Article
Microsoft’s ‘touch screen’ for any surface goes on sale | Microsoft – CNET News
You Can Turn Any Surface Into a Touchscreen With a $150 App | Gizmodo
From the horse’s mouth
Ubi Interactive
My Comments
You have hit on to the Windows 8 “Modern UI” as a way to start programs and have tried it on a touch-enabled Ultrabook. Or you have seen a computer desktop user interface projected on that wall and, to help the person who is operating that user interface, you point to key items on that image as a guide.
If you do want that touch-enabled user interface on a large wall, you would expect to pay heaps for a special projector and camera combination or a large touch-enabled LCD fiatscreen monitor. But Ubi Interactive, who is different from the Ubisoft games studio, have integrated Microsoft’s Kinect technology implemented in the XBox 360 with a special camera sensor to allow you to use any old display system such as that economy data projector or a common flatscreen TV to make a projected image touch-interactive. Here, you just need to also purchase the Kinect for Windows camera kit for your WIndows PC but it can work with your XBox’s Kinect camera but is not guaranteed to do so.
It honours the gesture-based touch practices like sweeping across the screen to pan or “pinching” to zoom in and out because the display combination is seen by Windows 8 as the same as a typical touchscreen display.
The software adds US$149 to the equation for a single interactive point on a 45” screen but you can option up to larger screen areas and increased points of interactivity for up to US$1499. I would personally like to see the cheaper versions allow two-finger interactivity in a similar vein to what is expected for a device’s touchscreen so you can “spin” or “pinch-to-zoom” on the display rather than just point.
But what I see of this is that a large touchscreen display can be built around hardware you can easily get your hands on at most computer or consumer-electronics stores just by adding the software. Then think of playing a strategy game like Civilization V on the living-room wall just by pointing out units to be moved or engaged.
