Microsoft Unveils TouchWall
Category: Xbox 360, Posted: 05/19/2008 at 12:34PM CDT by Tim Mellish, Staff Writer
We seem to keep getting closer to the computing experience Minority Report introduced with its vision of the future. Touch based computers, or machines which respond to gestures as input are all the rage these days with the software researchers.
Nintendo has put a basic form of it to use in the Nintendo Wii, with much success. Now Microsoft has unveiled another prototype in its drive to create a touch based computing experience known as TouchWall. Like Surface, Microsoft's tabletop touch based computer, TouchWall responds to user input when they touch a huge glass screen.
Microsoft's goal is make computing accessible everywhere, whether it is the kitchen, living room, or hallways. Imagine taking the laundry through a hallway and glancing at the wall to your left check if your received any new email. Or, my personal favorite, coming home from work/school with either the Xbox.com or Bungie.net homepage up on a wall so you can easily see if you should boot up the Xbox and group up with friends.
TouchWall is still in beta, and still expensive to build. Right now both it and Surface suffer from the problem computers did several years ago; hardware is costly. Hopefully, the price will go down, and Bill Gates sees this as a probable future.
Let's hope both the Surface and TouchWall take off and ultimately make it into our homes.
[Via Cnet]
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my god minority report is becoming closer tor eality!
Awesome!
What? This doesn't look that new. Schools in the UK have had stuff like this for a few years. It's a big board which responds to touch, with the computer's screen projected onto it. All MS has done is gotten rid of the projector bit.
video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-lIKKWYoIE
@wasabi
yea, those were my thoughts as well, every room in my school already has a smartboard (which i think is what ur describing)
something tells me microsoft wants to make it a bit more ubiquitous than smartboard (or those silly projector doohickies in theaters around here that respond to people walking over them...). though its interesting that the writer is only connecting this with the internet and its uses...(gotta broaden the horizons... though i do like the ability to know when friends are online...) to a smarthome, knowing when the laundry is done from the tennis courts... alerting everyone in the household that supper is ready... getting the computer to alert you when your favorite show is about to start (where ever you may be in the house (this is seperate from the household alert as the tv show one is aimed for a specific person in the house)...)
Impressive, but the video says "all vertical, all horizontal surfaces..."
I'm all for touchscreens, but having screens all over the place seems excessive. I mean, i get a big PC monitor or TV becasue i wan a big screen there, in that place. not on a random desk, were i probably dont need it. ¬_¬
Having said that, wouldn't it be great to have the keyboard as a screen in teh desk? It woiuld take some getting used to, but that would be one great use. Dual monitors, just above and below each other. :D
I used to think, omg how awesome is it to touch your PC's screen, but there's a reason we still use mice and keyboards, try to keep your hand in the air like that all day long, it's extremely unproductive, maybe it looks cool and more straightforward during powerpoint presentations, but at home I will always use my mouse and keyboard, even when everybody else will use their fancy touchscreens...
i currently work at a place that uses touchscreens and our problem is not with arm strength, its with the accuracy of your finger (compared to using the mouse), while it is faster at times to use your finger, you lose quite a bit of accuracy. Even trying to hit a target that is about a half inch by half inch you can miss pretty easily. There is also a question of what constitutes input, at my work if you somehow spit on the screen or get some other sort of fluid on the screen it counts as input (it really screws things over because the screen/computer doesn't know what to do with multiple points of input...)
i am curious to know how exactly infrared and lasers are used to sense input...
Just like the nintendo Wii pointing device.