You can tell it's futuristic by the techno soundtrack
February 8, 2006 8:14 PM   Subscribe

Multiple-contact sensitive touchscreen doing neat things [Quicktime video]
posted by Pseudoephedrine (17 comments total)
 
Whoa! I'm on-board. How much?
P.S. Does it do pre-crime? Cause some of us might be looking over our shoulders....
posted by rob511 at 8:27 PM on February 8, 2006


Awesome. The map demo sold me - using two fingers they controlled the pan, rotate and zoom of the map easier than if it was a printed page. I wonder if one could set up something similar on a regular display using two mice.
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:45 PM on February 8, 2006


Two mice?- why not just one mouse with two sensors instead of one?
posted by marvin at 9:21 PM on February 8, 2006


Funny you should ask. Neat demo, btw - its a pity that such tactile interfaces haven't been adopted by TabletPCs.
posted by unmake at 9:27 PM on February 8, 2006


If you want something like this right now, there's the Lemur multitouch control surface. It's pretty much made for music/video performances and generation, though. It speaks to programs like Max/MSP, Jitter, etc., or anything that does MIDI.
posted by zsazsa at 9:31 PM on February 8, 2006


Great stuff - although I still think that French guy painting in sand on an overhead projector was cooler...
posted by twsf at 11:00 PM on February 8, 2006


(disclaimer: I'm one of the developers)

You can do similar manipulation tasks with two mice, but since mice are relative motion controllers, you don't have the same type of immediate point-to-point constraints. The larger problem is the user interface. Like a car, most of our current operating systems are designed around a one-user, one point of contact ( plus keyboard ) - so adding more mice means you're limited to turn-based control, rather than shared control.

What I'm most interested in are small scale multipoint controls - if you notice the cow demo halfway through, that tiltpad lets you manipulate position, scale, and complete 3d rotation simultaneously with a single control.

re: Lemur : it's a similar, but you're limited to the interface widgets they provide, which means that control is essentially one-way. You can't recontextualize touch based on what's at your fingertips ( i.e. grab parts of the map and drag them elsewhere to resize, or view the waveforms of your audio patches )
posted by arialblack at 7:43 AM on February 9, 2006


arialblack> You're one of the developers? Neat. I don't know if this is your area of specialty or not, but how bulky is the display device? Is it plausible that it could be reduced to thin, pliable sheets anytime soon? I'm specifically thinking of applications involving a display of this sort mounted on say, a curved surface or something similar.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 8:38 AM on February 9, 2006


Way cool!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:25 AM on February 9, 2006


Does anyone have the link to that Mac graphics tablet that used a video camera so that your hands appeared on the screen when you moved them on a separate tablet, and did similar things to this?
posted by cillit bang at 10:03 AM on February 9, 2006


apple's already on it...kinda.
and if they pull it off right, maybe I just will buy one.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:47 AM on February 9, 2006


The use of two control points to zoom and rotate worldwind was really nice. I guess you could use three or four to add tilt control. Amazing stuff. Nice one arialBlack. How much for a devkit :)
posted by inpHilltr8r at 2:32 PM on February 9, 2006


It's still nowehre as sensitive as my multiple-contact sensitive touchbutt.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:29 PM on February 9, 2006


When do we get the version that touches back?
posted by Hicksu at 9:12 PM on February 9, 2006


PFC.
posted by scarabic at 10:41 PM on February 9, 2006


Hicksu, when I was at CES, there was a Chinese company there demoing their "force-feedback" touchscreens. By turning a dial, you would feel either a single click, a double click or a buzz when making contact with the screen.

Very interesting concept that I'm sure we'll see sooner than later in production.
posted by disillusioned at 2:45 AM on February 10, 2006


This is like a weaker version of the playtable that MS designed and built, and which was hinted at in Gate's 2006 CES keynote. I've seen it as a fully working model months and months ago, and it does all this does and more- not only the multiple fingers/hands interface, but scanning of barcodes, scanning of pictures and text right on the screen, etc.

Of course, the idiots at MS wouldn't think to release this and get the good buzz for it; they'll sit on it indefinitely and probably release a crappier version for no good reason.
posted by hincandenza at 11:49 PM on February 11, 2006


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