Twisted Eight: First Look at Microsoft Surface Computer

The Idea

Microsoft Surface fundamentally changes the way we deal with digital content on a computer.

Instead of working with a dull mouse and keyboard, which is not very intuitive to all users, we will be using our hands and fingers to operate the Microsoft Surface.

We can grab data with our hands, move it around by performing simple gestures, and this even with multiple persons simultaneously.

All computers only have a single input device which is the mouse. The surface on the other hand is a full multi-touch device, supporting up to 52 touch points (that are a lot of mouses).

The Outside

The Surface itself it built as a small table, where the plate itself is the multi touch device.

Because it looks so natural, it can easily be included in various surroundings.

Microsoft Surface: The Outside

The surface of the Surface, is a kind of matted glass material, feeling really soft to the fingers, and allowing fast movement.

The viewing angle and brilliancy of the screen is made so a lot of users can have a clean image, when surrounding the table.

The Inside

Microsoft Surface: The Inside

The inside of consists of 3 major parts:

Near infrared camera’s
A computer
Rear projection system

In total, there are 5 camera’s monitoring the surface for movement tracking. The reason Microsoft uses 5 camera’s, is to solve field angle problems. Each camera monitors it’s own small area of the surface, resulting in better speed and resolution. It was also needed to get the table as low as it is now.

The camera’s themselves can read unlimited numbers of touch points on the surface. The limit of 52 is only set because of CPU processing limits.

The computer inside the Surface is a high-end machine, but runs on mainly conventional components. It is powered by a Core 2 Duo 2.13 Ghz CPU, and has 2GB of RAM.

The Operating System on the surface computer, is a standard non-modified Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. An extra layer is running on top of this windows vista, called the shell.

The read projection system, projects the computer’s image to the underside of the tabletop.

Communication

The Surface offer 3 ways of communication:

WiFi
Ethernet
Bluetooth

There are already sample application using the WiFi possibilities to automatically load content from a wireless device, if put on the Surface.

Development

To develop Surface application, there is a choice between Windows Presentation Foundation and XNA. Custom WPF control have been built to support the Surface specific interactivity.

The development can be done using the Microsoft Surface SDK, which integrates with Visual Studio 2008 and allows the developers to run a Surface Simulator to test the application locally on a windows vista machine.

Technical Specifications

Size: 108 x 69 x 54 CM
Weight: ca 90kg

Network: