Gizmodo
It may not be as fancy-schmancy as Microsoft Surface or Jeff Han's demos but this video of a Linux-based MPX multi-touch table shows that things are moving full speed ahead in the land of the free penguins. We talked with developer Peter Hutterer, who gave us his insight on the project, the iPhone and the ongoing multi-touch craze.
MPX or Multi-Pointer X is a modification of the X Windows Server that allows multiple input devices to be used at the same time. You only need a normal computer plus any number of keyboards and mice attached to use it. The system lets multiple users interact with one or various applications simultaneously. The software is still in development and there are a ton of bugs to fix according to Peter. However, it will give you a good idea about what you will be able to do.
Things get a lot more interesting when you connect a MPX-enabled Linux system to a Mitsubishi Electric's DiamondTouch display table. Like Microsoft Surface, the DiamondTouch is also a "multi-user, debris-tolerant, touch-and-gesture-activated screen for supporting small group collaboration" surface.
While the DiamondTouch employs a different technology than Microsoft's TouchLight or Han's FITR hardware, the final result is even better because the MPX-DiamondTouch combination actually recognizes four different unique users. Microsoft Surface and Jeff Han's developments allow multiple users to interact with it, but they don't recognize as unique yet.
However, there are drawbacks: This solution requires "each user to touch a different conductive pad" for the system to recognize them and according to MPX's developer: "The DT is good for detecting multi-touch from different users but not good at detecting multi-touch from the same user." Still, it will be interesting to see MPX evolve, specially if they can get it to work in other kind of Minority Report-style hardware interfaces.
Here's what Peter, PhD Student Wearable Computers Lab at the University of South Australia, had to say about its future as well as what is cooking now in the multi-touch user interface space.
Jesus Diaz: Have you got MPX working with other control surfaces similar to the DiamondTouch, but without the limitations of MERL's hardware?
Peter Hutterer: Yes and no. I only have a DT right now, but the first X driver I wrote for the touch support was just listening on the network for touch events. My first touchscreen was a ~50 line perl script. We're also in the process of building an FTIR table, but it got delayed due to too many interruptions. I still use a little C program to test stuff the DT can't give me. Once you have a driver, it really doesn't matter much what hardware you're using.
When I designed the events, I mostly aimed for what FTIR tables [the type of table that Jeff Han uses]/MS Surface can do hardware-wise.
JD: Does MPX only run on Linux or does it work as well on BSD?
PH: My main test box is a Ubuntu Feisty box, but we do have a FreeBSD 64 box running MPX as well. In theory, MPX should run on anything the X server compiles on, but I guess you know how it is with theories...
JD: Is anyone working in a MPX port to Windows or Mac OS X?
PH: Not that I know of. You have to understand that X under Windows and OS X is significantly different. X servers under Unix actually render to the screen and do input as well. Under Mac/Win all the rendering and device handling is done by the respective OS. The X server translates the OS events into X protocol events and forwards them to the clients. Without native support for multiple devices, porting MPX to Win/OS X would be a waste of time. How much development is going on at Apple/Microsoft to switch their windowing systems over to multiple devices? I don't know.
JD: What do you think about the iPhone's use of multitouch in its interface?
PH: It's good to see multi-touch in a popular product. This may drive the demand up for standard desktops, which is what I'd really like to see.
But it also requires a bit more explanation. Let's just say there is the "perfect touchscreen." It registers who's touching, the exact touch area including a detailed image of the touching object, and even what object is touching. This is what I'm trying to orient myself on.
The iPhone's screen is capable of doing some of those things, but the software doesn't seem to use it. The touch input is reduced to the coordinates of the touch. Apart from the absolute coordinates, this isn't any different than a standard mouse.
MPX puts in the abstraction layers to deliver high-detail touch events to a client, and provide a standard interface for touchscreens that provide more than just coordinates. All the smart things still need to be done by the clients. MPX just removes is the hardware-dependencies. So a gesture-app should work with any touch screen. Including the perl script I mentioned before.
This is from a technical point of view. From a user-point of view I think that multi-touch gestures increase usabilty a lot, and it is a good idea to use them as a standard interaction method.
JD: So do you think the iPhone is going to popularize your research efforts and maybe get them in a real product one day?
PH: I'm working on getting MPX into the upstream X.org repository. When I can get it in (and there's a lot of work left), this would affect pretty much any Linux distribution, BSDs etc. For me, that counts as "get them in a real product." : )
The iPhone main accomplishment is to make users aware of multi-touch input. Gestures and multi-touch have been in the focus of research for quite some years now. From a research point of view, the iPhone isn't very special.
But the fact that it made a lot of people aware of technological alternatives to the standard mouse/key interaction methods makes the iPhone very important.
JD: Do you feel there's now a race in the multi-touch, multi-user User Interface space? I mean, starting with Han's efforts but now really booming with the iPhone and MS Surface...
PH: My page hits went up quite a bit after announcing touchscreen support, so I think there is quite some demand for touchscreens.
How much of a race is it? This is difficult to answer. Being the first one isn't necessarily the most important thing.
Jeff Han's input technology was impressing me because it was such a simple idea and it is really easy to build yourself. Multi-touch hardware was suddenly very affordable. He wasn't the first, but he had a huge impact.
The iPhone is very similar. Not the first in what it's doing, but definitely a huge impact.
And there's also a difference between the latest craze people go for and what they actually would want to use. Maybe the "race for multi-touch" is over in a few months and the focus has switched to something else. At this point it will be good to review what technologies we have and why they succeeded or failed.
JD: Thanks for your time, Peter.
PH: Thanks for the questions, I really appreciate it!
Comments
Nice work Jesus.
Peter seems like a real sharp guy. It is nice to see what creative people can do, even without the backing of a multi-billion dollar corporation behind them.
Isn't it projecting on his hand from afar? Can't we kind of already do this?
The important thing is not the hardware itself, but that his windowing server is designed for multiple input devices from the ground up. This means that he can have as many input points and users as he wants.
The system was designed with this kind of surfaces in mind. The DiamondTouch is one. Microsoft TouchLight is another (uses a different method). Han's FITR is another and Apple's implementation is yet another one.
Also, another important factor is that this research project won't be limited and will proabbly see its way on many products in the future.
yay a linux derived device of a windows one... wow who would have thought that was coming... but as you point out its the nice little things that microsoft does that end up making it sell vs the free counterpart... Not to mention microsoft will deploy it as a platform to dell/compaq/gateway etc to get it to mass market eventually in a few years and then walla surface computing on a grand scale.
I love Open Source projects their great, but saying things like "FREE" diy microsoft surface is idiotic and insulting and it makes me not want to read gizmodo...
you accentuate that the first surface from ms will be in the 10k$ range over and over again, and then a linux version you say is gonna be free... its not gonna be fre the hardware wont be free so it wont be free stop advertising it as such
Projected touchscreens aren't new, but that's not the point. This is very cool. It's a great demonstration.
These projector multi-touch things are in malls. They project things like soccer balls and little kids kick them around.
Man, that hardware seems slow. That map barely responded when the guy was using it.
Guys, when demoing new gizmos, do it on something other than an Intel 386. It makes your product look clunkey and unresponsive.
Godz, if you don't have a clue about what is this (because you obviously have not RTFA), please don't comment.
Phantam, please apply the same advice. Did you actually read what this is about? Do you actually have a clue about what are you talking about?
Heime45, as Peter says, this is beta software, but impressive nonetheless.
The idea of FREE goes beyond just the cost PHANTAM. Of course hardware costs money. But hardwaer isn't the thing we really buck up for. The iPhone is the perfect example, $600 for $200 of hardware - what you'er paying for is development and branding.
So, with this project, everything but the hardware is free - to leeches like me. It's also free of proprietary controls and a lot of EULA BS and other oppressive tactics. It's also free of MS or Apple fanboy-ism.
This is exactly they kind of news that attracts me to Gizmodo and could even get me to invest time and energy into changing of to Linux (and I am a bit of an MS fanboy, evil overlords for teh win!).
You seem bitter, you doing OK?
I just want Microsoft to release some WPF samples of their surface stuff, so we can see how they handle it....
Dang Jesus... A little protective of your article? Criticism, even idiotic, makes us better writers. Deep breath. Relax.
TC2COOL, if anything, I am protective of Peter's work, which I think it's serious and important enough to be defended against inane comments that minimize his efforts.
In fact, I couldn't care less about the article except for one reason: because it may allow other people to discover his work. I'm saying this because I didn't know about it until I came across the video in YouTube. I thought that some people will be in the same position as I was. I also thought that some of the smart readers of Gizmodo would be to appreciate the significance of his research.
As he said, his project is not unique, but he's working to make this kind of technology available to other developers worldwide, which in turn may bring products to the market sooner and cheaper than the alternatives.
That's why, as the gadget whore that I am, I consider it's important to support people like Peter. I just like to support people who I believe are working to help us all.
I can't say much more than it seems really crap!
This looks really promising. One thing I think would really help to enable it as a convenient multi-user tool, though, would be the ability to flip around an application, so two people could sit on either side of the table, each with a keyboard, and pass a Word document back and forth as easily as a piece of paper, reorienting it so that the person currently working in it sees it right-side-up.
Maybe this is already implemented but not showcased in the video. If not, they should definitely develop it.
Jedibugs:
That would rock for chessmaster
I didnt read it but it looks like its cool.
Linux is doing big things. Microsoft and Mac may have competition.
I mean compared to mircosoft and mac prices they're prices are relatively lower and you dont need that much of a monster system to run linux.
To me its the best of the both worlds at a cheaper price.
I can't help but feel that the commenters are examining grains of sand while missing the beach...
Mr. Hutterer gives good answers to those questions. I particularly like his observation on being able to review what technologies we have and why they succeeded or failed.
iPhone will do much to put touch on people's radar, even though it isn't 'true' multi-touch in the sense that multiple users aren't manipulatng multiple objects that are aware of each other.
To the average Joe, it's magic, but once a popular product has it, it becomes expected magic.
The Wii falls firmly in this category. It's not that Nintendo invented that kind of interaction - or have even done the best job of implementing it. It's that they've bumped it across the threshold into the popular pool of technology expectations, and there's no going back.
Once upon a time this happened with the mouse.
And I'm sure the first demos of overlapping windows must have met with a *least* one person thinking "what's the use of that? It just slows everything down!"
Interesting.
Multi-touch going opensource is a great thing.
Though it's still in beta stages, development may come fast.
But it seems the title of the article is kinda deceiving... from what I read, it's not the multitouch table that's going opensource... it's the software behind it, isn't it? Being able to generate unique IDs using multiple tables?
I've already seen somewhere how to make a multitouch table yourself, using projectors and cameras... or something like that.
Love how the Microserf fans think automatically anything Microsoft shows is a first time product. Sorry but multi touch surfaces/interfaces have been around for years, Ive been working with the stuff since the 90's, what MPX brings to the table that neither Microsoft or Apple have so far is the ability to have "two" active windows working independently of each other with separate pointers. All the stuff I have seen from Apple and Microsoft (yes that includes the "big assed table") only support one active window at a time.
MPX, it is cheap and also works two independent active windows at the same time! This is cooking for the future Peter! Keep going mate it is important!
A rear-projection system would make a lot more sense to me; the shadow of the user's arm would simply go away (assuming no bright overhead light sources).
It'd be interesting to me to use computer vision for this instead of a DiamondTouch. This sort of interaction using computer vision has been prototyped in the literature; see "PlayAnywhere" (front-projection mind you) for instance. You could get rid of the DiamondTouch to save some $$$.
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