Hasta La Gadget!

At the University of Groningen, a team of researchers wanted to see if they could pull off making a huge touch-screen capable of use by more than one person at a time. After tons of work, the team managed to create this massive 33-foot long by 9 foot high curved touch screen that can accept over 1000 touch points at the same time. The screen is only about 3mm thick, with a set of six HD projectors behind the screen generating the image. In the video (under the jump) you can see three people using the screen simultaneously. 

The technology is similar to Microsoft’s Surface tables, just mounted on a wall vertically, curved around at an angle, and of course, much bigger. The team used a few cameras, some infrared sensors, and a thousand LEDs to create the display, which has a resolution of 4900 x 1700 pixels. 

The research team has all of their notes and build documents shared, so if you’re thinking of putting one in your house for some light gaming, go for it – the components are widely available and the sensor software running on the systems is free to download and open source. These guys will likely use theirs for research and showcase purposes, but hook this thing up to an iPhone and I’ll bet you can get some serious multiplayer touch-screen gaming on.