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Microsoft makes Surface look dated with SecondLight

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
Microsoft's Surface may be hard at work helping the liberal media steal the election (we kid, we kid), but other than acting as props in stores or random promotional videos, the device hasn't exactly created a market for itself. But that's not stopping MS from introducing the next generation: SecondLight. It takes the tabletop, multi-touch display concept and adds the ability to project images into the air thanks to a liquid crystal screen timed to be transparent on alternate frames, enabling a projector below to beam an image right through it. Your eye doesn't notice unless you hold something opaque up to scatter the light (like tracing paper, for instance), meaning the device can show a picture of the night sky on the surface while highlighting the constellations on paper. The must-see video below shows how the thing can also track objects above the glass, turning a sheet held aloft into a second multi-touch display. Like the Surface, practical applications for this seem somewhat limited -- but since when have you cared about practicality?
Click to expand...
Engadget [with video].
 
Are my eyes fooling me, or did he pick up a holographic piece of paper? Trippy.

It will be useful in the future, it's cool that MS is experimenting with it, I know the crowd here thinks they suck and everything they do is horrific, but they are trying to drive into the future. Of course it's not feasible to purchase right now unless you are Bill Gates.
 
The device itself is really cool and the innovations in it are really great too, but I just don't really see why you would need to make the underlying pattern visible. It would be useful in some applications, but I just can't think of that many.
 
Large scale (PC monitor) touch display will never be practical for average consumer use.

It's definitely cool, but they need to incorporate their technology in to a peripheral device that extends the touch on to the screen.

Obviously this is for high end use and not normal consumer use.

Still- kudos to Microsoft for actually innovating. :)
 
FF_productions said:
Are my eyes fooling me, or did he pick up a holographic piece of paper? Trippy.

It will be useful in the future, it's cool that MS is experimenting with it, I know the crowd here thinks they suck and everything they do is horrific, but they are trying to drive into the future. Of course it's not feasible to purchase right now unless you are Bill Gates.
Click to expand...

If they want me to be impressed they need to implement a tech demo of something that makes sense. What exactly is the point of projecting a 4fps animation of a jogging man on a piece of paper while viewing a screen with a photo of a blurry sunset below it?

I guess this this is "innovative" but it's also "completely useless".
 
Um, there's a lot of talk about how useless these things are. People once said touchscreens would be useless, and they're starting to pop up everywhere. Heck, lots of technology once deemed useless suddenly has infinite possibilities

Actually, here's a better presentation you must see if you're a naysayer:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/283846.html?playlist=featured

One step closer to the holographics of the future

Now that's pretty damn impressive. Maps of star systems seems like something in the future (yeah, im a sci-fi geek). Kudos to MS for still innovating though. If any of you go to any tech fairs and see MS display their technology innovation side, you'll realize that they do a ton more than just bland OS's and Office. Only problem is, their upper management demands those products be the ones be released, not the cool things. Maybe they've finally changed
 
Interesting times, I could see creating some kind of 3D virtual controls that change according to the situation. Although, i doubt we will see anything useful until at least a few years later.
 
Yeah, it is cool and such, but honestly, how often can you use touchscreen? Right now, people with touchscreen notebooks rarely use those touchscreen features and MS is promoting Win 7 with its revolutionary touch screen feature.

To me, I would much prefer if Apple don't follow this route and instead release a touch-screen monitor (something like drawing tablet) like that connects through USB/FireWire/Display Port, so that only people who requires it will buy it rather then increasing cost of a product unnecessarily.
 
This looks to be the tip of the iceberg with where they seem to be heading with this technology. It's as futuristic a projection device as I've ever seen. No way is it practical or for that matter very useful now, but if they keep pushing the envelope, something pretty spectacular is bound to be created.

I can already see the use for some of this technology. Think location based, like at a stadium or theme park. It would let you interact without touching, you would become part of the scene instead of looking at it. Pretty wild stuff. Who cares who creates it?
 
Tilpots said:
This looks to be the tip of the iceberg with where they seem to be heading with this technology. It's as futuristic a projection device as I've ever seen. No way is it practical or for that matter very useful now, but if they keep pushing the envelope, something pretty spectacular is bound to be created.

I can already see the use for some of this technology. Think location based, like at a stadium or theme park. It would let you interact without touching, you would become part of the scene instead of looking at it. Pretty wild stuff. Who cares who creates it?
Click to expand...

Or at the office. The boss thinks you are working on the budget report, pick up the tracing paper and bam pr0n:rolleyes:

On a serious note this does seem promising. However I think MS still has a long time to go before the UI is refined enough to be productive, such as the scattering of photos across the screen with Surface would be a nightmare with thousands of pictures. Also for what users could probably throw at a large multi-touch interface I would imagine hardware needs to advance significantly to meet demands, mainly because I would imagine even the current UI takes a lot of CPU and RAM resources.
 
its gonna flop we do not have a need for technology this advanced yet. Even if we did let apple come out with so its not full of bugs and so we don't have to have VISTA to use it
 
This technology is more innovative than anything Apple has released, it's amazing, imagine this sort of technology for photographers being able to use tracing paper to see meta data about a photo?

or engineers being able to see data about parts in a schematic? truely amazing, but what they need to do is miniaturise it now.

Reminds me of that film, Minority report, imagine this surface tech on one of those see-through OLED displays? :D
 
beg_ne said:
If they want me to be impressed they need to implement a tech demo of something that makes sense. What exactly is the point of projecting a 4fps animation of a jogging man on a piece of paper while viewing a screen with a photo of a blurry sunset below it?

I guess this this is "innovative" but it's also "completely useless".
Click to expand...
For now it's useless. But in a decade or so, maybe not. I'm interested to see what Apple is doing for the future too. They haven't shown anything like this (or like Surface for that matter), but they are quiet in anything they plan for the future.

Tilpots said:
I can already see the use for some of this technology. Think location based, like at a stadium or theme park. It would let you interact without touching, you would become part of the scene instead of looking at it. Pretty wild stuff. Who cares who creates it?
Click to expand...
I can't wait for the first movie made with this technology. :D:p
 
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