installation shots

GestureXtreme Interactive Basketball Simulation Game Immerses Kids at Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science and Technology

May 2009 - GestureTek’s GestureXtreme Virtual Reality Game System was recommended by Cincinnati-based design firm Jack Rouse & Associates and exhibit producer Geograph Industries.  Geograph had been retained by the Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology in Syracuse, New York (better known as the MOST) to design an interactive children’s activity for a science exhibit on musculature.  Upon learning about GestureTek’s touch-free interactive entertainment and game systems that are controlled by hand and body gestures instead of touch screens, remote controls, keyboards or joysticks, Geograph retained GestureTek to provide video gesture control technology and interactive graphic content for this new museum display project. 

Geograph chose the GestureXtreme interactive game package with high-end computer, camera technology and gesture recognition software included. GestureTek’s out-of-the-box basketball simulation application was customized to make the player’s uniform and skin tone, and the background graphics, reflect the museum’s colors.  The museum’s logo was also integrated into the visual imagery. 

“Being in the business of large screen displays for trade shows, exhibits, museums and digital signage, we are well aware of how gesture control is revolutionizing this business,” said Rich Schmidt, Manager at Geograph Industries. “We often leverage new technologies from companies like GestureTek to stay on the leading edge”.

With the GestureXtreme immersive basketball simulation, children play basketball live onscreen against a computer-generated player. A camera captures the child’s movements and instantaneously translates those movements to the child’s identical onscreen video image, where the child can watch themselves in real-time as they play on the digital basketball court.  It’s similar to Wii, only better, because the child sees their actual image rather than a cartoon character, and there’s no need to hold a remote control device.

“Children love playing basketball with the GestureXtreme system” says Peter Plumley, Project Director for the MOST.  “They find it entertaining, as well as empowering, to be able to control the onscreen actions of their video image.  More importantly, it helps give them a better sense of how their muscular and skeletal systems work and the nature of kinematics (how the body moves)”.