Touchscreens are so yesterday’s news, but 40-inch HD displays that can handle 20 or more fingers of touch and real-time interaction with people, objects and tags? That’s something to get excited about. It’s also pretty much the description of Microsoft’s Surface 2. These large, table-top touchscreens went on pre-order last year and now we finally got a chance for some hands-on time. It’s an impressive technology.
Microsoft’s first Surface was a bulky box that used a computer, projection screen and sensors to see finger touches, gestures and even objects. It mostly sold to commercial destinations like hotels and casinos.
The latest Surface is actually a joint project between Microsoft and Samsung and is officially called theSamsung SUR 40. Now all the tech is inside a thin HD screen and it no longer uses projectors or sensors pointed up at the screen. Surface 2 employs “PixelSense” technology, where every RGB pixel is paired with a “camera” pixel to see your hands and anything you place on the screen (or move right above it) in real time.
The display is, naturally, multi-touch, bit it is also multi-person, multi-touch. During a demonstration at this year’s CES show in Las Vegas, we saw how the display could track not only the exact position (XY coordinates) of 10 or more fingers (making every Surface 2 multi-user), but could even see the orientation of a finger touch. With that information, Surface 2 can reposition on-screen objects so they, say, point toward you. Imagine passing a virtual photo on the screen from one person around the Surface 2 table to another: the photo will properly reorient as each person touches it.
The screen is also pressure-sensitive, which makes it adept at creating lines of varying thickness, depending on how hard you press or how much of your finger you place on the big screen. In the demonstration, we tried an app called “Da Vinci,” which let us draw objects that, depending on the settings, would then interact with each other and the boundaries of the physical screen (watch the video and you’ll get it). It’s a natural kind of human/display interaction that could lead to all sorts of new applications.
One of Surface 1’s neatest tricks was being able to recognize tags on physical devices and call up information related to the device. I placed a phone and a camera on Surface 1 and all the specs appears on screen right next to each object. Surface 2 can read tags as well and was able to look at two coded cards and launch a couple of Bing searches.
For now, Sur 40 Microsoft Surface 2 screens will run you nearly $9,000. That’s a lot more scratch than the typical, non-touch sensitive 40-inch HDTV (typically less than $1,000). As a result, don’t expect to see one of these the next time you visit a friend’s house for a game of virtual Parcheesi.
Where do you think Surface 2 should be used and, if you could afford the $9,000, would you buy one? Tell us in the comments.
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