For the Adobe Mobile Challenge 2011 Kay Wiegand and Tobias Richter from the Berlin Razorfish office produced a Crossplatform Mobile Application with Flash Builder 4.5 for iOS, Android and BlackBerry called TOUCH N CLASH! The App was a smashing success and went on to win the highly sought-after Novelty/Innovation Prize! Read what the jury said here!

TOUCH N CLASH is powered by the Adobe RTMFP group functionality. By utilizing this technology, it was possible for us to create the necessary multiplayer communication without establishing a server/client infrastructure. On the gameplay side of things, another notable feature is the physics engine we implemented that really brings the fun of the game mechanics to life and adds a level of intensity to the overall experience. To really kick things up a notch, we tapped into the device accelerometers to control the direction of the gameballs. The unique selling point that helped us stand apart from the competition is that the game is playable with different devices together in a cross-platform experience.

The gameplay is a very simple, but VERY fun:
In the game, the colored sides of your game-field represent the other players. If a gameball appears in your game-field, you have to pass it to another player before the countdown timer runs out. To pass a gameball to another player, touch and drag it to the colored side of your game-field. To add a fun element of chaos, we added a mechanic that randomly spawns a gameball. First player to touch it gains control allowing the tide of the game to turn on a dime. You win by being the last man standing!

We’d love for you to experience this fast-paced and innovative game for yourself! Please download a copy from your appropriate marketplace below:

Download for iOS
Download for Android
Download for Blackberry

Back in November 2010, we posted a video of a little Microsoft Kinect app we called “DaVinci Kinect.” It’s a prototype we originally built for Microsoft Surface that blurs the lines between the physical and virtual world.

But as soon as we got our hands on the Kinect hardware, we updated the app to take advantage of the new platform and interactions –  as well as extended the technology to recognize hand/figure gestures. With our latest iteration, hand gestures are used to create objects and control the physics of the environment.  The user’s hands appear in the interface which allows one to literally grab objects out of thin air and move them in the environment. Additional gestures allow folks to affect gravity, magnetism and attraction.

After the blog was posted, we received a ton of attention from the likes of Gizmodo and Engadget. And now, we have an opportunity to demo the app at E3!  We’ve been working on a version for the Microsoft Surface v2 as well, so we’ve integrated the new graphics, interactions and a fun little homage to Mr. Lucas.

We’ll post footage of the event next week. Hope to see you there!

The launch of Xbox Kinect has caused much excitement in the open source community. In the last few weeks, developers have managed to tap into the hardware with impressive results. We’ve seen applications ranging from gesture-based experiences to 3D imaging.

We’ve taken this exciting opportunity to port our popular DaVinci experience to the Kinect platform. Gestures are used to create objects and control the physics of the environment. Your hands appear in the interface which allows you to literally grab objects out of thin air and move them in the environment. Additional gestures allow you to affect the gravity, magnetism and “planetary attraction”.

To date, many of the experiments in gestural interface development have not taken into account the hands. Unfortunately, the result is an experience that isn’t precise – users have no context of where they are interacting in the virtual space and 1-to-1 manipulation of objects in a scene proves difficult. By using an clenched hand to signify “grabbing” an object and an open hand to signify “releasing” an object, we are able to create experiences with an higher level of precision which can mimic a touch based experience. In fact, we’ve created a Kinect plugin to enable our entire suite of touch-based experiences to work with gestures – more videos to come!

Gesture-based interaction is great when touch isn’t practical. For instance, on a large screen projected display as shown in the video above it is difficult or physically impossible to control the entire area using touch. Using a technology like Kinect, we can create a virtual canvas in mid-air in front of the user. Interactions within this virtual canvas space are projected into the experience as shown in the DaVinci example.

To be honest, we had a blast playing with this experience. It definitely fulfilled all of our Star Wars fantasies of controlling objects with your mind. We’ll be adding more features in the coming weeks including the Darth Vader death grip. Stay tuned!

“Control, control, you must learn control.” – Yoda

DaVinci is a Microsoft Surface application that blurs the lines between the physical and virtual world by combining object recognition, real-world physics simulation and gestural interface design.

One of the important design and technology considerations around building direct manipulation interfaces is to ensure virtual objects behave like real-world objects. The real world physics behavior of these objects is a type of visual affordance, which aids in delivering an intuitive user experience – users know what to expect when they manipulate objects in the virtual world when they behave like objects in the real world. The physics engine used in DaVinci is being applied to our other applications to create interfaces which have natural real world physics.

The DaVinci experience could easily be extended to teach Newton’s laws of motion, gravity, friction, orbital motion and other physics concepts in a classroom setting.

A childhood favorite – Table Toss – is transformed using Microsoft Surface technology. Like the old fashioned game, Surface Table Toss involves players taking turns at tossing a bean bag towards a target. However, in this version, the target is a bulls-eye created on a very expensive table (Note: No Surface tables were injured in the making of this game). Scoring is determined by the distance of each bean bag from the center bulls-eye. Each bean bag contains a unique Microsoft Surface tag to associate the score to each player. The combination of a baseball theme and photo-realistic particle effects creates a one-of-a-kind experience on Surface. While this game is fun for the whole family, we do not recommend throwing other items at the table, even if you lose.