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Comment by TedDoesntTalk | Hacker News Reader

Another Las Vegas Window Trick is to prevent any natural light on the casino floors. The gambler has no sense of time of day without looking at a clock, but that’s not the same as feeling “oh, it’s almost dawn” by looking at the daylight.

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I have always heard this, but I suspect it’s less of an intentional trick and more just a happy accident of how large Vegas gambling floors are. Even if the buildings were wrapped in floor to ceiling windows natural light would only penetrate the first couple rows of slots.

The Mirage in particular actually has a pretty large skylight towards the front of the gambling floor.

There's a lot of psychological stuff going on with the casino floors but I'm not sure how you'd design a massive ground floor room in a way that there would be a lot of natural light. And it would actually be user-hostile (and, yes, doubtless business hostile) to spread the casino across a lot of floors.

Internal courtyards is how you add light and air circulation to a large floor plan, typically

I've seen (but not entered) casinos in office towers. I imagine you have the sea of slot machines on the first floor or two, and then table games and high roller rooms on the upper floors.

For a las vegas style ginormous casino and hotel, many of them have the casino footprint much larger than the hotel footprint. You could have big diffused skylights over much of the gaming area, if you wanted. Of course, you'd augement that with lots of artificial lighting, so it would save energy, but not change the experience of roughly constant lighting 24/7

Skylights

I thought about that after I wrote the comment although a lot of the time there's convention center and other expansive spaces above the casino.

Works for the floor that is under the roof.

I worked at a casino (albeit different country) and I was always told this is on purpose. My casino also didn't have windows, and there were no clocks. And the very busy patterns on the carpet are made like that so visitors don't look down and keep staring at their slot machines.

The lack of clocks is deliberate, I think the natural light is simply a case of it not being practical to allow it. Furthermore, the space around the gambling areas is used for various business purposes, both to get gamblers to see the businesses and to get people to walk past the machines to go to the businesses. To put in windows would be to give up prime areas.

Some gaming jurisdictions mandate that slot machines must display the time in a font at least 7mm tall.

The best "dark pattern" trick from Las Vegas casinos may be to start pumping pure oxygen thru A/C around midnight, so guests would get some "high" boost, keeping them gambling harder and tirelessly all night long.

I read about this many years ago in "Fools Die" by Mario Puzo, which of course is fiction, but I think there may be some truth in there (One of the characters in the book is mostly based on the author himself).

Edit. Found an original quote from the book:

  Gronevelt was dressed to go down to the casino floor. He fiddled with the control panel that would flood the casino pits with pure oxygen. But it was still too early in the evening. He would push the button sometime in the early-morning hours when the players were tiring and thinking of going to bed. Then he would revive them as if they were puppets. It was only in the past year that be had the oxygen controls wired directly to his suite.

Casinos do not now nor have they ever pumped oxygen into their buildings. It's nothing more than a myth.

This is true, however may be worth noting that I’m sure they (along with many large commercial buildings non-specific to casinos) control the carbon dioxide levels inside, and increase air exchange with the outside when necessary.

High carbon dioxide levels do have a lethargic effect

Lets not forget that casinos also allow smoking on the gambling floor, so excess air handling and filtration capacity is a necessity.

Any LEED certified building will do that.

> One of the characters in the book is mostly based on the author himself

Fun fact: Puzo had a serious gambling problem. He did most of his research for The Godfather while gambling in a Las Vegas casino (or several?) and interviewing the manager.

Building fires would sure be exciting!

Ah! I don't think they need so much oxygen to be a fire hazard. People would start acting crazy, at least.

I also wonder if they use to do the same - to some extend - in trains and airplanes, I always feel quite relaxed while traveling by them.

Not if you live in a northern climate dawn in the winter is 8am at its worst and sunset can be as early as 4pm.

I worked in a small casino and we had a huge front window that you could see south eastward. But yes I'm sure some some people lose track of time it's human nature.

Lost count of mall visits where glass ceilings bask in morning light, only to leave hours later to a dark sky. The capitalist secret: hiding the day-night transition from customers.

Malls don't have a hotel on top, they can use skylights. In most places casinos have something above the gambling areas--either hotel or meeting rooms (or, in some cases, meeting rooms and then hotel above them.) Unless you have some business with the meeting rooms you're likely to not realize they are there.

There are also some casinos where there are restaurants above the gambling areas.

But they don’t have to be built that way. It’s a choice that shows natural light is not a priority.

Of course not. Being able to fit 3000 rooms above the casino is the priority.

No, the casino floors can be on the top floor. Or the hotel rooms can be built in another tower.

The land our casinos are built on is very expensive, they're not going to separate the hotel from the casino. I would be surprised if you could provide meaningful natural light into our casinos for less than 9 figures.

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