Multitouch gestures and random thoughts.

[CrackedButter]

Where are the multitouch gestures on the iPhone, for all the praise for the technology, I've noticed games which are designed for the one finger and won't respond if you use more than one its weird because that particular developer isn't taking advantage of the tech. Gears for example isn't multitouch, I can't move more than one gear around at a time.

Eliss however is a great example of the technology

Anyway besides that, imagine this.

I'm inside application 'x' and I want to change the brightness of the screen for whatever reason. Why can't there be a power user option to touch the screen with 3 fingertips and a fourth finger to act as the slider thereby changing the brightness within the app but with only the OS responding because it would act like a short key on the keyboard?

This would solve having to keep getting back into the settings and across iphone pages to change the screen levels. Simple for power users and unseen by regular users.

There could also be another gesture for airplane mode, 4 fingers could bring up a virtual switch and the 5th finger to swipe, let the fingers go and the quick menu disappears.

Thoughts?

 

[kdarling]

I've read that with more than about three fingers, the screen loses track of the touches.

Plus if any finger lifts for an instant, then its next touch will be returned in a different order in the touch array than before. This makes keeping track of finger swipes, more difficult to code.

It's a lot easier to have either a dedicated physical button, or a place on the screen to touch.

Of course, if you can multitask, then you just need something that can let you flip to the settings without closing the game.

 

[CrackedButter]

You should play 'Eliss' if you already haven't. I've never noticed a problem with more than 3 fingers. Some levels ideally require 4 hands (8 fingers total) but nobody touches my iPhone!

 

[kdarling]

You should play 'Eliss' if you already haven't. I've never noticed a problem with more than 3 fingers.

Yep, but that's a totally different programming scenario.

In Eliss, you touch planets (circles). They're in known locations. A touchdown point coincides with known coordinates. It's like touching button areas on the screen. If a touch is missed, no harm done. No coding tricks needed.

With swipes, there is no object location to correlate to. Swipes are coordinate agnostic. The software has to recognize that multiple moving touch points are related for each finger. In other words, the code has to follow each finger. If a finger accidentally raises or the screen skips seeing it, the swipes get jumbled up. It's just a lot more difficult to handle.

 

[CrackedButter]

Interesting difference you've outlined, thanks, it goes towards explaining things.