Why can't we have multi-touch on our PPCs? (I think it truly is possible.)

[ScrapMaker]

I'm not exactly sure how the iPhone does it, but we can do it too, I believe...

I believe ANY touch screen device can do it, aside from maybe the infrared ones...

When you push down in one spot on a resistive touch screen, and then push another finger down, it simply gives you the average of the two points... directly in the middle... so if you take the starting point, and the new average point, you can EASILY find out where the other finger was pushed down...

Clearly there would be limitations to this, depending on what information is available to the touch screen driver... but there are things like pressure/size that could work into the equation to make this work... if you move your fingers, the size between the two points would increase, and the average point would also move...

I just played around with a resistive-touch screen on my desk... for sure, the mouse cursor stayed exactly between my two fingers the whole time...

I honestly think that something like multi-touch can be done on our devices, even without a capacitive screen... hell, Apple might be doing something just like this... who knows what the iPhone's screen really "sees." It's probably just averaging things out, and using a formula as well...

[vikdmon]

Phones require multi-touch sensor.
Windows Mobile 7 and the phones that are capable of running it, will have multi-touch.
http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com...tion-gestures/

[CyberMonkey]

Originally Posted by vikdmon

Phones require multi-touch sensor.
Windows Mobile 7 and the phones that are capable of running it, will have multi-touch.
http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com...tion-gestures/

"phones capable of running it"
that make me wonder if any current Pocket PC devices will be able to run it (or course not all features would be available if that was the case)

[ScrapMaker]

Originally Posted by vikdmon

Phones require multi-touch sensor.
Windows Mobile 7 and the phones that are capable of running it, will have multi-touch.
http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com...tion-gestures/

The point I was making is that I believe it can be done without ANY additional hardware... I was pointing out that you could simply use math to find out where the two fingers are... it seems logical to me, and while I don't think we could write a device driver so that it is default in windows mobile--I do think that people could write software to do Multi-Touch-"like" gestures...

Here's an example...

When you push down one finger, and then another... the cursor INSTANTLY jumps to the new point... so you could write the software to realize this, and say, "hey, he's using multi-touch." If you pull your finger off, or just swipe it, then it will realize that, and work per usual...

[steps]

From my understanding current PPC have pressure sensitive screens which is much different from the glass multitouch the iphone uses. Unfortunately there's alot more to it then a "software hack"

[Musicman247]

It would be possible, but it would be extremely limited. I thought about writing a "multi-touch" picture viewer along these basis:

User puts one finger down, then the other - the ppc sees it as the user touching and then moving his finger to a new location

From there tell the program to resize the picture based on the new finger position.

Haven't tried it yet, but I'll see what happens.

[ScrapMaker]

Originally Posted by steps

From my understanding current PPC have pressure sensitive screens which is much different from the glass multitouch the iphone uses. Unfortunately there's alot more to it then a "software hack"

The area of the circle that is registered, along with the center point can be used to determine where both fingers are...

[ScrapMaker]

Originally Posted by Musicman247

It would be possible, but it would be extremely limited. I thought about writing a "multi-touch" picture viewer along these basis:

User puts one finger down, then the other - the ppc sees it as the user touching and then moving his finger to a new location

From there tell the program to resize the picture based on the new finger position.

Haven't tried it yet, but I'll see what happens.

pretty much what i had in mind...

[aedmunds7]

Have you tried Winterface by Vito Tech? Might be what you are looking for??

[No1ustad]

what's interesting to me, kind of on the same lines possibly. is the dell latitude xt, which is currently single touch, but will be upgraded to multitouch as per maxim magazine. lol (i know, not the most credible tech source, but hey)