Virtual Drums .com
You can play drums... without a real drumkit!

Where does this idea come from?

At the beginning of 2006, we developed a real-time stereovision 3D tracking system, : it allows to track objects in 3 dimensions with 2 cameras. It was used for the school robot during the French national robotic cup : with a camera positioned on top of the robot, it was aware of its environment (opponent, balls, etc.).

This tracking system is the outcome of a long project (and many many hours of writing C++ lines!) and we really wanted to play with it on another project, to prove to ourselves that the framework was open enough to be used for different purposes (not only for robot positioning). Moreover, a big virtual reality festival (the biggest in Europe!) was taking place in France, and we really wanted to participate :-)

After one evening of brainstorming we looked for all possible uses of the library: juggler motion capture? Ping pong tracking? We then thought about the three senses we wanted to use : touch, sight... and hearing! We ended up opting for music. We found out about the virtual air guitar project and it sounded very interesting. Because we knew how to track balls in 3 dimensions, drums appeared to be the most feasible system. And maybe one of the funniest virtual music system, because it is rare to try real drums : a drumset is expensive and so hard to find.

And so we did!


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