Touchscreen monitor as input device?

[offive]

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..

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 .

[F9thRet]

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

Stephen

[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...

[Fursphere]

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

This post is 150% garbage. lol

[Iceorbz]

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.

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

[yaki]

This post is 150% garbage. lol

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.

[F9thRet]

heh, there is always this we could use.



Stephen

[Fursphere]

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

Stephen

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.

[F9thRet]

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