Touchscreen monitor as input device?

Just throwing this out there, to see what you all think.

The cost it prohibitive for me to try it our myself, what with Christmas here, But could a touchscreen monitor someday take the place of our X-keys, or keyboards?

I imagine one of you fine programmers could make key overlays, that allow us then to just touch the monitor for whatever. My questions would be, how responsive are they? I know Windows 7 has allowed for there use in there basic system, but how well does it really work?

Thought it might be a good topic for discussion, toss some ideas around.

Our Friend Fursphere would have to make yet another Monitor mount though If he went this route. :D

Stephen

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Originally Posted by F9thRet

Just throwing this out there, to see what you all think.

The cost it prohibitive for me to try it our myself, what with Christmas here, But could a touchscreen monitor someday take the place of our X-keys, or keyboards?

I imagine one of you fine programmers could make key overlays, that allow us then to just touch the monitor for whatever. My questions would be, how responsive are they? I know Windows 7 has allowed for there use in there basic system, but how well does it really work?

Thought it might be a good topic for discussion, toss some ideas around.

Our Friend Fursphere would have to make yet another Monitor mount though If he went this route. :D

Stephen

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As a person who spent several years in MS labs working on touch screens I can tell you this is a very bad idea ergonomically. Reach out and touch your screen enough and your shoulders will be in great pain by the end of the day..

And the fingerprints!

The responsiveness varies from total crap to very good.

Touchscreens are very cool when they're appropriate to the application, and utterly pointless when they aren't. They aren't particularly appropriate for WoW.

A side example. A gestural interface would be funny as hell to show off, but really not so good for routine use. Fighting in WoW often boils down to 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, ... which is boring but not terribly problematic if the motion required to perform the action is a twitch of a fingertip, but it would be really, really stupid if it required significant motion. I don't want to have to make sword swinging motions for every attack.

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Originally Posted by Nitro

As a person who spent several years in MS labs working on touch screens I can tell you this is a very bad idea ergonomically. Reach out and touch your screen enough and your shoulders will be in great pain by the end of the day..

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i dont think he meant to have it standing vertically in front but rather horizontally on the desk where your xkeys keyboard would be. with a program showing on it that resembled an xkeys with customizable key graphics and such. thats what i got out of the question. i dont think anyone would want to reach out to their screen for hours on end :)

but i also dont think anyone would wanna shell out for a touchscreen just to replace their extra keyboard. unless of course they were an artist or something who already had another use for it.

Exactly Bot, But yeah Nitro, that would be horrible after a few minutes. :D

Yaki, very good points. It was more along the lines of Mental Masterbation at this time anyways. Thanks for the input.

Stephen

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Originally Posted by Bot

i dont think he meant to have it standing vertically in front but rather horizontally on the desk where your xkeys keyboard would be. with a program showing on it that resembled an xkeys with customizable key graphics and such. thats what i got out of the question. i dont think anyone would want to reach out to their screen for hours on end :)

but i also dont think anyone would wanna shell out for a touchscreen just to replace their extra keyboard. unless of course they were an artist or something who already had another use for it.

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The big selling point would be images instead of keys.

So imagine a square screen that sits on your desk almost horizontal with 4 big graphical buttons on it to heal your 4 slaves. If you press a modifier the images change.

You can also have a smaller sidebar with lesser used (out of combat) abilities.

I am thinking something about the size of 4x iPhones with configuration of images and regions displayed. You will already be able to do this with an iPhone if I am not mistaken. You will need to write an iPhone app to do this but you already have networking and the touch screen.

I think the breaking point for me would be that you wouldn't be able to feel the keys. You would have to look down at it to find the right things to press. I almost never look down at the keyboard and I don't even consider myself a good typist. You lose concentration every time you look away from the screen and you would have to look away alot to make sure your hand is in the right place.

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Originally Posted by Smoooth

I think the breaking point for me would be that you wouldn't be able to feel the keys.

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Yup. The optical feedback is okay, but keyboard + monitor gives slightly lower efficiency optical feedback plus far better tactile feedback. Unless you are changing the semantics of a key just THAT often, you will need the optical feedback less and less and the quality of the tactile feedback will become more and more dominant.

Something like this, mounted to the side of my x-keys would be awesome with a touch interface for the "lesser used" things... like a button to form group, a toggle to put up my raid target icons if I'm raiding, the fact it could be dynamic in it's display and function without having to memorize 20 keys in 4 roles each... I'd stick to my keyboard/mouse/x-keys for combat stuff, but for the 1 off stuff like eat, drink, buff, etc it would be great.

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