Techfest 2009
by SimKill on Jan.28, 2009, under General
So I and a friend had gone to the ‘Techfest 2009′ at the IIT on the 26th.
What to say, we spent more time walking around the college than actually seeing events. The only one that we actually saw was the Robot Wars. Yes, only one decent event. We just saw the semi finals and the finals.
The main reason we had come there was to see the Microsoft Surface. Along with that, they were even demonstrating the ReacTable. The ReacTable was a pretty impressive demo with two people playing out instrumental music.
On the other hand, the Microsoft Surface was a blooper waiting to happen. Arguably just lesser than the Windows 98 BSOD before its launch. They had started the drumming software and called a person from the audience, who apparently was a good drummer. His movements were so fast that the Surface couldn’t track them essentially skipping notes like older CD players skipped songs while on bumps.
Thus, the entire purpose that we went for was defeated. Still, all was not lost. For the closure of the event, they had the laser man show.
The performance was only for a few minutes, but in retrospect, these few minutes were worth every bit of visiting the IIT festival. It is indescribable in words, pictures or even videos. You just have to be there to see it.
We also made a few new friends there waiting in the queue to get into the auditorium for the final event.
Overall, it was a pretty worthwhile experience.
January 29th, 2009 on 12:28 am
Nice to know that me hacking you in and back dooring another guy in actually paid off :p Where’s my name in the credits roll?!
The surface drumming issue, imo was due to the contact time on the screen not being enough. You need to have enough pressure cause it does have IR beams you need to cut and it should be for long enough to show up on the cameras (which I’m pretty sure should be at least 15-25 fps and thus sufficient). Of course, these are educated guesses since I don’t have 15K USD for getting my hands on a dev version of Microsoft Surface and well.. Microsoft doesn’t love me *that much* (yet?
)
All is not lost.. Surface is still young. In the meanwhile, you can continue drooling at the 2 year old videos on http://microsoft.com/surface
January 30th, 2009 on 11:05 pm
^whatever he said @surface plus an awesome blog design. Hope to see more spicier posts herein! \m/
January 30th, 2009 on 11:14 pm
@Karun AB
This is exactly why Macs score over their PC counterparts. You don’t think “I need 279ms contact time, or else it wont register.” You just drum.
And it’s not the pressure I believe, I think it’s the motion detection/change detection. I guess if you rig up 5x 1000FPS cameras that would do the trick, but then need a software re-write to adjust for all the speedy goodness.