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High tech interaction for air guitarists

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail CNTV, September 6, 2011
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Want to play along with your favorite band long after the tour has moved on? The Air Guitar T-shirt let's you do just that - using special software to keep you in tune and close to the beat.

Playing air guitar has never been really cool, but this hi-tech T-shirt could change all that. It interacts with your computer and tracks your attempts to keep up with the professional musicians.

A small Welsh company called FK Create has utilized "augmented reality" technology to make the air guitar experience more realistic.

Luke Khan, director of FK Create, said, "We built it on a technology called augmented reality. It's a really cool technology which is coming to the masses quite quickly at the minute. We put our own twist on augmented reality. Augmented reality is a computer, so the digital world reading the physical world and the physical world manipulating the digital."

Users navigate to a free website using a webcam. Once players are signed in, the Air Guitar T-shirt and computer work together to do the rest. The technology enables you to play in time to the music, scoring points as you go, while recording your session for other users to see.

Luke Khan said, "The webcam picks up the symbol here on the center of the guitar, on the T-shirt and then when I hide that symbol it plays a note and obviously if you play in time you get green, you get added points, play off time you get red, you get points deducted."

This year the Air Guitar T-shirt won an innovation award at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, USA.

The inventors are a small design firm based in Cardiff, South Wales. They believe it's the first time augmented reality has been used in this way and have put "wannabee musicians" at the heart of gameplay.

As there's no hardware or microchips in the T-shirts. The creators say they can be sold for a reasonable price alongside other band merchandise at gigs and other music venues.

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