This past Wednesday, at their annual CEO Summit, Microsoft demoed their latest computer interface at their corporate headquarters. The interface, dubbed "Touchwall," is built upon a specialized version of Windows Vista called Plex and its corresponding touch screen hardware.
The hardware that runs Touchwall is made up of three infrared lasers and a camera. The camera is able to determine when and where something breaks the path of the lasers and sends that data back to Plex. From that point on, the user is able to navigate around the computer workstation just as they would with a normal keyboard and mouse setup, with the only difference being that their hands are doing all of the work. While this sounds complicated, the end result is something that resembles a really large iPhone or iPod Touch setup.
This interface is something that wouldn't come at a premium either. Microsoft's Director of Envisioning Ian Sands is quoted as saying that Touchwall will be able to turn "almost anything into a multi-touch interface for just hundreds of dollars." The end user would only be limited by the size of the projector and the surface the output would be displayed on. That is, if Microsoft decides to commercialize the technology. As of now, Microsoft has not announced any plans to sell or market any technology based on Touchwall, but the potential is there for its use.
5 comments:
"Seamless", "Organic"... The business jargon that says nothing always cracks me up. I call them "wank-words"... :-)
That looks really cool but the question about editing is key - until they put a keyboard on it somewhere it's pretty much a glorified projector (obviously with some interactive capabilities, but still quite limited...)
Still, very cool indeed!
PS I take it you review this stuff for a living (and that that was you behind the camera)?
True, it is just a glorified projector but I the possibility is there for it to be used for many different purposes. An interactive whiteboard and or a big demo table comes to mind. It would also be killer if implemented into Powerpoint.
And I wish it were me behind the camera. That would have been awesome as not only would I have gotten a free trip to Washington but I would have also gotten to hobnob w/ CEOs. Instead, on Wednesday I was hanging out in the bars in SC.
Which all in all, really was probably more fun.
I've seen someone rig up somthing similar using a Wii-mote. I actually liked that set up better, because with the mo-cap, you didn't need to block off the board in order to manipulate something.
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