Last week, our senior multitouch engineer braved the 25-hour flight to Malaysia to install a MT-50 Multitouch Table in the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin buildings in the world. Our table is in the lobby of Petrosains, the science and discovery center on the 4th & 5th levels of both towers.
The center is huge, with over 70,000 sq. ft of exhibit space(!), and features several implementations of multitouch technologies. The screens that can be seen behind the MT-50 in the photo below are also multitouch, as are the kiosks and touch voting screens in the background. The “Hot Science” gallery is designed to promote interest in the latest cutting-edge scientific research. Although the center focuses on petroleum-related technologies (the towers are home to Petronas, Malaysia’s national oil and gas company), it has a wide variety of other science exhibits as well.
It seemed like everyone got a kick out of the programs on the table. Staff and visitors alike enjoyed playing Gravitoy, a multitouch physics-based game (NUITEQ) that allows you to change the way objects slide on the table. All of the Petrosains staff were extremely welcoming and helpful. Check out our flickr set to see more images from the Petrosians install.
It’s been a busy week for the GestureWorks team. Our programmers have been developing a Flex-compatible version of GestureWorks, which we expect to release later this month. (We already provide the easiest way to author multitouch with Adobe Flash.) Be the first to know about our Flex release; follow GestureWorks on Twitter and Facebook.
We’ve posted some great new tutorials on creating applications with the flick & zoom gestures, as well as a more complex tutorial on implementing rotate, zoom & drag on multiple objects. Hopefully these tutorials will aid new developers as well as developers new to GestureWorks in easily creating multitouch applications in Flash.
We are now offering educational pricing for developers and teachers in both institutional and informal learning environments. Museum folk, that means educational pricing is available for you too! The standard version of GestureWorks, which allows distribution on up to 5 machines, is $99, while a site license is $399. Use the coupon code “edu50” at checkout before April 15th to save an additional $50 dollars on your new copy of GestureWorks!
So how tough is the MT-50 multitouch table? Just last week, we tried to find out. We conducted a few tests to see how the glass surface of the table in particular would hold up to some serious abuse. First, we dropped a 12-pound bowling ball onto the table from a height of 2 feet, then we hit the table hard with a 4-pound hammer. Not only did the tempered glass surface survive, it showed no marks from these impacts.
As you can see, we had a lot of fun with this, but durability is a serious concern for tables that are deployed in public spaces. The MT-50 is not only the fastest table out there (with 60 points of simultaneous input), but now we can also safely say it is the toughest. Don’t try to drop a bowling ball on a Microsoft Surface!
Update: March 5, 2010 – The story about the improved MT-50 has gotten around this week with stories in Engadget, Slashgear, Electronista, and dozens of other blogs.
