Slashdot Mirror
Secondlight, Microsoft's New Surface Prototype
Barence writes "Microsoft has literally added another dimension to its touchscreen table technology Surface. The new table projects an image through the table itself, so that any translucent material (such as tracing paper or perspex) held above the Surface screen displays a different image to what you see on the table's display. This means you can have a satellite image of a town on the table, and have the street names projected on to a piece of paper that the user holds above the map. Or you could have a photo of a car, with the tracing paper displaying images of its innards."
Any 3D viruses for it yet?
Most of the stuff on
If they're presenting it then you can be assured that it is already patent pending.
Which means its been in the lab for about 2 years already.. so in another 8 it might be on the market - but it'll be (more) boring by then, so it won't.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So... it can display a second image that is completely invisible unless I hold a piece of paper in front of it.
Is it just me or does that sound kind of silly?
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
A bigger ass table!
Task Mangler
I've been blocking video projectors with objects to annoy my teachers for years. I claim prior art!
...since when did companies routinely invest in research and then give the results away for free, unless there was some other way to make money off it?
Everyone on Slashdot except for you.
Is actually laying off people as a result of the supposed economic crisis and yet still wasting away resources on Surface. We're wasting money on this crap because our new manager wants to be all "trendy" and make us look like some sort of cutting age IT outfit. I'd rather us keep on doing what we already do and have been highly profitable at instead of wasting time and money on this type of toy product and ruining people's lives in the process. There were some people who found out they were loosing their job by watching the evening news, but we still have enough money to buy and maintain electronic tables. Horrible.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Seems pointless to me.
If this functionality is useful, why couldn't you just have the software display a rectangle that you can drag across the screen that affects what is displayed within the rectangle?
Then it's always available regardless of whether you happen to have a nearby supply of tracing paper with the proper translucency characteristics.
And then it's equally visible with the main image, from all angle and lighting conditions, because it is in fact the main image.
Actually I don't understand why you'd only want street names displayed only with a small rectangular area, rather than toggling them on and off across the entire image.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
"Do not stare into table with remaining eye."
[
I'm sure some of the technology they developed for this is deserving of a patent (I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to patent some trivial/frivolous stuff, though). Patents aren't always bad, even for big corporations.
Sounds like pretty standard form of glyph tracking, similar to those outlandish "magic boards" the news networks seem to like playing around with to beguile the audience with more of the shiny.
8==8 Bones 8==8
He's bitter beacuse he's dyslexic, and to add insult to injury he name himself "moniker" when he meant to type "monkier".
Now, I can display one image on the large-format table, while I struggle to manually hold a 36" x 48" piece of frigging tracing paper a few inches over it, thereby rendering the tracing-paper image impractical, and the other image invisible!
Damn! Why didn't I think of that?? I would be RICH!!!
Rich, I tell you!
That's what I want to know.
Clearly I'm missing something obvious, but other than looking cool, is there any practical advantage to this?
It would seem that the very thing that makes it look cool -- that "added dimension" -- is also going to mean that the way in which the images are superimposed varies depending on where you're standing. The only way the roads in that "road map" idea would be in the right place is if you were hovering directly over the table -- except you'd be blocking the projector, and it still wouldn't be right towards the edges of the table.
I mean, I get the point of Surface itself. I do. What I don't get is what value this other layer has over doing the same thing in software.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Look at the pic with TFA. There, behind the pretty flowers, revealed only by use of the Magic Translucent Paper, are what appear to be....
Frickin' sharks with frickin' lasers on their frickin' heads!
Apparently, Dr. Evil Ballmer has some type of plan to make MILLIONS off of this new technology...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
This is Unix!
You can't handle the truth.
Its fucking cool technology. Don't let fanboyism ruin this. Its a big table, its expensive. But its still fucking cool. Have you forgotten you are nerds? Who gives a shit how useful it is? Aren't people always arguing pro research that isn't about making a buck. Now when 'evil' microsoft does something all nerds like (making cool shit without having purely profit in mind) what happens? You bash it? I expect better :S
I dunno, the actual technology seems really simple. But on the other hand it is rather innovative and I'ce never seen it before. Anyways it's a hell of alot more deserving then alot of the other patents that get handed out these days.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
Making computer screens out of $10,000 coffee tables for $2,000,000 home refinancers is so 2006. It's time for tent screen prototypes for the renters.
No, but there are some pop-ups.
this is pretty cool stuff, it allows the user to display an image on the table of say a building, and different people (say engineers working on different sections like plumbing and electrical) can throw on their own parts of the plans to see if they are going to conflict and to easily show others. having actually worked on large projects where one of the biggest hurdles is inter discipline co operation i can see a real use for this.
if this was apple developing it i'm guessing you'd all be masturbating over it by now.....
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
The only way the roads in that "road map" idea would be in the right place is if you were hovering directly over the table -- except you'd be blocking the projector, and it still wouldn't be right towards the edges of the table.
The projector projects from under the table using alternate frames on the surface. By applying current or not, the surface is either translucent or transparent, thus the second image projects through while the first remains on the table surface itself. If you're standing directly over it, you're in a perfect spot to see it and nothing gets blocked.
The cool thing about not doing it in software is that you can have the extra layer be a piece of translucent plastic on top of the surface... or you can hold it a few feet up. The second projector can then focus on where you're holding it to project a sharp image. If you do this in software, you'll end up holding a blank, unlit object while the second image is superimposed on the surface, obscuring the main image and negating the benefits of a third dimension. Because of the alternating frames and the second projector, you see an unimpeded original image on the surface and an unimpeded second image on the object you're holding.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
http://research.microsoft.com/sendev/video/SecondLight.wmv
I'll get modded into oblivion. It is taboo to speak imaginatively and positively about a Microsoft product on Slashdot.
Any would be a good start.
Basically most people are saying what they think about the thing, or telling what they think through humor
Which I find overly predictable. Although the topics may be news for nerds or stuff that matters, the discussions are only karma whoring, Microsoft bashing, and +5 funny. I'm frustrated because Slashdot used to be filled with posts from engineers. Slashdot used to be the Scientific American of discussion groups. Now it's like Digg only geared towards Microsoft bashing rather than the Apple fan site that is iDigg. I understand that people don't like Microsoft, I just find it more difficult each day searching though the +5 funny or the M$ posts trying to find the intelligent content of days past.
Linux Rocks! There... Mod me up.
My guess: since the dawn of time
Apparently they only stopped doing so in 1623.
Except, of course, every time you come in, you have to enunciate "honey Mustard, not honey Roasted", and she still can't find the Honey Mustard Chicken button on the cash register, even though you're staring right at it, and you've ordered it before, and you've seen her press it before.
I'll take the table.
--Edward Dassmesser
This is cool technology, but if it can sense the location of IR-reflective objects on the table it doesn't need to actually project anything onto the paper. You could simply lay a frame on the table so it could sense the corners of the frame, then composite the image onto the display as if the frame was a sheet of paper. Then the transparency of the paper can be handled in software, you don't need the special surface, and you can have as many "sheets of paper" as you want.
Projecting onto objects above the table is cool, but not super practical. The "IR Mouse" is really more interesting.