Ever wanted to get a better idea of the terrain that’s being displayed on your monitor? The Relief might be able to help you with that, as it’s an actuated tabletop display, able to render and animate 3D shapes with a malleable surface, thanks to a series of 120 rods below a stretched piece of fabric covering it. It’s powered by open source hardware and software. The Relief is also able to sense a user pushing or pulling the rods, which might be good for feedback. While it’s probably not the best tool to display complex data, it’s pretty darn good at showing geographical terrain, as can be seen in the picture above.
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