People are starting to finally get it. During a preview of Microsoft’s annual TechFest event this week, the company’s researchers showed a technology dubbed Project Gustav, which attempts to replicate the experience of painting without all the mess.

Project Gustav is a realistic painting-system prototype that enables artists to become immersed in the digital painting experience. It achieves interactivity and realism by leveraging the computing power of modern GPUs, taking full advantage of multitouch and tablet input technology and our novel natural media-modeling and brush-simulation algorithms.

Find out more on project Gustav on Microsoft Research’s technology page.