Kristof Rennen’s Blog

As of today, we are working on a Microsoft Surface application which gave me the idea starting to blog about news, features, nice to knows, … anything you may want to know about the Microsoft Surface and the development of Surface applications.

In this first article, I will be talking about the Surface in general, and what it is all about.

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.

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

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:

• IEEE802.11b
• IEEE802.11g
• Bluetooth 2.0
• Gigabit Intel Network Adapter

I/O:

• 2 headphone jacks
• 6 USB 2.0 ports
• RGB component video
• S-VGA video (DB15 external VGA connector)
• Component audio
• Ethernet port (Gigabit Ethernet card [10/100/1000])
• External monitor port
• Bays for routing cables
• On/Standby power button

 Display:

• Type: 30-inch XGA DLP® projector
• ATI X1650 graphics card with 256 MB of memory
• Maximum resolution: 1024 x 768
• Lamp mean-life expectancy: 6,000+ hours

Computing System:

• 2.13-GHz Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo processor
• Memory: 2 GB dual-channel DDR2
• Storage: Minimum 250 GB SATA hard-disk drive

More Information

More information can be found at the following locations:

• The Official Website
• The Surface Blog

In one of my coming articles, I will be talking about Microsoft Surface Development.

Kristof Rennen Hardware Hardware, Microsoft, Multi-Touch, Surface