Lightning!

Often with Fingertapps projects we find it is the combination of touch and multi-touch gestures with interesting visual effects that really bring an interaction to life. One of our favorite visual techniques is to apply open gl pixel shaders to distort / manipulate the screen, an approach the we've used in the past to create effects such as Liquid Touch. 

Our latest effort takes the concept further and enables the user to trace their finger across the screen and create lightening as they do. Very cool, can't wait to see this one up on the big screen.  

 

More Technical details over on David's blog

"Two buffers are created in OGSL. The first holds a touch map which decays over time. The result is that as you move your finger around the screen it leaves a fading trail behind it. The second buffer is a height grid. This is perturbed by the motion triggering ripples."

Fingertapps Intro Video

As way of a bit more background on what we're doing with Fingertapps here is our Intro video that we put together earlier this year.  A big thanks to our friends at New Zealand Trade & Enterprise for kicking the project off and Transmission Productions for their great work in putting the video together.

SID 2009 & Win 7 RC demos

SID 2009 is in full swing today and you'll once again Fingertapps will be there in support of our touch screen technology partners.  The buzz this year will no doubt focus on Windows 7 support and if you're at the show be sure to stop by the N-Trig booth to see some of what Fingertapps can do.  We've got a version of our photo application there, just a taste of what we've been quietly working on for Win 7 and which we are already using in client projects, and will show up in new products later this year.

If you can't make it to San Antonio flick us an email, we've got a new build of our Air Hockey demo for Win 7 RC that will run on the Dell Latitude XT, XT2 or HP Touchsmart TX2 devices and more to come...

Multi-Touch Wall Build Project

Our CTO David Brebner has a new project going into the Fingertapps Engineer Lab. He's building a 3m x 2m (approx) multi-touch wall surface that will be used for experimentation, development projects and test.  We've created cool solutions using Fingertapps in this type of format for clients all around the world and figured it was about time the shoemakers children got some shoes of their own!

The project is a joint initiative between Fingertapps / Unlimited Realities and Project Space and so will be available to others down this end of the planet wanting to experiment with physical-meets-software style projects.

In terms of technology, we'll be using a projector for the image along with some DIY touch tracking (for now).  We'll have the Fingertapps framework available and so projects will be able to use Adobe(TM) Flash(TM) and Fingertapps together via our Fingertapps SDK to create true multi-touch, multi-user interactions using off-the-shelf components. 

We've also got plans for pulling in other types of gestural input (David coverts a z-depth camera!) and we'll be looking at how we can use the surface as a remote collaboration platform...

We'll track the build and hopefully get some videos up soon of Fingertapps in action on the large format.

X Media Lab Auckland

A somewhat belated post to say what an amazing the X Media Lab Auckland conference and workshop was this past weekend.  A huge thanks to Megan & Brendan from X Media Lab for putting the event together and the sponsors (Nokia, NZTE, Auckland City and many others) who made it possible.

The invitation-only workshop with the international mentors was inspiring, draining and humbling in equal measure (I mean, a whole hour with Mr Minority Report, Dale Herigstad, great stuff).  Hands down the best conference or workshop of its type any of our management team have participated in, we'll be working hard to get another invitation next year and possibly looking at heading up to one of the events in Singapore or China.

Dell Studio One - multitouch software video

Our team is understandably proud of this one and very pleased to share the first full length video of the Dell TouchZone multi-touch software application developed exclusively for the Dell Studio One by Fingertapps.

Fingertapps.com new site & new videos

We've gone live with our updated Fingertapps.com website that includes a more product information and a number of new or improved video examples.  There is a new show-reel on the front page, while we've also added a Showcase page with project videos and on the Fingertapps Components you find 'mini-montages' showing off specific capabilities. 

Note: all the videos  have HD versions on YouTube if you are using Firefox or Chrome, unfortunately IE 7 doesn't seem to support that YouTube feature.

Pink is the new Black

Our production Dell Studio One 19 arrived today (April 1st here in New Zealand) and it is very cool, and very pink!  It's great to see the Dell Touchzone application that we've worked so hard on over the past few months running on the final production hardware...

   

Dell Studio One Launched in Japan

The Dell Studio One All-In-One PC has been launched in Japan and we're proud to announce that Fingertapps is right there on it!  Fingertapps are in fact the developers of the Dell TouchZone software, the application suite that provides the focal point for the touch experience on the Studio One.

TouchZone makes full use of the touch hardware to introduce some handy new gestures and 'actionable touch' behaviors (it's not just about resizing and rotating photos you know!).  We're not in a position to talk about the details just yet but we'll be able to post more information, screen shots and video closer to the world wide product launch...

It's been a very cool project to be involved with so far and we're really excited to see the finished product out the door!

Updated: One of the first reviews from the South by Southwest Interactive Preview that the Dell did on Monday night in Austin is up:

http://techmamas.typepad.com...dell-studio-one-19-family-desktop.html

Fingertapps SDK: Win 7 support for N-Trig

The Fingertapps SDK beta has been extended to include support for N-Trig on Win 7.  This means that Adobe(R) Flash(R) developers can now start to write applications that use up to six (6) simultaneous touches for the Latitude XT (and XT2) and the HP Touchsmart TX2 tablet PCs.

This new capability is in addition to our existing support for dual touch applications for the HP Touchsmart and NextWindow overlays on Vista and XP (Win 7 driver support coming soon).