Multitouch

Most of us have seen or heard of Multitouch displays (if not go here) and they are increasing in use: many laptops have them though mostly Macs, and the iPod touch famously features one.  But larger multitough displays are hard to make at a reasonably low cost.  That is until now.  Nui group, the same people that made the "Smart Board" have released tBeta, it is a free GNU program amd set of librarys that allows you to use multitouch at a low cost.  It uses a a webcam input to see highly contrasting areas of light and dark (eg a shadow a finger makes on a peice of paper) to create a point.  Many points can be seen at one time (dependant on the camera resolution) and these corespond to many points of interaction.  If you have a decent webcam and a projector (although not aboulutly nessecary it makes for a good efect) then it would cost around £25 ($45) to make the surface style table.  For more info visit http://tbeta.nuigroup.com/

tbeta preview from ~ on Vimeo.