One of the big differences between Microsofts and the others is that most of the multitouch displays were LCDs with modified traditional touch screen technology. These tables are rear projection units that have IR sensors to detect any object that comes near the table.
The next step is to combine this with the flexible OLED tech, and then we'll be that much closer to having interfaces like in the movie Minority Report.
KeyserSoze: Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking
It looks very cool, and the applications it has in public interface use seem nearly limitless - you could have all tables like this in a restaurant, and people could order by dragging menu selections into their "placemat" area.
Neo_God: I think it was the same multi-touch technology that was shown in a video posted last year, where a guy was manipulating a selection of photos by dragging them around and scaling/rotating them with his fingers. Looked very cool.
Also when this technology becomes cheaper and smaller, it'd probably make for very good kids "edutainment" devices. Pre-schools could have a "painting desk" with all manner of crazy effects and no cleanup required
1) People will have to be careful what devices they put where. I can see someone coming back from a "trip" throwing their camera phone down on their desk and out spills a wild night on the companies dime... opps you're fired!
2) Wear and "terror". Kids, they are dangerous to every form of electronics known to man, I'm not so sure I would want them pounding on a 10,000 table just to watch it make funny sounds. I'm not so sure restaurants would want plates, glasses, silverware and customers grubby fingers all over their nice expensive screens. Again with the opps I put my phone on the table and oh shit my porn and MP3's spill out.
3) Its a really big Cintque without the pressure sensitivity and a neato UI.
Its a really cool idea, but how durable is it? My guess is, not very and at the price they will be moving as fast off the shelves as the Optimus Keyboard.
[ QUOTE ]
Its a really cool idea, but how durable is it? My guess is, not very and at the price they will be moving as fast off the shelves as the Optimus Keyboard.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry to burst your bubble dude, but the optimus keyboards first-run sold out already
I imagine this will quickly become a glass plate you lay on our desk or whatever surface. I can't imagine it will stay as a table.
Tulk: That being said, I can only imagine the porn possiblities Laying body parts on the table and having video interaction... or viagra ads surround it
Such a sweet idea and I remember the other video that was mentioned, but I don't remember it being Microsoft though.
So much potential with this concept which were shown on the vids on the Surface site. It's awesome hearing that it will be publicly available late this year. Nothing worse than hearing about a technology with no release date, then you never hear of it again.
Give it a few years and its true potential will be realised and this technology will be commonplace and inexpensive, as will the Optimus keyboard
Cool technology and they're wasting it on a silly coffee table? How about on a monitor that we can afford and actually use? How about a tabletPC? And games would be cool, instead of stack the pile of pictures. Doubt we'll see much of this besides card games.
Btw, this tech has been around, and shown, for some time now. So no need to use the term Next-Gen. Just like that flashy keyboard, it's big cost for little practicality.
Elysium, that stuff is coming I'm sure. It is new tech to the market, as such its expensive. Assuming MS wants to make money on this (I'm pretty sure they do) they'll want to start by targeting businesses who can afford the new tech. A lot of the features I saw from this had some damned cool uses for business.
I'm sure the home uses like games will be just around the corner.
Agreed, Tulkamir.
ElysiumGX: Do you think the first PC computer systems went straight into the home? No way. They were too expensive and limited in practical uses for home use, but the big businesses got them while the technology was still being refined for more mainstream applications. It'll be the same way with this, as with anything. It's just impractical and expensive for anything less than a coffee table at the moment, this is probably the only way they will actually make money off it while refining the technology for those uses you mentioned. It's impossible to just dive straight in to that stuff, and unreasonable to expect it to happen so fast. Back when graphics tablets and colour printers were prohibitively expensive and huge, it was the businesses and leisure enterprises who bought them, not home users or individual professionals. That stuff always comes later, I'd expect you of all people to realise that.
I can understand that, MoP. I simply don't see this as a breakthrough. I see a tech that's been around for a little while, combined with Microsoft's marketing team. So it's more, I'll love it when i see it used for something cool. I can understand a use for restaurants, but multi touch isn't important for selecting menu items. I see it's potential for education/entertainment...digital fingerpainting. But it'll be about a decade before that's an affordable activity.
The Zbrush idea. Who sculpts details using both hands? A pen tip provides more precision than a finger. Cintiqs already provide this function. Tho, I could imagine using my right hand for sculpting, and the left for navigation.
I didn't realize it was a rear projection unit... that sort of hurts the concept
I've seen MS demonstrate a technology in their 'future home' where it interacts with your countertop to provide recipes and help walk you through them. For instance, it would provide a circle on the counter to show you how large your dough should be. It would interact with you throughout the process.
I thought this was part of that technology, combined with the two hand/mouse/finger stuff we've been seeing from other groups lately.
Imagine something like StarCraft 2 on this ... you could control bunches of units at the same time, order people in different directions and different commands, control the overview map much more fluidly... It'd be awesome
I can just see a whole bunch of hotseat multiplayer games springing up, you could do an awesome multiplayer version of Pong or Tetris on this interface!
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Cool technology and they're wasting it on a silly coffee table? How about on a monitor that we can afford and actually use? How about a tabletPC? And games would be cool, instead of stack the pile of pictures. Doubt we'll see much of this besides card games.
Btw, this tech has been around, and shown, for some time now. So no need to use the term Next-Gen. Just like that flashy keyboard, it's big cost for little practicality.
[/ QUOTE ]
The cost of the technology has to scale appropriately first. If they impliment the costly, bulky version into something that everyone can see and use at a restaurant without having to pay $5000+ then demand will go up, development will continue, and the technology will be used in more home environments.
And no, this technology has not been around. Sure there have been multi-touch interfaces that have been developed in Comp Engineering buildings, but no consumer product has been developed that incorporates a multi-touch screen with IR cameras to detect objects placed on the screen and interact with them wirelessly. It is the first consumer product of the sort with some very nice new features and it is all built on a solid hardware and software platform. That is what makes it a breakthrough. Sorry that a MULTI-TOUCHSCREEN INTERACTIVE TABLE wasn't "cool" enough for you, but you can keep your cool wooden table while the rest of us play with the new technology.
Replies
Everythings looking good this summer with all the new gadgets/concepts being introduced, nice post.
Its about time multi-touch screens hit the market. Sony had been working on a multi-touch + RFID panel awhile back but I guess Microsoft beat them.
It looks very cool, and the applications it has in public interface use seem nearly limitless - you could have all tables like this in a restaurant, and people could order by dragging menu selections into their "placemat" area.
Neo_God: I think it was the same multi-touch technology that was shown in a video posted last year, where a guy was manipulating a selection of photos by dragging them around and scaling/rotating them with his fingers. Looked very cool.
Also when this technology becomes cheaper and smaller, it'd probably make for very good kids "edutainment" devices. Pre-schools could have a "painting desk" with all manner of crazy effects and no cleanup required
but 5000 to 10000 isnt cheap.
How cool would it be to model with your hands in Zbrush.
1) People will have to be careful what devices they put where. I can see someone coming back from a "trip" throwing their camera phone down on their desk and out spills a wild night on the companies dime... opps you're fired!
2) Wear and "terror". Kids, they are dangerous to every form of electronics known to man, I'm not so sure I would want them pounding on a 10,000 table just to watch it make funny sounds. I'm not so sure restaurants would want plates, glasses, silverware and customers grubby fingers all over their nice expensive screens. Again with the opps I put my phone on the table and oh shit my porn and MP3's spill out.
3) Its a really big Cintque without the pressure sensitivity and a neato UI.
Its a really cool idea, but how durable is it? My guess is, not very and at the price they will be moving as fast off the shelves as the Optimus Keyboard.
Its a really cool idea, but how durable is it? My guess is, not very and at the price they will be moving as fast off the shelves as the Optimus Keyboard.
[/ QUOTE ]
Sorry to burst your bubble dude, but the optimus keyboards first-run sold out already
Not to mention that I'm sure it'll have a "shared" folders type system.
I imagine this will quickly become a glass plate you lay on our desk or whatever surface. I can't imagine it will stay as a table.
Tulk: That being said, I can only imagine the porn possiblities Laying body parts on the table and having video interaction... or viagra ads surround it
So much potential with this concept which were shown on the vids on the Surface site. It's awesome hearing that it will be publicly available late this year. Nothing worse than hearing about a technology with no release date, then you never hear of it again.
Give it a few years and its true potential will be realised and this technology will be commonplace and inexpensive, as will the Optimus keyboard
-caseyjones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc&mode=related&search=
Starcraft 2 anyone?
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That would blow my mind.
Btw, this tech has been around, and shown, for some time now. So no need to use the term Next-Gen. Just like that flashy keyboard, it's big cost for little practicality.
I'm sure the home uses like games will be just around the corner.
Just my thoughts on it.
ElysiumGX: Do you think the first PC computer systems went straight into the home? No way. They were too expensive and limited in practical uses for home use, but the big businesses got them while the technology was still being refined for more mainstream applications. It'll be the same way with this, as with anything. It's just impractical and expensive for anything less than a coffee table at the moment, this is probably the only way they will actually make money off it while refining the technology for those uses you mentioned. It's impossible to just dive straight in to that stuff, and unreasonable to expect it to happen so fast. Back when graphics tablets and colour printers were prohibitively expensive and huge, it was the businesses and leisure enterprises who bought them, not home users or individual professionals. That stuff always comes later, I'd expect you of all people to realise that.
Nice but fat.
The Zbrush idea. Who sculpts details using both hands? A pen tip provides more precision than a finger. Cintiqs already provide this function. Tho, I could imagine using my right hand for sculpting, and the left for navigation.
I've seen MS demonstrate a technology in their 'future home' where it interacts with your countertop to provide recipes and help walk you through them. For instance, it would provide a circle on the counter to show you how large your dough should be. It would interact with you throughout the process.
I thought this was part of that technology, combined with the two hand/mouse/finger stuff we've been seeing from other groups lately.
I can just see a whole bunch of hotseat multiplayer games springing up, you could do an awesome multiplayer version of Pong or Tetris on this interface!
Cool technology and they're wasting it on a silly coffee table? How about on a monitor that we can afford and actually use? How about a tabletPC? And games would be cool, instead of stack the pile of pictures. Doubt we'll see much of this besides card games.
Btw, this tech has been around, and shown, for some time now. So no need to use the term Next-Gen. Just like that flashy keyboard, it's big cost for little practicality.
[/ QUOTE ]
The cost of the technology has to scale appropriately first. If they impliment the costly, bulky version into something that everyone can see and use at a restaurant without having to pay $5000+ then demand will go up, development will continue, and the technology will be used in more home environments.
And no, this technology has not been around. Sure there have been multi-touch interfaces that have been developed in Comp Engineering buildings, but no consumer product has been developed that incorporates a multi-touch screen with IR cameras to detect objects placed on the screen and interact with them wirelessly. It is the first consumer product of the sort with some very nice new features and it is all built on a solid hardware and software platform. That is what makes it a breakthrough. Sorry that a MULTI-TOUCHSCREEN INTERACTIVE TABLE wasn't "cool" enough for you, but you can keep your cool wooden table while the rest of us play with the new technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx9FgLr9oTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEax1mJhJQ0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCo_No_Bpwk