How can we allow remote players to effectively interact with a physical tabletop battle-map?

Question

Part of our in-person tabletop group moved six hours away mid-campaign. We've been dealing with the distance by having multiple laptops set up, one with the players on the screen and the camera pointed at the DM; another with a webcam pointed at the grid board. However, this is awkward and results in a lot of "I move three squares left. No, the other left. No, one more square that way," or "Can you move the webcam so we can see?", etc.

We'd like to find a way for our remote players to reliably see the entire table at once, and to be able to point to specific squares on the board.

We're aware of online/virtual tabletops like Roll20, but we don't want to use them for various reasons. For the purposes of this question, we are only looking for real-world, meatspace solutions.

How can we allow our remote players to have:

1. A top-down, or otherwise all-encompassing, view of a physical tabletop combat grid, such as one drawn on dry-erase dungeon tiles;
2. The ability to indicate individual squares or other features on the grid?

Note: While my question is similar to this question, that one accepts virtual tabletop solutions and does not solve our problem.

Answer 1

For remote play at our table, we use a camera that is stuck on a microphone-boom-arm that can be rotated by 360°. We found out that we prefer it to have our rest position at about 45°, instead of top-down because the top-down angle creates nausea for some of our players, and it simulates sitting at a table.

We use a 19 by 19 go-board with numbered and lettered tiles, so if a player wants to move they say:

I want to move to A 9, attack Goblin 3 with my sling, and then take cover behind the rock on B 9.

There are different kinds of boom-arms that you can use. We tested for a while. We now use one with a tripod stand as it is the most stable while remaining flexible as opposed to the mountable-holder that we initially fixed to our gaming-table.

For indicating features, we use a mix of miniatures that were part of the 2002 D&D boardgame by Hasbro and cardboard printouts that create terrain objects by sliding them together at a 90° angle with little plastic sockets, so they don't topple over.

Answer 2

The boom camera suggested by Akixkisu is a good way to solve the vision problem.

For directions as an alternative to the numbered grid I would suggest just defining N,S,E,W. "I move 3 squares west, 2 squares north, then attack the goblin" for example.

Since most directions are given relative to your current position you just need a clear way to indicate your movement relative to your current position and a big compass rose printout placed on the table will give that.

Answer 3

Have you tried suspending a camera directly over the map? This wont give great details so you could also angle it a little. You can hang from from the ceiling or have some sort of stand to hold it.

I would also suggest labeling the board much like in chess so that a player could say "I move from A7 to B9" so there is less confusion.