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.

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/002...png?1261089381

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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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Think of the workout potential! Touch screens for input, exercise cycle for power generation! All of us would be in 5 times the shape of solo boxers!

More on topic, I think a PC version of Porject Natal would be fun to play with, just make sure you only need a few keys mapped on your team. My guess is that Natal will be Xbox only :(.

I hadn't heard of that Offive, I'll have to do a google search here in a bit

Stephen

Natal is half marketing bullshit, half stuff you can already do, and half stuff you may be able to do in a few years...

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Originally Posted by yaki

Natal is half marketing bullshit, half stuff you can already do, and half stuff you may be able to do in a few years...

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This post is 150% garbage. lol

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Originally Posted by zanthor

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.

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/002...png?1261089381

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That is basically what i use my x keys for, those exact functions.

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Originally Posted by Fursphere

This post is 150% garbage. lol

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GIGO

But seriously, Natal promises a bunch of stuff that there is no way they will be able to produce. People have been working on components of what they promised for decades and there are serious limitations which there is no way MS can overcome in the next year without somehow discovering a portal to the future. Oh, all of the features can be done, and done using free open-source code and cheap off-the-shelf parts. But there are major gotchas regarding accuracy and responsiveness. Major "oh by the way this only works in bright light and when you're standing really close" issues with the parts based on visual-wavelength cameras. Will it work anything like in the demonstration any time in the near future? Hell no, and they're idiots to oversell what could otherwise be a rather interesting product.

I know a way to implement the Sony ping-pong controller, but you need to be within about a meter of a sensor. Oh, and it involves shooting decent intensity lasers around, which could be a complication. Well, you can do it in video too, but then your registration quality goes down sharply (tracking accuracy and responsiveness go to hell) and you get the "bright light only, while standing fairly close to sensor" gotchas again.

I will be a little shocked if neither ends up vaporware. I will be extremely shocked if they manage to pull off something that has any market potential past the initial hype-driven sales and doesn't end up in the garage after the first month of ownership. Why? Not because the tech lacks gaming potential. It has awesome potential for use in games. It's because they're letting their marketing people sell things without talking to their engineers again.

Which, sadly, happens all the damn time. See also: Dilbert.

heh, there is always this we could use. ;)

http://www.gamersgraveyard.com/repos...powerglove.jpg

Stephen

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Originally Posted by F9thRet

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

Stephen

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I thought about a touchscreen monitor for healing a couple of times. But it would need to be mounted like a keyboard, and that gets all kinds of crazy. And stupid expensive too.

Idealy you could mirror two monitors (one normal, one touch) and setup the touchscreen with "Grid" or something and just "tap" heal. I think it would work pretty good - but again, cost is a prohibitive factor.

Once again, all good points Fur. I had thought about that myself, Have it look like the L-Cars display off of ST or something.

Man my inner geek is working overtime in this snow storm.

Stephen