A Look Beneath the 'Surface'

Hajsky writes "Ars Technica takes a closer look at Microsoft's new "Surface" tabletop device. Turns out that Surface isn't actually a touchscreen at all, but uses five cameras located in the table's base to record movement and touch. 'The five cameras are near-infrared devices, but that's not because they are trying to read heat signatures from fingertips (or other body parts) on the table. Instead, it's because the entire surface of Surface is bathed in light; by illuminating the top of the table, the cameras can easily see when things are placed on it. Shining colored light across the surface of the table would spoil the effect that Microsoft wants, so near-infrared light is used for invisible illumination.' The whole setup runs on a Core 2 Duo and off-the-shelf hardware, and can handle 52 simultaneous touches." jfanning wrote with a link to an overview of similar technology used in the Helsinki 'CityWall'. The article she provides discusses the unique public display, and has an in-depth video on the way these kinds of setups work.

Comments

D'oh

[Swizec]

The video in yesterday's post DID say that the whole thing was run by five cameras. Doesn't it still make a touchscreen if stuff happens when you touch it? Why woudl it be any less of a touch screen if it sees you touchign it instead of feeling it?

touches

[DaMattster]

So I wonder if I got six of my friends and we all touched the Surface at the same time with all of our fingers. Would that produce the Blue Surface Of Death? Or would it drive the bloody thing psychizo?

The frustrations of parallax

[G4from128k]

I can't help but wonder how they will compensate for parallax between users' eyes, fingertips, and the screen objects. I'd imagine that the display panel will be relatively thick for structural reasons and that most users will be sitting far off the central axis of the table (i.e., the coffee-table scenario). This means that the image on the screen will be displaced with respect to the line sight from eyeball to fingertip. Moreover different people sitting around the table will see different parallax displacements between fingertips and the screen. Without some compensation for this, the device will be frustrating to use because it won't be intuitive as to where to touch the table top to "touch" an underlying display object. People will often touch the screen where they think they should only to find they've grabbed the object next to the one they really wanted.

P.S. Acrylic is a horrible choice of material for the top as it scratches too easily.

Gorilla arm

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Does anybody remember the HP touchscreen computer (from back in the Lisa days) which bombed miserably because people couldn't hold their arms up for hours on end? The thing about a mouse or trackball is that a little motion produces a lot of motion of the cursor - without fatigue.

Re:Gorilla arm

[WrongSizeGlass]

The old HP-150's had what was called a 'touch screen'. When your finger broke the infrared X,Y grid it registered it as a 'touch'. We used them as POS devices with great success.

Gaming?

[Shadow Wrought]

Could this be a forerunner of a gaming tabletop? All the terrain, units and record keeping are kept for you as you play on a largish surface. Could be pretty cool.

Re:Gaming?

[nightwing2000]

The full-desk display would be neat - but the obvious question is - what's the resolution?

This thing is just a projection unit, which means underneath is bulky and blocked off. It doesn't seem to be the real table-top display we're all looking for, where you can pop up a window and read it about the same size and resolution as a piece of paper. Basically it should be an electronic D-paper. I think I'll wait.

So, the big deal is the interface. This sounds too complicated. Each special item has to have its own handler - cameras, fingers, stylus, phone, PDA, etc. A "general environment" that has too be programmed for each special case doesn't sound that great.

Applications for the Table

[deleo77]

The more I think about it, this table (or whatever they end up calling it) could be the computing device that finally succeeds in finding its way into peoples' living rooms. People don't want to compute off of their TV, they only want their TV to display things, that's why every attempt to combine the internet with a TV has pretty much failed. But imagine this device somehow integrated into your coffee table and using it to order and pay for a pizza, using it to control your home lighting and thermostat, using it to look at photos, magazines, catalogues, pay your bills, or using it to sort through your home media library of music and movies. The list goes on and on. The technology will have to get better, the cost will have to come down, it will have to be simple to use, and the applications will have to be developed flawlessly, but I actually think Microsoft could pull it off. If Apple created this people would be gushing over it because they would know that Apple would succeed in doing all of the above. Microsoft should pour a lot of money and resources into this, because they might be on to something big. I hope they pull it off; there isn't enough innovation out there these days, too many copy cat devices. It's time for something new and this could be it.

Re:Applications for the Table

[Irish_Samurai]

Man, I can think of a ton of things that I could write myself using XNA.

• Specialized drink glass code that you could play drinking games with (russian roulette comes to mind)
• Almost every board game ever made
• Air Hockey
• A MTG interface
• If there was a way to start manufacturing items, or self encoding, with the domino encoding on them, writing an app that queries wikipedia when the item is placed on it to give you a neato little "Identify" effect
• Take the same idea as above, but it allows you to purchase said item directly from the vendor by tapping you credit card on the table. Cool if you have people visiting or if you are at someone elses house.
• Another layer of immersion with certain types of digital media (travel shows can display interactive maps without using up viewing real estate, ect...)
• Multi user story telling - Essentially choose your own adventure where everyone was a character and chose from a list of actions to dynamically create a story or show.
• Virtual turntables
• A real time map of my house with live feeds from webcams actually playing in the roomspace
• A tool that allows you to generate custom tabletop game boards and rule structures on the fly. Lego men now have another use!
• A visual warehouse management tool
• Virtual home decorating swatches (although the screen and projection tech may need to catch up on that one)

I could go on and on. None of this is really mindblowing, but there could be a very decent cottage industry popping up around this one item alone.

Re:Disappointing

[randyest]

"when they get this stuff to work with a brush I'll really be impressed."

Watch the videos at surface.microsoft.com and prepare to really be impressed. They use a paintbrush on it.

Not just for tech-savvy artsies

[Tabernaque86]

I've been waiting for something like this for a couple years now, since I've started working as a draftsman. The amount of paper that companies use for mailing out proposals/revisions/mark-ups is ridiculous. Now they can e-mail a drawing package to whomever, and they can then view at least Arch D drawings (24"x36") easily, and could even use a "red pen" to mark up drawings, and then e-mail the revised drawing package back.

At that point, you could even re-introduce the "drafting table" with integrated AutoCAD or similar. I would love to see this sort of thing as mandatory as a plotter.