG’s aren’t the shining stars they used to be but RNG tech still plays a pivotal role in ensuring that live casino games are kept legitimate and fair. 

AI is set to bolster live casino technology even further

There can be very few doubts that the emergence of AI will change the casino landscape once again. At the moment AI use in live casinos is limited but that will change – particularly when it comes to interaction. 

At the moment people playing within a live casino can talk to their fellow players with ease through web and mobile chat services that are controlled by traditional methods. 

There are hopes that AI will make communicating even easier, there are even thoughts that AI could eventually replace the dealers dealing the cards, but that still remains a long way off. 

Exactly how AI will alter the world of live casino technology is still to be proved, but once it is applied in the correct way, you can be ensured that the tech within live casinos will never be the same again.