Surface Table Monitors: Linux VS Microsoft
16 07 2007
While it may not be as flashy as Microsoft’s surface table monitor, the Linux MPX Multi-touch Table seems to be a very attractive alternative to those who don’t have the $$$ to shell out for the Surface. MPX is an updated version of the Linux Windows X Server with multi-touch support that can accomodate multiple input devices. This means you can hook it up to your PC and use as many mouses and keyboards as you want along with the touch screen (though why anyone would want to use a mouse when you’ve got a touch screen is beyond me). But mouses and keyboards aren’t the only thing you can hook up to the MPX. If you connect an MPX Linux system to Mitsubishi’s DiamondTouch display table (which is also a gesture-activated screen designed to support small group interactions), it gets more interesting because the MPX-DiamondTouch combo recognizes four unique users. Microsoft Surface allows multiple-user interaction but each user isn’t recognized as unique.
Ulike the Surface, however, MPX only lets you use multiple inputs; it doesn’t include gestures. So you can’t use universal commands like pinching our fingers to make items larger or smaller, as with the iPhone. You can, however, change an object’s size by grabbing both ends of the objects. Well, Peter Hutterer did say that he did not build some kind of touchscreen or tracking system, nor is it some kind of gesture recognition system. The MPX is the stuff in between.
As of now, the system is still under development and there are a few bugs that need to be fixed, but the information we have so far gives us a fairly good idea of what the MPX can be capable of achieving.
Video after the break.
[via gizmodo]
mlitty replied on Jul 30th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I’ve been a linux user for over seven years, and exclusively for five. I love linux. That said, this is a weak demo. The touch screen is nice, but the multi-user portion was nothing more than two people each using one hand to do what the first half of the demo showed one person doing with two hands.
In other words, in each instance two hands were interacting with the screen, so the multi user was no different than a single user with two hands.
And what’s with the paint program? Finger painting is fun, but how about showing the benefits of touch screen with The GIMP, MythTV, Planet Penguin Racer (Tux Racer), or any other program that would show the maximum benefit of this unique user interface? Show the bluring tool on a photo, MythTV menu navigation, Pushing the penguin down the mountain, or three users doing all of these things at once. How about two people playing electronic table tennis across from each other, while another person keep score on an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet, or surfs the web.
This type of interface would also benefit from a rotation addition to Xorg. By this I mean that two users sitting across from each other could grab a corner of their window and rotate it to face them, sideways to a normal user’s view, like this…
|————————————————————|
| |
| |———-| |———–| |
| | > | |
| |———-| |———–| |
| |
|————————————————————|
Don’t get me wrong, this looks like a very cool device. I’d just like to see the demo illustrate a wider and fuller example of the potential application for this interface.
mlitty replied on Jul 30th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Ok, the ascii pic didn’t work out. Oh well, I hope you get the idea. Two folks sitting across from one another with their work window facing them and the possibility to rotate it to face the other at will.
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