Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

research.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 140 posts

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#81

Post by bentcorner »

jamesbritt wrote: post #28
finnh wrote: post #10

Strange that the "swiping & pinch to zoom" gestures (starting at 41) are exactly opposite of how they work in an iPad. I can understand swiping being backward - people can disagree about "move the camera" vs. "move the paper" - but pinch-to-zoom-in is wrong in all contexts. ah, microsoft. you've got this cool research, but somehow you manage to make the usability all wrong. how did these people not notice that they i…

but pinch-to-zoom-in is wrong in all contexts. Smaller distance between finger tips == smaller abstract distance from what's show on the screen. To "move farther away" you move your fingers farther apart. It doesn't seem all that odd. Just requires shifting the mental model (as with swiping). Meanwhile, later in the same video (3:21), they show the same gesture following the more common behavior (widening fingertip d…

This seems like one of those things people will eternally argue about, much like 3rd person video game camera controls and to a lesser extent, plane simulator controls in games viewed from a chase camera.

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#82

Post by zevyoura »

vinceguidry wrote: post #78
nsxwolf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the best description I've ever heard. Apple really got this wrong with their new default "natural" scrolling on OS X.

Eh. I prefer natural scrolling. Took me two seconds to get used to and I don't like the 'normal' way anymore. On my work laptop, though, I keep it off because it reverses a mouse scroll wheel too, which I find abhorrent.

Check out Scroll Reverser[0], it allows you to reverse just one input.

[0] https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#83

Post by mcrider »

cbhl wrote: post #77
interpol_p wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the implementation demonstrated in the video is that the gesture is recognised, and then the action happens. There is no one-to-one mapping between the gesture in progress and action on screen, so I suspect it will not feel anywhere near as nice as a trackpad or touchscreen.

I think that could be improved with a higher resolution sensor, but the question is whether you could build such a thing while retaining space for physical keys. IIRC, current gesture recognition still takes a couple hundred milliseconds on modern consumer touch screens (iPhones, etc.), especially for the "click" action.

Couldn't you make the keys transparent and put the IR sensors below them?

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#85

Post by mortenjorck »

guelo wrote: post #26

The idea of turning the surface of the keyboard into a trackpad is very cool, you could almost get rid of the mouse. Except for, how do you click the mouse pointer? Accidental clicks of keyboard keys is probably what makes it impractical.

This actually looks like it's only a few steps removed from a viable human interface device for the 10/GUI concept.

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#87

Post by cbhl »

mcrider wrote: post #83
cbhl wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that could be improved with a higher resolution sensor, but the question is whether you could build such a thing while retaining space for physical keys. IIRC, current gesture recognition still takes a couple hundred milliseconds on modern consumer touch screens (iPhones, etc.), especially for the "click" action.

Couldn't you make the keys transparent and put the IR sensors below them?

Maybe you should do that and write a paper about it. :)

My initial thoughts: 1) is there space underneath the key for such a sensor? 2) would the infrared light bounce off of the plastic on the key? 3) would transparent keys affect chicken-peckers (and other users) adversely?

Not saying it's not possible, although I imagine there will be challenges.

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#88

Post by alexvr »

Really cool idea, but I think they have the implementation all wrong. I'm picturing something like a long Leap Motion sensor across the top (far side) of the keyboard. Such a keyboard needs the sensitivity of a trackpad to be much better than simple key commands, no?

Re: A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

#90

Post by interpol_p »

yogrish wrote: post #79
interpol_p wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the implementation demonstrated in the video is that the gesture is recognised, and then the action happens. There is no one-to-one mapping between the gesture in progress and action on screen, so I suspect it will not feel anywhere near as nice as a trackpad or touchscreen.

For that matter even with Touch Screen, a gesture is extracted/identified by touch Algorithms (either in Touch controller or SoC). Only later, an action is taken. So there will defenitely be an inherent delay. These algos involve similar classification methods as mentioned in this demo.

But at least on a touch screen I can perform a partial gesture and see a partial result — i.e., the feeling is that the image zooms as my fingers pinch the screen, or the map pans as my fingers move. It's a very different feeling to the approach demonstrated in the video.
Post reply on HN