Clays – Interactive Virtual Clay Pigeon Shooting
The first Clays Bar opened in Moorgate in the City of London on the 27th of October 2021. By opening night, Interactual had converted 32 decommissioned Kofs ‘over and under’ shotguns into interactive virtual clay pigeon guns.
When the Clays development team comprising Alchemist Special Effects Ltd, The Imagination Factory, Player 3, and Target 3D approached Interactual in April 2021, they had established that the core technology was viable by laying out IR sensors on a facsimile of a gun controlled by breadboard-style prototype electronic controls.
Interactual’s job, in partnership with Denki-Jin Electronics, was to squeeze all the tech into a real decommissioned shotgun, design the installation so that all parts could be accessed for removal and upgrade, productionise the electronics and control software, and ensure that the guns would continue to function in what, surprisingly, has proven to be the most aggressive use-case scenario imaginable – a combination of heavy guns, very hard floors, large groups of players, and a lot of alcohol.
