http://10gui.com/

Watch the video. It's a UI concept designed to replace the mouse, touchscreens, and virtually every other piece of crap we've come up with thus far.


Discuss.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Aug 3 2010, 5:44 pm by Tuxedo-Templar.

Impractical for gaming, but I could see how it would help in window rich environments. However due to the former, I simply don't give a fuck about it.

I have no problem with mice and handling many program windows. Hello taskbar! I also like that a tiny move of my hand is scaled to a larger movement on the screen.
Using 10 fingertips this can get messy fast simply because your fingers are too big so they probably have to keep the 1:1 scale which could be annoying for big screens since you have to span "large" distances with your hands. 2 Hand usage could help with that, but I can't tell from this presentation.

In any case it's an interesting concept that's worth exploring. Sure needs some work and fine-tuning, but nothing that can't be overcome.
Probably needs an entire new OS which could prove problematic to get a widespread foothold with in todays computer market.

About gaming. At first mice will still be #1 input device for games, kinda like the joystick 10-20 years back*. In time the games would be developed to take advantage of the new input device and mice will die out. Just like joysticks. That is, if the 10/Gui concept becomes standard for everyone which I have strong doubts about.

Also I lol'd at con10uum. Clever term though imo.

* Anyone remember how he played settlers 1 with his friend on 1 computer split screen with one using the mouse and the other using a joystick? For a RTS? Fun times for sure!

I like it, and I don't agree that it would have to be impractical for gaming once the software adapts-- wouldn't it be neat to have an RTS game where you could push and pull units around with all 10 fingers, and use gestures to navigate around and issue general orders at extremely high speed? Could you imagine how crazy Korean micro would be in such a game? Or for a simpler example, envision a version of Tetris where you moved the pieces with actual fingertip grabbing, twisting, dragging, and dropping motions, with multiple pieces falling all at once on a larger playing field...it could be faster, more intuitive, and more involving than conventional Tetris all at once. I have a multitouch trackpad on my laptop, and the gestures are very convenient for surfing the web and working with documents, to the point that not having them makes things feel awkward and slow...I'm sure that if something like this were to catch on, people would wonder how anyone ever managed to control a game with just a keyboard and mouse.

This shouldn't get rid of the mouse but co-exist with the mouse imo.

I'd rather have a neural actuator.

There is a reason that the p-38 is what it is. It is by far the simplest, most elegant, and most portable can opener ever, and has withstood the test of time (coming up on 70 years).

I have multitouch on my laptop. The first problem is the distance required to switch from typing to moving the mouse. I have to take my entire hand off the keyboard to move. The way to fix this is to eliminate the keyboard and move to voice recognition, or put the mouse in a proper place.

The second problem is touchscreens are severely limited for me since their use is designed for people who do not sweat.

The third problem is the more stuff you put in, the greater chance of it to fuck up. My touchscreen supports 2-4 fingers. I can't use more than 2 fingers because 3 fingers never works, and 4 fingers never works. Likewise 3/4 fingers are pretty useless. There are 5 major functions of a standard mouse: moving the pointer, left click, right click, middle click, and scroll wheel. Any more and it's all just shortcuts for doing something else. I find the zoom/rotate function is extremely limited and poorly executed in most touch screens, since you move only fingers. This limits your movement to just as far as your fingers can go. When zooming, the touchscreen area is halved, since both sides have to be moving. When rotating, you can't rotate in a full 360 degrees.

IMO GIMP (and other photo editors) have zooming and scrolling down perfectly, and honestly can get rotation pretty easily (but really, rotation is stupid. Can anyone tell me when it would be useful?). Ctrl+wheel zooms. Middle click + drag grabs the area and moves it along with the mouse. This in particular is good for traditional mice. Touchscreens work better by middle click + wheel (aka 2 finger multi-touch drag) since it doesn't move the mouse pointer. Alt+any click could simulate rotation, though there is a tool for that.

The fourth problem is that humans cannot multitask. The very idea that we can fully utilize both of our hands doing separate things is absurd. There's only so many combinations that we can perceive. I, for one, can't brush my teeth and comb my hair at the same time. In fact, I can do both tasks separately faster than I can at the same time (perhaps I could learn, but who does that?). Likewise, you can't work on two windows at the same time. Anyone who says they can multitask is doing it like a single core CPU, not a dual core. They don't have two brains.

Finally, tactile feedback. This is my biggest gripe. We have five major senses: sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell. The latter two are inconceivable as a use in computing, and are heavily dependent on one another. Sight is probably the most important (I feel bad for blind people). Touch is the second most important. Without touch, we wouldn't know which button we pressed, or if we even pressed that button. In the move to touchscreens, we have gotten rid of that sense of touch, since all you're doing is touching a flat surface, and using sight or sound as feedback. Essentially we are limiting ourselves to TWO senses. Since sound isn't really a necessary part of computing, and at times can be obtrusive, we are really limiting ourselves to one sense: sight. Where does that leave blind people?

We already have traditional multitouch on traditional mice. It's called a keyboard.

What we need is touchpads which 'click' when... clicked. Physically, I mean.
Impractical but not impossible.
We can, however, operate quickly enough to simulate it when our means of operation are close enough to what our brains are adapted for.
Our fingers are one of the best things we have for this job. Hell, look at typing - at any given time, a fast typist is likely to have at least three fingers and the palms of both hands moving.
Note: I haven't fully read the video yet, I don't know if I'm responding to what I believe I am. That said:
Rotation is frequently used by artists, as flipping things around can have drastic effect on our interpretation of them.
Also, we're better at moving our fingers/hands/pencils/whatever in some directions than others.
Keyboard can easily be integrated into a touchpad, though I don't know how to solve the tactile feedback issue in this case.
It's likely solveable, I believe.

The problems I have with this concept:
One, finger fatigue. Maybe it's just my hypotonia and underdeveloped forearms, but I know that my fingers would grow tired damned fast from using that thing. Pressing down (typing, mouse button pressing) is simple, but this would involve a large amount of lateral finger motion while applying pressure without using the palms, none of which apply to the keyboard, and all of which is unnatural and difficult.
Two, finger interference. Fingers are big and clumsy and can get in each other's ways.
Three, precision. While it gains some bonus there for being more intuitive an interface, ultimately, our fingers, due to their complex designs, are bad at precise, smooth motions that are easier with our thumbs (trackballs, thumbsticks) or arms (conventional mice), which are designed to move in any arbitrary way relatively easily. Fingers mostly close and open.

For the record, I use a trackball, myself. My input device itself never moves, so I don't have to worry about desk space, I can hold it in my hand and place it in my lap or to my side or wherever I want, and in its default position it is always within thumb's reach of Numpad-Enter and other keys and a minimum distance in general from my keyboard.

@rockz

I think the point of increased input bandwidth isn't for people to multitask, but to simply normalize UI functions for given tasks as best as possible for handed use. Anyone who uses a ton of hotkeys ought to understand the value of this.

Tactile feedback is probably the only gripe I can swallow, since I think the absence of a physical object to create an earthly manifestation of an interface element makes it a bit too nebulous. I bet even that could be a solveable problem, somehow...