AquaTop Immersive Display System: Get Your Hands Wet to Sink Some Files 52
mikejuk writes with an intriguing description of AquaTop, a (very) interactive display system developed at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications Koike Laboratory, which uses a Kinect sensor, a projector, and a tub of cloudy water. Images are projected into the water, and as a user, "[Y]ou can move them around, resize them using the usual two-finger pinch, but you can also pick them up in cupped hands and transfer them somewhere else. The gesture I really liked was 'sink to delete' — yes, that's often how I feel about a file. Add some waterproof loudspeakers under the surface and allow the computer to run them at low frequency. The result is that you can now make the surface 'boil' in response to the sound. You can make fountains of water appear and project the right colors onto it to make it look like an explosion. In the demo game you throw energy bolts at squid that blow up if you hit them. You have to see the video to understand how putting your hands in cold water might be so much fun."
Metaphors (Score:2, Interesting)
This isn't really useful right now, but these kinds of technologies lead to a possible future where we aren't that much different than we are now and we interact with our virtual world a bit more naturally. Contrast that to a future where we adapt ourselves to more easily access the information in our virtual world.
Augmented Reality Sandbox (Score:5, Interesting)
Still prefer Augmented Reality Sandbox [ucdavis.edu].
Example on the tubes [youtube.com]