Best Device For Gesture Based Input? 133
jotaeleemeese writes: "A few days ago there was a discussion about gesture navigation in the Opera browser, that prompted my to buy Black & White, download Opera and get the evaluation version of Sensiva. Being a trackball user, I found gesture navigation too cubersome, I found a mouse not much better either. Then I thought a pen based device or a touchpad could be ideal for this kind of input, but before investing my hard cash buying something, I would like opinions from /.ers that have already tried something with these or other programs using gesture recognition and what the results have been."
Brain gestures (Score:1)
What about brain gestures from this device?
http://www.IBVA.com
Re:Gloves (Score:1)
Re:Alias|Wavefront's work in the field. (Score:1)
Re:gestures are great! (Score:1)
I tried Sensiva, and did find that to be a pain in the rear. It will be interesting to see if gestures can be well implemented accross more than just one application.
Re:Mouse position refresh rate - that's what matte (Score:1)
pen gesture (Score:1)
Re:Gesture Control Good! (Score:1)
Graphire (Score:2)
The other thing with the Graphire is that you get a cool cordless mouse to go with it, of which I have only one complaint. It wasn't designed to be able to click either of the outside buttons while rolling the wheel in the middle. I'm thinking about doing some reconstructive surgery with a craft knife so that pushing a button doesn't push down on the wheel and stop it from turning!
A numeric keypad (Score:3)
Wacom Intuos + B&W = magic (Score:3)
Try a trackpad? (Score:3)
Frankly, though, I think gesture based interfaces are overrated.
Nintendo powerglove! (Score:3)
Gesture keyboard (Score:4)
I don't own one of these (I have a Kinesis Contoured [kinesis-ergo.com] keyboard, which I'm very pleased with), but I'd be half-tempted to buy a KeyBowl if they weren't almost $400 [keybowl.com] (%$#!).
Alex Bischoff
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Re:Alias|Wavefront's work in the field. (Score:2)
I don't know what a "gesture-based menu" is, but I was using the gesture (stroke) interface of Mentor Graphics (circuit/system CAD) package back in '93. I'm sure it existed even before then.
The nice thing about Mentor is that you can do things in many different ways: menus, keystrokes, gestures, scripts and so forth. It's flexible without being cumbersome. Really, it's probably the best computer user experience I've ever had.
This was with a mouse, BTW, which seemed perfectly natural to me. The middle button initiated a stroke, but I think this was configurable.
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Is your computer slow perhaps? (Score:5)
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
Re:Getting B & W to run in Win2k (Score:4)
Re:IBM's new laptop... (Score:2)
Now...any chance the pad/touchscreen works in any other OS than Windows? If it did, I'd consider buying one - unfortunately I doubt that's the case.
** keying email to IBM sales **
Opera (Score:1)
I must say that I'm really impressed and don't find it difficult at all to use the mouse. It took me a day I'd say to get the perfect feel so that I do the correct gesture with the minimal effort required.
I think people who don't like mice aren't going to like using the mouse... for gestures or otherwise. So listen up to anyone that was swayed by the article author -- the mouse works fine... just give it a shot.
And of course a pen will work wonders too. I have one but most people don't (should change, they're awesome!) but I think a glove would let us express the most gestures... heh heh no puns.
I don't know.. maybe I'm just a post 8 bit nes, power glove dreaming child stuck in this adult body.
Later
Re:Opera (Score:1)
(five lashes for spreading bad internet grammar, spelling, and bad taste)
:P
Re:gestures are great! (Score:2)
Only problem is when I move the mouse to do something, and then change my mind and move it somewhere else... and end up closing the window. Pisses me off every time. I'm developing the habit of "squiggling" when I change my mind...!
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Getting B&W to work under win2000 (Score:1)
Hope that helps,
~Squiggle
The Glove was the near-epitome - almost perfect (Score:2)
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Re:Wacom Intuos + B&W = magic (Score:1)
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Re:gotta have the Glove (Score:2)
Gloves (Score:5)
Gesture Control Good! (Score:2)
I was fascinated by the gestural interface on the shuttles in Earth: Final Conflict. In many ways it seems to be a very intuitive and natural way to control things. It would be interesting to have a gesture recognition device that would allow us to use our actual hand (or hands) to make gestures without cumbersome things like gloves. It would, of course, have additional advantages: people who know sign language could even use a sophisticated system to type.
In the meantime, I'll settle for the traditional way of giving people the finger.
Amen (Score:2)
Re:Pens (Score:1)
Pens (Score:4)
-Laz
Alias|Wavefront's work in the field. (Score:5)
The idea is that the human brain isn't good at discerning differences between short distances, such as "Move the mouse pointer to the menu bar, click within a .5 inch box, scroll down 2.5 inches to the appropriate menu item and release", however it's quite good at producing and remembering changes in directions. So, for instance, File|Save would be "Up, Left".
With just two gestures, it's possible to represent over 48 different actions. Add a third gesture, and that number goes to 288. Their research showed that their average subject had no problem remembering four levels deep!
Gesture interfaces are especially useful as a user-interface for blind people, where it's just not possible to choose items from a menu visually.
The cool thing is that gesture-based menus have been part of the Alias|Wavefront products since 1996.
-James
Re:Getting B&W to work under win2000 (Score:1)
Funny, to get B&W to work in Windows 2000 for me, all I had to do was "install the damn thing". And it worked, imagine that!
Getting B & W to run in Win2k (Score:2)
Since there's no real way to run things in "su" in windows, you can use a nice little trick to make it work - rename the executable "setup.exe", and then it will ask you if you want to run it as administrator.
So. I renamed the B&W executable, and now it asks me for the admin password when I want to run it, and it works fine.
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Unproductive gestures (Score:5)
Application specific? (Score:5)
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Gestures and the Death of Usability (Score:1)
Re:Alias|Wavefront's work in the field. (Score:1)
What prompted the idea for me was the concept that with only two gestures it's possible to represent over 48 different actions.
Don't get me wrong, let me preface by saying that I believe strongly that evolution is a good thing, but are we trying to do away with the keyboard or what?
I have watched users very closely over the past 10 years. What I have been very disappointed to notice is people's increased dependance on the mouse.
When I was a regular Windows user I would push my mouse off to the side once a month and navigate entirely with the keyboard. You'd be amazed at how quickly you learn keyboard shortcuts you didn't even know existed. I'm not saying that I was more productive that day... far from it... but I *was* more productive the other days as I didn't need to keep reaching for my mouse to perform common tasks.
Today I watch people use their mouse to position the cursor at the end of a highlighted string of text so they can backspace over the entire string. Slightly better, I'll watch someone use their mouse to re-highlight an already highlighted string of text and delete it. Both are indicators to me that most users (present company excluded) just don't get it!
Yes, it would be pretty cool, and perhaps even quite useful, to use a minimal set of gestures in a browser. Until the introduction of the tab key in IE (and Netscape shortly after) there was no way to navigate in a browser without the mouse and I've hated it. Lynx is the only tool you can use to browse w/o a mouse that I have tried, and it's painful. Otherwise, unless I want to put both hands on the keyboard to go back I'm forced to move my mouse to the top-left corner and click back, or right-click and select back. Either way it's annoying. This is where I think gestures make sense.
Where I don't think gestures make sense is ordinary tasks like File
How intuitive do most of you find console gaming? To start with, take *any* of the fighting games for N64, PS(2), or DC... do those key-combinations make the slightest sense to you at all? Sure, the basics do, but what about all the "special moves" you have to learn if you want to win a level? How often do special moves require flawless execution of 6 or directions/buttons? Even THPS2 has too many *assignable* combinations to ever use knowingly for all the different characters.
Now take that concept and apply it to all the separate applications in the Windows space. Every one of them is going to think their gestures should be different. Look how long it took to reach an acceptable standard for copy-n-paste... vs.
Take the concept and apply it to the KDE/Gnome war as well - no one is going to standardize on anything other than what they believe to be the best way to do it.
In closing, I'm all for limited gestures, it sounds like a really incredible concept, I just hope things don't get carried away to the point that people forget how to use their keyboards even more than they have now. A mouse is a wretched interface, although it provides some very useful assitance. Perhaps certain applications (web browsers for those who truly surf and do nothing productive) will benefit tremendously from this new paradigm, but for people who make a living on a computer there currently is no substitute for the keyboard. Unfortunately those same people are putting a roof over their heads by writing the software that the other 95% of the population uses and can probably continue to use by gestures alone. =(
Haptics and degrees of freedom ... (Score:4)
LL
Re:Force feedback mouse (Score:2)
No, the driver gives new meaning to closed source. You can't even download it - you have to call Logitech to get another copy of the CD sent to you if you lose yours. It's not because it's big, either - the drivers aren't that sizable. Logitech loses points for that one. That's the only driver CD I actually keep.
Force feedback mouse (Score:5)
The only drawback is that it's too tiring for day-to-day use. I usually leave the feedback turned off when surfing the web, for example, because it just beats your wrists to death as you glide over a zillion links. I've got carpal tunnel, and the buzz that it makes when jumping over hyperlinks makes my wrists feel like they've been typing for hours.
It's remarkably cheap, too - it was $45 on the shelf the last time I looked.
Re:IBM's new laptop... (Score:2)
Recommendation: "IBM recommends Windows 2000 Professional for business."
Too bad, it looks great
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Graphic Tablets (Score:1)
Re:Gesture keyboard (Score:2)
Re:gotta have the Glove (Score:1)
s/want/wont/
you used the wrong word
Re:Gloves (Score:1)
Re:Gloves (Score:2)
It sounds like a nice idea, but using a glove or a touchscreen for hours will kill your arm.
See gorilla arm [astrian.net]
wacom (Score:2)
However, I'd like to add that such a device as a pen is fairly cumbersome for the traditional GUI, since they're based off entirely different principles.
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CAIMLAS
Re:How about (Score:1)
Black & White sucks. Gesture controls suck. Get a fucking clue people.
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Damn! (Score:3)
Re:Brain gestures (Score:3)
Best gesture device. (Score:1)
If your talking about Black & White why use a physical device, a netcam would be awesome. The moving around would be odd but casting spells would be cool. Maybe a two camera system could be put together to capture real 3-D movement, something I don't expect to see for quite a while.
Now if yout talking about 3rd person shooters, I love the strategic commander and a mouse. You physically can move the device to move about in the world and with two programmable buttons under each finger you can easly select weapons, jump, reload and whatever fills your heart with glee. Then I use the mouse to look/aim the weapons. I also like to use a wireless mouse and keyboard, it's always nice to be able to move the mouse clear across the desk without every having to pick it up or tug on the cord for slack. Another advantage with the strategic commander I often put the keyboard on top of the computer or monitor, don't need it because you can just program one of the buttons on the commander to do whatever you need to, no large clunky keyboard in your way (leaving plenty of room for soda and chips)! Now if they only made a wireless commander I'd be set!
Touchpad/Glidepad is fantastic for this (Score:2)
With that in mind, a fast intuitive "pointing" device is best for this purpose. A touchpad allows you to sketch these shapes out with your finger, and in fact Black and White with one (with the accuracy set right!) is great. I imagine a graphics would be great for this purpose as well.
On a related note, anyone else here seen the "menu" system in Sacrifice? instead of it being a dropdown system, it's cross-shaped, with new crosses spawned from each vertex. very fast, and no need for great accuracy when choosing selections. couldn't find a screenshot i'm afraid, but it's similar to the "circular" menu systems seen around.
/fross
Re:Mouse position refresh rate - that's what matte (Score:2)
On both systems I use a Razer Boomslang 2000, which of course has a higher refresh rate than you would believe. It really doesn't help that much. What is more important, from what I can tell, is how much time the processor has to spend onhandling other things (like graphics) and how much time it spends on getting input from the mouse.
Re:Gloves (Score:1)
Ever used a Palm? (Score:3)
Gestures on the Newton (Score:1)
Re:What WOULDN'T make a good gesture based device. (Score:1)
echo $email | sed s/[A-Z]//g | rot13
Give both a shot (Score:4)
I got the hang of the controls quickly, but eventually I found that the mouse works well for maneuvering around, but was still unreliable when casting miracles. Often the gestures for casting a miracle would have to be slow and deliberate, and even then would take 2-3 trys to work. When you're trying to cast a miracle in a hurry, this is unacceptable.
I dug out a touchpad I won as door prize at a conference (which I hadn't opened until then) and gave it a shot. Casting miracles with a touchpad was an incredible improvement, the movement was much more intuitive to do with a finger rather than your whole hand. However, maneuvering in Black & White with touch pad is a pain, and in some situations it was impossible to use (fighting and other quick point-and-click motions).
So I got a serial mouse and starting using the mouse to play the game and the touch pad to cast miracles. This, IMHO, is the way the game was meant to be played. After a while, you'll find things that work better with the touchpad, such as interacting with your creature, and things that work better with the mouse, i.e. fighting and catching followers to feed to your creature. Give em both I shot, it's worth the $50 or so for a touchpad.
Touchpads work, if using correct drivers (Score:5)
I am currently using a Dell CPxJ for browsing with Opera. I had the regular drivers installed for the PS2 mouse...they blew for this. I downloaded the Alps drivers. This allowed me to click and drag, right click, everything could be set so I just placed my finger and drug...all's done
I think the key to anything is find something you are comfortable with, and then just make it work. Don't spend a lot of money on something you aren't going to be happy with. And when you do get it, don't half ass it!
Re:theremin (Score:1)
extrodinary instrument anyway.
Sensiva Gestures (Score:1)
1) Mouse down and to the left, minimize: this SOO beats moving up to the corner of the screen, the trick is to have sensiva set to be VERY forgiving.
2) Mouse up and to the right, maximize.
3) Mouse streight down: close. This is a miracle, their default action is some lenghty thing that I would never ever use, but just doing a very very short down drag (approx 1 cm) is great.
4) Mouse left and then up, move window to other monitor
5) mouse left and down, turn of secondary monitor (with ultramon, a must for anyone who has multiple monitors)
Anyways, hopefully this will give you ideas, and remember to turn off the plugins thing, it just gets confusing and it bothers you overly.
Re:gotta have the Glove (Score:1)
So instead of just walking down the street with an earbug cellphone laughing and talking apparently to yourself as people are want to do these days, you could be stumbling around making inane "Johnny Mnemonic" gestures too? Tres, tres cool...
Dork.
Re:gotta have the Glove (Score:1)
Wacom with sensiva - no good. Get Squeak ? (Score:2)
Re:Pens (Score:2)
It is like you described at first though, but I think I was doing something weird drawing the gestures with the pen, but after a few successful gestures, I can pull them off with no problem and in quick succession. I don't think B&W has anything to stop perfect gestures. Seeing the red trail on the screen certainly helps too..
Grafitti (Score:4)
Think about the act of dragging your mouse as the act of writing a little scrible to represent a letter that is places serially along an input stream.
They are very similar.
Re:gestures are great! (Score:2)
There was a patch to let FVWM2 use gestures, and I once modified wmx to use the same guy's library.
Pester your friendly neighborhood window manager team for gesture support, it's fun.
If anyone actually cares, and uses wmx, I probably still have the patch.
Gestures == Bad (Score:3)
I find that hotkeys are ALOT easier, just have the letter in small print next in the lower right hand corner of the gesture icons in B&W and you would remain uncluttered. . . .
Shit, 4 out of 5 times I cannot even draw the circle in B&W to cast a shield spell. . . . Damn, I _HATE_ gestures. if it wasn't for the M hotkey and the R hotkey I wouldn't be able to play the game at all without zipping back to my temple to cast spells each time!
Gestures easier in a browser? Excuse me, WTF? Hmm, lets see now.
Enter, ooh, enter the data! Nice big key there, easy to hit. Backspace, go back a page. Once again. . . easy to do.
Also, don't forget that the amount of mouse movement you use for gestures is equal or GREATER then the distance that you would move your mouse to click on an icon! And if your just browsing then your icons are all up in the toolbar anyways right along with your mouse. Hell, just use tab to go between items and enter to enter the data, hell, I've browser without using the mouse at all, WTF would I want to complicate things even more?
Re:Gloves (Score:2)
If you happen to be going to E3 this year, you can check out their latest version there. The unit is slated to sell for $149, which might really make it a possibility for widespread use/adoption.
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PointlessGames.com -- Go waste some time.
MassMOG.com -- Visit the site; Use the word.
Wacom Graphire (Score:5)
Gestures in B&W clarification (Score:4)
May I recommend: (Score:3)
pen based and glidepads (Score:4)
I also use a glidepad occasionally on my father's laptop. I hated it at first, but then I got used to it and I can use that more effectively than a mouse (as long as i avoid finger drag). If you go the glidepad route..make sure you get one that you can click by tapping.
Re:Mice 1 Everything Else 0 (Score:2)
I don't know what you're doing, but I'm on the 4th world and my god's hand looks pretty damn evil... lots of icky veins and so on.
Burn villages, electrocute children, throw around the elderly, get your giant cow to eat the innocent, that sort of thing.
I wasn't even trying to be evil, those damn villagers just got in the way
Mouse position refresh rate - that's what matters (Score:5)
What I have seen is how much the 'refresh rate' of the mouse's position (temporal frequency?) affects the usability of gestures.
I've bought Black and White, and it has serious issues on Windows 2000. As in it doesn't run at all. Fantastic.
I've got a triple-boot machine (Slackware/Win98/Win2k), so I'm forced to run B&W in Windows 98 where the update rate of the mouse is pretty appalling.
Getting B&W to recognise some of the more complex gestures is a pain because the time between updates of mouse position gives the gesture considerably more 'jaggy' edges, making it look less like what you actually did with the mouse.
Windows 2000 has the refresh rate pretty high, so I'd have thought it's far easier to use gestures successfully on there.
I've not used the mouse much under Linux; my dedicated Linux box doesn't have a monitor, let alone a mouse, I just use it over ssh or X-Win32, so I don't know if the PS/2 refresh rate has been increased (or is configurable); the last I saw was that it wasn't particularly fast.
Opera's gestures are fairly simple (so far), not nearly as complex as some of B&W's gestures, so the rate isn't as critical. But, add more complex ones and you will see the difference.
It's not a new technology by any stretch of the imaginatio (emacs strokes mode anyone?) but it's very useful; even something as simple as Opera's 'back' gesture is so convenient, I wonder 'why didn't they put this in earlier!'.
Nice one Mr. Molyneux; he was always the king of games back in the good old days of Atari STs, and now something from his latest game seems to have started a bit of trend elsewhere in the software business.
Re:Mice 1 Everything Else 0 (Score:2)
You need stupid amounts of wood.
You can get huge quantities of wood by multiple clicking on the Wood miracle as you cast it. This is not a cheat, the game was designed to allow it and there are hidden drawbacks (which I'll leave you to find) but there is NO shortage of wood in B&W.
After a while you have stacks of villages, but still have generic messages that don't tell you where to look.
You're falling into a trap which the game sets for you (and is related to the wood issue). One option is to just train your creature to look after the villages for you. It can be done.
TWW
Poor Mans Mouse (Score:4)
Imagine feeling a "kick" in the joystick to warn you not to click on the "Goat sex" link.
wands (Score:2)
I get a smile out of the idea of people controlling their computers with the equivalent of wands, magic wands. In terms of a 3d interface it makes sense, complete with custom interfaces with funny symbols on them in a circle around the user.
;-)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip
Re:Mice 1 Everything Else 0 (Score:4)
Nah, it's great.
A whole 5 levels,
Which take a long time to complete, at least for me.
and WAY too much wood required to do anything. If I wanted to do the same task over and over and over again for hours on end...
Yeah, I think the wood requirements are too high, but you can do this:
Step 1: Teach creature to cast wood miracle
Step 2: Attach creature to village store with the compassion leash
And how do you become evil?
I dunno, my problem is becoming good; my hand looks all orange and veiny, with sharp fingernails.
Re:gotta have the Glove (Score:3)
Interesting implications (Score:2)
I can imagine sharing computers will become a little unpopular.
WebCam (Score:2)
Being able to detect where the user looks would open up a field for new user interface inventions. Being able to detect wether there is a person sitting in front of the computer could be usefull too.
Or reading the user expression (smiling, laughing, scowling, yawning, etc). Scowl and look at the paper clip to make it go away, rate web comics depending on if you smile or laugh when lookin at them. Have the IRC cliet insert "lol" automatically. Aargh.
Try Black&White's gestures first.... (Score:2)
Gesture-based input is error-prone and can be frustrating. Try playing a multiplayer game of B&W and see how mad you get when you do a gesture incorrectly in the middle of a battle. If only I could have simply pressed a button instead!
I can see gestures being useful for web browsing (draw a 'B' to go back), but I can also see it being more of a hinderance than its worth.
REAL gesturing. (Score:5)
- Synchronize a "frame" from the point of view of every camera. You must already know their "absolute" positions, which is relative to some zero-point. (Determined by the original location of the calibrator).
- For each pixel that a given camera sees:
- Assume that you are seeing a pixel at the nearest point that the second camera in your stereo set could also see. To draw a human comparison, bring your finger closer and closer to your eye, until with your other eye it passes the line of your nose and you can't see it anymore. This is the "closest point".
- Calculate where this point would appear in the other camera, as well as the sorrounding blocks of pixels, and see whether it matches what the other camera in the stero pair actually sees.
- If it doesn't match, assume that it must be farther than you initially assume. Repeat process.
- Repeat until you "converge"...ie, get images where many pixels in the area "line up" as calculated by the assumption that they are at absolute point x,y,z. This process actually is very similar to what your eye does if you ever notice when it's scanning for how far away something is. At first it assumes it's close, then keeps looking farther and farther away until the two images are brought together. Your brain is the only thing bringing the two images together! Your eyes are still an inch point five apart, silly.
:) In the same way, for each pixel (or rather, group of pixels large enough to identify a small area on an object), our software's "brain" converges the image for various distances until it finds a match.
- If you cannot find a match, assume that the other camera in the pair is not seeing that particular pixel, either because something near you is blocking the nearest area that the other camera is seeing, or because something near the other camera is blocking the line of sight that goes to what you're seeing, or because it's outside the line of sight of another camera entirely. This last is easiest because you don't even need to scan the pixels you know only one camera sees.
- Repeat this process for each stereo pair.
- Assemble every picture you have an absolute coordinate from (that a stereo pair can see) into a three-space.
Note that I've left out such things as massaging the image from different cameras in various ways (color, brightness, etc) to get them near, using more or less fuzzy "matches" depending on how much you might expect an object to differ at different angles, and calculating lighting sources based on the calibrator. While these are serious issues, they're really basic math stuff that's well-explored in the field of optical recognition, and it's basically a cut-and-paste of components, and, like I said, a $5,000 server can do thirty frames per second without having any graphics hardware specifically enabled for this stuff. The number of three-space "pixels" it ends up getting varies with conditions, but you can always do well enough to read standard braille that's reasonably close in proximity (1.5 feet) to a stereo pair of cameras. Needless to say, there are more useful applications to these kinds of technology than reading braille on your computer screenDeveloping a gesture recognition system. I did not mean to outline everything I did above, but it really is not involved, and a lot more viable than some people think. Anyway, the interesting thing about the three-space that you develop from the process above is that it is very easily analyzable. Not only do you have a solid "block" of where pixels are, but it's easy to tell lines that separate, for instance, individual fingers that overlap. In fact, the human brain uses more picture analysis than stereoscopic analysis, and our system is actually more precise than the human brain at finding the exact location of a point two or three feet away relative to a point near it, compared with the human brain, if you are given no color clues! When looking at a hand, therefore, we can pretty take the basic shape of a hand and (here is where we get tricky) apply a very fuzzy algorithm for fitting it to the hand that we actually see. It is "fuzzy" almost to the extent of being neural-netty (although we control it very much), since it not only needs to choose between an infinite number of ways that two hands can contort themselves, but also learn the size of individual aspects of it (which changes slightly), and their shape, and for this purpose also takes into account where the hand "used" to be in the previous frame, how fast it was moving over the previous few frames, and how likely it is to move in a certain way, with respect to speed and with respect to what positions are unnatural. All this is necessary to get 30 frames per second, because we aren't just interested in the "position" of the hand, but its important aspects (the relative bend in each joint). To test, we have another application that is ONLY given the absolute position of hands and the relative joints we are measuring, and then reconstructs the hands visually. You can therefore have all three programs running, the stereoscopic analyzer feeding the hand-position recognizer data, and the hand-position recognizer feeding the renderer data, so that your screen shows how the renderer is getting the info about where your hands are. Mostly, however you move your hands will be reflected on the screen, but if you move it very quickly and unusually you can still confuse the hand-position analyzer and get an image that's out of sync with what your hand actually is doing. This is independent of the stereoscopic anaylzer, which comes up with the correct data, which if you feed directly to the renderer you see always matches what your hand is doing, at 30 fps.
So now I've outlined how we get the position of joints, which includes quite a bit of fuzziness. But by far the most fuzziness is not in this, but in the actual "recognition" of a GESTURE. We've already gotten the first-generation information about what a gesture is by spending several hours each in front of a test server set up for it, already equipped with a popular voice command system, and agreeing to surf the web and do various other tasks the voice command system is equipped for (we didn't make that, it's just purchased off the floor somewhere) while also doing the gesture we have set up for each command. So we end up with "sample" gestures to analyze, and have already manually looked at the major indicators and drawn them up and programmed them. The way we have done the first time is very crude, however, eyeing as we have each sample ourselves, but we are now in the process of collecting second-generation information, so that when a user successfully uses a gesture and doesn't complain that it wasn't what he wanted, that particular instance of gesturing gets put into the database of gesturing instances associated with a gesture, and we are developing fuzzy logic to link these gestures more closely and reliably. The gestures make sense for the most part, such as having your right thumb open to the left with your other fingers closed, in a quick leftward motion to go back, or up and with a quick rightward motion to be right. Stopping is pushing your palm forward toward the screen, closed a window is putting your finger and thumb together and drawing your hand back, as if you're flicking the window away, and refresh is a sweeping gesture with your palm toward you, from bottom left toward top-right (only a small part of the way). The software recognizes a "gesture" because you perform it particularly fast and deliberately, so if you playing with your hands slowly, it doesn't misrecognize any of these.
Anyway I'm getting really tired of typing all this, and even though there is much, much, more, I'm just kidding. Wouldn't all this be cool though?
~
Re:Mouse position refresh rate - that's what matte (Score:2)
What about accelerometers? (Score:3)
Gloves seem somewhat outdated in a strange way. They never caught on, and are a little cumbersome for day-to-day activity (ever tried typing in gloves?). But what about something smaller? MEMS technology is developing better and smaller solutions every day - and accelerometers could be an answer.
Instead of putting a glove on your hand, how about sticking a small IR/Bluetooth/802.11/whatever MEMS device to the back of your hand, and go for it. Wave your hand around, and have the sensors track the motion in 3D. I'm fairly certain that in time (if not already) the sensors will be sensitive and reliable enough for you to be able to select screen items by "pressing" them.
This would be a wonderful way to go for interfaces (for selection, at least, not text input), as it would work with a device of any size, and is totally portable.
My 2c on the work of hi-tech.
Re:Mouse position refresh rate - that's what matte (Score:2)
Mouseadjuster [tweakfiles.com]
PS/2Rate [tweakfiles.com]
Those should solve your problems - I've used one, and it really smooths things out.
-- Chris
Pen Systems (Score:3)
Say you have a "Z" gesture (Haven't played B&W or used the new version of Opera yet, so don't know exactly what types of gestures we're talking here) - you could try to do it with a mouse, but it could be difficult. With a tablet, it's as simple as writing a Z as you normally would on paper. Quite simple.
The tablets aren't too expensive, either. I chose Wacom as they're recognized as the industry leader among artists (Higher pressure sensitivity and more gee-whiz bells and whistles), but most any tablet could work. I got mine (6x8 intuos) for $130, refurbished. No problems with it. It's a serial interface, but that doesn't bother me too much. You can get the smaller "average" version for about $70 or $80, I think, and it'd work just as well. I certainly consider it to be worth the price.
-- Chris
gestures are great! (Score:3)
What WOULDN'T make a good gesture based device... (Score:4)
Re:gotta have the Glove (Score:3)
Re:What WOULDN'T make a good gesture based device. (Score:2)
Re:gestures are great! (Score:2)
For those of you who do use the program, be sure to set it in the options to report as Opera, that way when admins look at the User-Agent logs it will show up properly. Just maybe, we will get people to take Opera seriously when developing sites.
Now, to something actually on topic. I use a Logitech Trackman Marble+ at home, and a standard MS Mouse at work. I like my Trackball better for doing the mouse gestures, but I generally prefer it over a mouse anyway. I guess to each his own, but I really don't think the input device matters, as long as you have the standard drag motions mastered.
GO Corp's PenPoint OS used pen gesture hardware (Score:2)
If only... (Score:3)
IBM's new laptop... (Score:5)
Re:Pens (Score:2)
Re:pen based and glidepads (Score:5)
You can customize how you want it to behave (map the screen to the tablet, or use a mouse-like interface), the pressure sensitivity thresholds, macros for the two buttons, angle behavior, and eraser behavior/sensitivity. On win and mac you can easily set these independently for different programs. Another cool feature is that you can buy multiple pens (which I find pretty comfortable,btw) and have independent settings for each one.
I'll be the first to admit it does take a while to get used to using one. But after playing around with it for a while I fell in love with it.
They are a bit costly, but well worth it. Last I heard, Wacom was selling refurbished ones at nice discounts.
--
Mice 1 Everything Else 0 (Score:5)
The only better device would be a 3D glove since you could do 3D motions, which gives a much larger domain for your gestures to be in, probably making it both easier to remember them and less likely you'll mess them up. But don't sneeze or you may delete you root directory.
BTW, Black and White sucks. A whole 5 levels, and WAY too much wood required to do anything. If I wanted to do the same task over and over and over again for hours on end I'd get a job in a factory and get paid for it. And how do you become evil? I taught my creature to eat people, I destroy entire villages, I set people on fire, fling them into mountains, sacrifice 'em all over the place, starve them to death and I'm a GOOD God? They got some good weed down at Lionhead, uh-huh.
VersaPad (Score:4)
Synaptics touchpad (Score:2)