Microsoft multi-touch Sphere surfaces in Redmond
By Thomas Ricker 
posted July 29th 2008 12:54AM
posted July 29th 2008 12:54AM
posted July 29th 2008 12:54AM
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Kid: "Mommy, watch me play with the big ball!"
Mom: "OH SHI-"
*crash*
Jhongerkong: Kid: "Mommy, watch me play with the big ball!"
Mom: "OH SHI-"
*crash*
Michael LaFramboise: *facepalm*
The new Zune Touch - try getting that in your pocket!
I can't wait to put my coffee cup on that sphere!
Oh come on, you guys cant take a joke? Sheesh.
"Mommy, watch me play with daddy's big ball..."
"OH SHI..."
This is nothing!
Apple is going to have replaceable batteries soon!
WOW!
Replacable in what?
Thanks for the heads up Santa!
3.5/10 - lacks subtlety.
in their wallets
Hey it's Karadzic! Welcome to the forum!
Hmm. Looks pretty cool. but having an inverted sphere, or half sphere would be better. Instead if you being outside you are partially in a sphere.
I think my arms would get too tired reaching out to touch the sphere after a while (if I were inside a giant sphere)
I can't really see much use for a sphere (other than a globe) but I'm people will manage to find uses for it.
"inverted sphere" ? Can that even exist?
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/projection/domemirror/uprightdome2/
Spherical displays...
Seeing this just made me once again go watch the bigass table vid. haha
Surface is very cool and I am a huge Microsft fan but there is a problem. I just got back from Las Vegas. I visited the surface installation at the Rio Casino and Surface was not what you see on the video's. It was jumpy, the grafics were horrible, the camera feature was useless, youtube loaded extreamly slow and crashed twice and the games hardly responded. I don't know if those Surface tables were bad, but it looks like Microsoft has a long way to go with touch technology.
I used a demo model at MS, it may have been newer. It jumped a little, but mostly it was very responsive and very cool. I played with it for over an hour and didn't see it crash at all. There were some bugs, but they were all very minor.
I want to use it as a giant programmable 8 ball.
reply hazy, send error report?
And now we have big ass balls to go with those big ass tables.
it's like game sphere from south park! w00t!
How long before somebody makes this into a breast OS mod?
watching porn would be a bit difficult
I'm pretty sure you mean the surface has an internal projection system
and this has an external one.
"the prototype relies upon an infrared system to detect hands, fingers, and objects as well as an internal (not external like Surface) projection system developed by Global Imagination (and customized by Microsoft) to deliver its multi-touch UI."
I think what he meant was the detection method for pciking up whether you are interacting with the table or not. Initially, the prototypes that were shown off required cameras to be mounted facing downward to detect any of your movement.
I went to a Joint Warfighting conference a couple of months ago in Virginia Beach and was able to see Surface first hand. To my surprise, no cameras. They had upgraded the table to IR and had a program to show it off. The table would switch to a flat black screen and your hands would appears white and grey when placed on the Suface, the program was then able to count how many fingers you had on there and circle the fingerprints and all that. Very interesting!
They also had a map program that they were showing off that could switch to 3d mode and be manipulated with an Xbox controller. Everyone was taking turns flying through the Grand Canyon. Good stuff! Only saw one crash of the OS while I was there.
I must admit, it does look cool. But the BIG problem I see with this product (And surface anyway) is that it has at the moment nearly no praktical use at home or at work. It's cool to play around with it for an hour but then you will just want an normal mouse and keyboard...
Oh spherical 8 ball.... Will this product come to market?
....Outlook not so good.....
Despite it not being so good, they sold a lot of copies of Outlook.
This actually looks very promising - I think it'll be a definite conversation piece wherever it is utilized, and it actually seemed to function pretty well. There has to be so much more that can be dreamed up for this thing.
On a side note, wouldn't it freak you out if you put your hands on it, and the gigantic eye of Sauron took over the Sphere globe? LOL!
THE LIDLESS EYE SEES ALL!
Yea, and everywhere you turned, it stared at you the whole way... creepy stuff
Too Bulky!
Test.
"Think outside of the box"...oh well, I think I prefer sticking inside of the box. Traditional systems seem to be so much more efficient (and by the way, who is pushing photos around all day?It seems to be the only thing you really need multitouch for :) )
What's next?
Giant Multi-touch hamster wheel! Let us hope beyond hope!
If the Breast OS is next I think a touchpoint would be a fitting optional pointer device.
That doesn't look very useful to me at all.
I mean, beyond a virtual globe/maps app, what the hell would you use it for?
fortune telling
Looks like Balmer's head.
phathetic
I soon expect Microsoft to create a "me too" multi-touch device in the shape of a phallus. In which Ballmer will demo after his typical over the top antics to his developers. Sweaty and breathing heavily, he will immediately demonstrate multi-touch on a phallus looking device.
Companies don't want the same device all the other stores or companies have. They want to get something bespoke in order to brand it. Surface could be an OS for a flexible array of interactive adverts and kiosks, but the companies have to be able to build it themselves, or an ad firm like Clearchannel.
We could use an IBM notebook nipple to control the breast XD
I'd love to hear what Ricky Gervais would say bout this. :D
Hmmm, one step closer to 3-D imaging. If I have this, I would definitely put the "Eye of Sauron" as a screen saver.
I've seen something like this at NEC C&C Innovations Research Lab (http://www.nec.co.jp/rd/Eng/Overview/soshiki/ccinov/index.html). Also a sphere with a rotating earth projected in it. The image could be switched to an other spectrum (e.g. infrared). Brightness and contrast were a bit low, but we could rotate the earth by moving both hands in a similar way as one would rotate a giant trackball in a touchscreen kind-of-way.
Here's a picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23407846@N08/2709505233/.
I really don't see any practical application to this except for an interactive geographic presentation of earth, etc. The products derived from this will be mostly be novelty items.
Wow! this has countless applications! Like... a globe... but more expensive...
And if anyone asks "but can it play doom?" I hope you sponaneously combust... which is actually possible according to the current understanding of quantum physics. Burn baby, burn.
*runs to hide fire extinguisher*
Hmmmm, the sweet taste of pointless... one would think that the highly paid experts at MS had noticed that a sphere is about as inefficient as it gets when if comes to interfacing displayed information as the vast majority of the display area is always out of view. Regardless, if groping big ass balls is your game, go buy some MS shares today.
hands, fingers, penis.