Jeff Han and Perceptive Pixel
For those of you who have not seen the future, here it is:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/...bctid422563006
Now put your socks back on.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/...bctid422563006
Now put your socks back on.
Comments
For those of you who have not seen the future, here it is:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/...bctid422563006
Now put your socks back on.
That's nice stuff, but not particularly sock knocking-off-ish. The only thing he added to the mix was the multi-touch. That part's the future and non-trivial but not much of that movie actually had multi-touch doing anything actually new. The rest is just garden variety interface and is already done with slightly clunkier and infinitely less sexy composite control like mice and on screen navigation widgets that are moused. Don't be too fooled by black shirts, dark rooms and ethereal music.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/...touchthis.html
In the article, several big name companies like GE, Mitsubishi and (yes) Microsoft are also pursuing multi-touch devices. Perceptive Pixel is set to ship (or has already done so) its first multi-touch wall screen to one of the branches of the military (not disclosed).
If the company ever goes public, the IPO line of investors will be very long.
That's nice stuff, but not particularly sock knocking-off-ish. The only thing he added to the mix was the multi-touch. That part's the future and non-trivial but not much of that movie actually had multi-touch doing anything actually new. The rest is just garden variety interface and is already done with slightly clunkier and infinitely less sexy composite control like mice and on screen navigation widgets that are moused. Don't be too fooled by black shirts, dark rooms and ethereal music.
You're kidding, right? Do you know anything about Han and his research?
You're kidding, right? Do you know anything about Han and his research?
He has good stuff but Hiro is partly right. The key was he figured out how to make FITR useful as a multitouch interface which is pretty brilliant because its obvious once you see how.
Lots of downsides tho' with the technique. Mostly size and darkness. On the other hand he seems very advanced with some of the software mods he's made. I'd love to have his World Wind modifications.
The video was done to be very "minority report" like, hence the staged look. Like the tossing of pictures off to the side.
Vinea
That's nice stuff, but not particularly sock knocking-off-ish. The only thing he added to the mix was the multi-touch. That part's the future and non-trivial but not much of that movie actually had multi-touch doing anything actually new. The rest is just garden variety interface and is already done with slightly clunkier and infinitely less sexy composite control like mice and on screen navigation widgets that are moused. Don't be too fooled by black shirts, dark rooms and ethereal music.
Bingo.
He has good stuff but Hiro is partly right. The key was he figured out how to make FITR useful as a multitouch interface which is pretty brilliant because its obvious once you see how.
Lots of downsides tho' with the technique. Mostly size and darkness. On the other hand he seems very advanced with some of the software mods he's made. I'd love to have his World Wind modifications.
The video was done to be very "minority report" like, hence the staged look. Like the tossing of pictures off to the side.
Vinea
To Vinea, I agree with your comment on the "staged look". To Hiro, I still think you're kidding because you're too smart not to be.
Jeff Han is now the company Perspective Pixel, not just the obscure NYU researcher he was a year ago at the TED 2006 conference. Of course the presentation has lots of hype and eye candy! But we see this all the time from companies touting their breakthrough products, e.g. on Jan. 9th at MacWorld Expo when SJ showed off iPhone to the world. In Han's case, there is a lot of brilliance and substance underneath the "black shirt". Look at the burgeoning resume and list of companies banging down his door trying to get a piece of his technology.
link
For those of you who have not seen the future, here it is:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/...bctid422563006
Now put your socks back on.
The Asian guy was much better at it than the other dude.
Meanwhile, I am still quite impressed with my trackpad, thank you very much.
(Really, I am. Four years later, and I'm still blown away by my TiBook.)
Good sleuthing dapple, if the article you cite is accurate re contractual papers he signed with Apple. I'm familiar with almost everything ever written by or about Han and this is the first instance I've seen of a real relationship with Apple. This is good news if he had some input into Apple's next (i.e. computer) implementation of Multi-Touch.
Possibly with the software patents (ugh) on gestures. Ugh. The hardware the only way I see using the technique is with another Apple patent on making the screen the camera.
Vinea
To Vinea, I agree with your comment on the "staged look". To Hiro, I still think you're kidding because you're too smart not to be.
Jeff Han is now the company Perspective Pixel, not just the obscure NYU researcher he was a year ago at the TED 2006 conference. Of course the presentation has lots of hype and eye candy! But we see this all the time from companies touting their breakthrough products, e.g. on Jan. 9th at MacWorld Expo when SJ showed off iPhone to the world. In Han's case, there is a lot of brilliance and substance underneath the "black shirt". Look at the burgeoning resume and list of companies banging down his door trying to get a piece of his technology.
Well, I'm not kidding. What he has will probably make him a lot of money, but if you have followed 3D virtual environment navigation and user interfaces over the last 6-7 years you don't see much new paradigm there. Just a very nice implementation with a few new wrinkles made possible by multi-touch. The eye-candy, like the flings, was just pure Hollywood without a lot of usefulness, even the open source GUI Beryl 0.2.0 has those The piling and organization have existed since the late 90's only lassoed with a mouse. The rotations and translations are the same ones used in Google Earth or an X3D browser like Cortona. Zooms have been around forever, just not with splitting fingers.
He happens to be smart enough to productize and market it in an exceptionally effective way. He should get full credit there since that is harder to pull off than it looks. The real work is in the engineering to recognize the individual distinct touches and that has been a field-wide goal for several years as evidenced by several vendors including Apple touting multi-touch now. It's an effort of a lot of folks in both academia and business with several now having workable products, not just Han. And yeah, I'm jealous as I probably couldn't market my way out of a paper bag.
Well, I'm not kidding. What he has will probably make him a lot of money, but if you have followed 3D virtual environment navigation and user interfaces over the last 6-7 years you don't see much new paradigm there.
If you've followed the 3D virtual environment navigation and user interfaces for the last 20 years you realize that they're all typically cool looking and not all that usable even with 6-DOF controllers.
I'm not certain they're all that usable now even with gestures but its certainly going to be much better. The real work change is with gestures that's only enabled on a multitouch interface which makes the 3D environment more intuitive than manipulation with a mouse + cmd keys or a spaceball.
Just a very nice implementation with a few new wrinkles made possible by multi-touch. The eye-candy, like the flings, was just pure Hollywood without a lot of usefulness, even the open source GUI Beryl 0.2.0 has those The piling and organization have existed since the late 90's only lassoed with a mouse. The rotations and translations are the same ones used in Google Earth or an X3D browser like Cortona. Zooms have been around forever, just not with splitting fingers.
The "lens" overlays are not present in GE, WW or ArcExplorer in that form. They modified WW to get that kind of capability (modifing the native layers). Not that you couldn't use it with a mouse but the interface lends itself better to the application.
From a UI perspective you can have planet inertia and click to point in GE and WW but with multimodal you can detect someone applying a hand (or perhaps just 4 fingers in a row) to the globe for a "spin" and then a stop. Yes, this works with mouse drag but getting the speed right is more difficult.
With gestures its intuitive for anyone that has seen a physical globe to grab, spin and stop and you can program in a variable spin speed based on the speed of the gesture (getting speed with a mouse is also doable but users are less able to gauge speed without practice).
People do "hollywood" because Minority Report is what got a lot of non-HCI folks interested in multi-touch gesture interfaces.
He happens to be smart enough to productize and market it in an exceptionally effective way. He should get full credit there since that is harder to pull off than it looks.
Eh? What other multimodal interface is as inexpensive as FTIR? Who else did FTIR as a multimodal interface prior to Han (there's one guy who developed a FTIR interface about the same time). There's Microsoft's TouchLight that might from 2004ish but that uses a camera behind a transparent surface...and PlayAnywhere is cool if somewhat huge and awkward looking. The Lemur (JazzMutant) has some kind of transparent multi-touch sensor but for $2K not cheap.
Okay, typically a projector is also expensive but lots of places have projectors you can "borrow" for an experiment. Ordering one even for a professor isn't too bad since its multi-use. Try justification for a Cintiq or a Lemur...
The real work is in the engineering to recognize the individual distinct touches and that has been a field-wide goal for several years as evidenced by several vendors including Apple touting multi-touch now. It's an effort of a lot of folks in both academia and business with several now having workable products, not just Han. And yeah, I'm jealous as I probably couldn't market my way out of a paper bag.
All fairly expensive for multi-touch prior to now or typically with worse limitations. Xerox, Sony, Mitsubishi and many others have experimented with front projected multi-touch surfaces. Raskin had been promoting ZUIs for a long time and folks have been experimenting with gestures for a while (since the 80s). In 1992 Tognazinni built the Starfire demo movie with multi-touch gestures at the heart of the UI.
Toshiba has technology that I think that might be used in the iPhone with the shadow sensing built into the display but isn't quite there yet for larger displays (so-far camera sized). http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/tm_dsp/pre...5/05-09-29.htm
The next step is to make the TactaPad transparent to overlay atop a LCD (www.tactiva.com).
Then we can build the Starfire interface for real in about...oh 10 years.
But for a usable touch surface for a large screen FTIR is an elegant and (relatively) inexpensive solution.
Vinea
Well, I'm not kidding. What he has will probably make him a lot of money, but if you have followed 3D virtual environment navigation and user interfaces over the last 6-7 years you don't see much new paradigm there. Just a very nice implementation with a few new wrinkles made possible by multi-touch. The eye-candy, like the flings, was just pure Hollywood without a lot of usefulness, even the open source GUI Beryl 0.2.0 has those The piling and organization have existed since the late 90's only lassoed with a mouse. The rotations and translations are the same ones used in Google Earth or an X3D browser like Cortona. Zooms have been around forever, just not with splitting fingers.
He happens to be smart enough to productize and market it in an exceptionally effective way. He should get full credit there since that is harder to pull off than it looks. The real work is in the engineering to recognize the individual distinct touches and that has been a field-wide goal for several years as evidenced by several vendors including Apple touting multi-touch now. It's an effort of a lot of folks in both academia and business with several now having workable products, not just Han. And yeah, I'm jealous as I probably couldn't market my way out of a paper bag.
Hiro, thanks for a very informative, honest reply. FYI, the Han" wall demo" was accomplished using Solaris 10 OS and linux GNOME. But you probably figured that out.
BTW, what are your thoughts on the basic technology, Frustrated Total Internal Reflection, FTIR? How far can he push the technology? How about TouchLight from Eon/MS? (That's what was used in "Minority Report"). Or DiamondTable from Mitsubishi? I'd really be interested in hearing your thoughts on these topics.
Thanks.
Thanks for the very informative comments. I'll ask you the same question I asked Hiro-- How far do you think Han can push FTIR?
Thanks.
Hiro, thanks for a very informative, honest reply. FYI, the Han" wall demo" was accomplished using Solaris 10 OS and linux GNOME. But you probably figured that out.
BTW, what are your thoughts on the basic technology, Frustrated Total Internal Reflection, FTIR? How far can he push the technology? How about TouchLight from Eon/MS? (That's what was used in "Minority Report"). Or DiamondTable from Mitsubishi? I'd really be interested in hearing your thoughts on these topics.
Thanks.
How far can it go? That's a bit beyond the depth I keep up on. The under the hood parts of FTIR and related techs are not what I do. Rather I am a future consumer of those technologies to provide the interfaces for what I do in simulation and virtualization. I probanbly won't get to look too deeply at it for awhile either since I am elbow deep in designing a engineering-quality simulation physics engine and that project's gonna keep me busy for a couple years I think.