That’s pretty cool, it reminds me of about 80% of the demos I saw at Siggraph in Boston this year though. Everyone was trying to bring interaction directly onto the screen. The physics part was fairly straightforward, but the graffiti icon use was interesting as he pinned down colliders and added springs using gestures. But after the wizzbang effect of him drawing this live on a screen, what’s really new about this? If he wasn’t standing there drawing it onscreen I could’ve believed it was a well done Flash demo, no?
It’s still cool though, I just wish all these people pushing these new interaction technologies would stand back and say , “what about this can’t we do with a mouse?” Is it really new or just reiterating the same paradigms?
Well, sure it’s a combination of already known technologies and not working perfectly yet but i still find it’s pretty cool as it gives an idea of what will be possible within a few years. A intuitive way of teaching, learning, experimenting or building a game… :O)
On a similar note, here’s a neat calculator:
http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/calculators/
direct movie link: http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/calculators/resources/waterfront.mov
Will also makes Mac video games. 
-Jon
:O)
It would be nice to see something like this hand in hand with a meaningful tablet-pc.
Surely this kind of stuff is what you do at home with blocks and lego. Note that the comments on the video include a bunch of stuff like “every college in the UK has this and it’s completely useless”.
Maybe the current implementtion (which?) is kind of useless but i have no problems imagening a great benefit out of this.
By the way http://icampus.mit.edu/MagicPaper/
A fantastic one!
That’s pretty sweet. It must be related to a similar project started at MIT a few years ago, but I like this one you found quite a bit more because it uses more synthesis instead of just sample playback.
http://www.iua.upf.es/mtg/reacTable/musictables/MIT_patten_audiopad.mpg
The interface (spain version) looks so nice and seems to work. You just feel the need to play around with the stones and making music/atmospheres alone or with others and watching the waves…brilliant!
That’s what i love about my Nordlead. You can play in the dark because it has so many lights. Each knob or rotarycontroller has a light which shows where it stands…
I remember seeing a video of a demonstration from 1960 doing something similar. It was a talk given by Alan Kay of Smalltalk fame on how little inovation there has been in the last 20-30 years of programming. The presenter was using a light pen to draw on the screen. The shapes he drew where then treated as object, both in the similuation sense and in the programming sense. It was very interesting.
Any link?
I will see if I can find it this evening.
Ok, my bad, there was no physics in the demos. My memory is now inventing things :shock: However, here are the direct links to the movies and the page which has links to the entire presentation by Alan Kay. I was amazed at what they were doing in the 1960s. You can see how small the step is to adding physics. Another movie shows kids using Squeek to draw a car then control the car and also using Squeak for physics (dealing with gravity experiment I believe).
Page: Lisa Rein's Tour Of Alan Kay's Etech 2003 Presentation - Look for films within presentation.
Direct links:
Sketchpad (1963)
Med Res (80 MB): http://www.lisarein.com/videos/oreilly/etech2003/alankay/sketchpad-ui-1963-mres.mov
High Res (126 MB): http://www.lisarein.com/videos/oreilly/etech2003/alankay/sketchpad-ui-1963-hres.mov
Pen Based at Rand (1968)
Thanks,
i’ll look into this when i have some time again.
Regards,
taumel