Windows 7 + multi-touch

Potentially useful for making software virtual instruments:

short demo
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/05/27/microsoft-demonstrates-multi-touch.aspx
(see demo playing on-screen piano keyboard towards the end)

techy lecture:
http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC03/

The hardware they used in the lecture, which is already available and will be able to run their Windows 7 beta with multi-touch:
Dell Lattitude XT, or HP TouchSmart 2.

lecture, 73 minutes in
The touchsmart supports 2 fingers only.
The Dell XT - around 5 or 10.

Windows 7 is slated for release some time next year.

With some luck, I may be able to add multi-touch polyphonic playing of all the virtual keyboards in Tune Smithy pretty much as soon as it is released - the code you can add to a program that uses the windows API looks very straightforward.

Not velocity sensitive as you can only get the x and y coordinates of the fingers, no z coord and no information about the contact area (if you could, you could use the rate of increase in contact area as the finger touches the screen to derive a velocity of sorts). But one could easily make the volume depend on where you click on the key e.g. towards the top of the key for quieter notes and towards the bottom for louder notes (FTS's virtual keyboards already have that as an option).

Robert

http://www.robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/music.htm

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