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Witness the beauty of a robot dominating Piano Tiles

Witness the beauty of a robot dominating Piano Tiles

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Piano Tiles is so much easier when you're able to perfectly process and react to 120 frames of motion per second. Unfortunately, most of us can't get anywhere close to that (though I'm sure a StarCraft player somewhere would claim to have that ability). So someone went ahead and built a machine to see what would happen.

Good luck beating this record

The result, which you can watch on YouTube, is pretty fantastic. An iPhone's camera is used to process an iPad's screen at 120 frames per second. A connected machine then analyzes what's being displayed and triggers a hammer every time a tile is passing by. The result is four hammers working in perfect unison to nail tile after tile after tile in Piano Tiles 2. The machine tops out at just over 21 tiles per second before missing one.

The video is kind of serene to watch at first, almost like you're seeing a carefully choreographed orchestra. But as the speed ramps up, it feels more and more like witnessing a tense, frenetic face off with one side about to lose its grip and explode. For better or worse, all that happens when you miss a tile is the game ending.