Built for museum environments, the high-resolution mt2 Table supports intuitive gestures, allowing visitors to interact and explore custom exhibits. With multiuser support, mt2 Table serves as digital gathering place, allowing visitors to interact with museum content and each other.
The mt2 Table, bundled with Natural User Interface (NUI) Snowflake software is a powerful
development platform for creating the next generation of computer-based interactive exhibits.
The mt2 Table supports multi-touch and multi-user interactions. It has a bright 50" (diagonal) surface with a high-resolution display which is higher than Microsoft's Surface multi-touch table. The large display also makes it easier to for multiple simultaneous visitors to interact with computer programs and one another. The multi-touch support allows the use of intuitive hand gestures to manipulate images and media items and to interact with computer-based applications.
As museums are moving toward developing exhibits that foster more visitor communication and interaction: the mt2 Table is a great platform for these types of computer-based exhibits. The playful nature of multi-touch interaction and the large surface and low table height all contribute to the visitor experience. The mt2 Table does what traditional computer kiosks can't do: it fosters social interaction and allows visitors to interact physically with museum collections and educational programs.
Visitors to the Don Harrington Discovery Center interact with the table
and one another.
The mt2 Table is designed for active museum environments. Both the outside frame and the interior railing system is made of rugged, aircraft-grade aluminum framing material. While the table top is made of thick tempered glass. The interior components have been selected for their quality and durability. The mt2 Table has been field tested at a hands-on science museum.
The 50" (diagonal) glass top is coated underneath with projection material for a bright display. The display size is 16:9 ratio at 1280 x 720 pixels. The bright 2100 ANSI projector has a 2000-to-1 contrast ratio and the image displays on the table with zero keystoning. The high-resolution DLP projector has 3,000 hour bulb life.
The mt2 Table ships with NUI's innovative Snowflake Software. NUI Suite 1.0 Snowflake is a fast and reliable gesture
recognition multi-touch software package. This software suite includes NUI Touch Core which can be used with any programming language that
supports the TUIO protocol. Software developers can create their own applications with Flash (ActionScript3), C/C++/C#, Java, Python, and
other programming languages.
The NUI Snowflake package comes with a set of basic applications: Viewer (media viewer with support for image and video media types), Draw (basic drawing application), 3D model viewer (.3ds and .obj file format support) along with other applications. The mt2 Table package even includes NUI's TouchEarth (Google Earth with a multitouch interface).
Ideum has been developing custom exhibits software since the firm was founded in 1999. We've developed computer-based exhibits for museums across North America, exploring a variety of science, history, art, and cultural topics.
Our interactive exhibits and Websites have been honored by the American Association of Museums' MUSE Awards, the Webby Awards, the Pirelli International Multimedia Awards, the Museums and the Web Conference "Best of the Web," and other industry awards. For custom software development questions please contact us.
A "surface shot" of a custom interactive mapping and photo
mashup application built for Vulcan Park and Museum.
To learn more about the mt2 Table please see our Specifications document or read our Press Release. You can see more photos and video of the mt2 Table and custom exhibits on Flickr or YouTube.
mt2 Table Specifications (650kb)
Press Release (2-4-09) (50kb)