I've been very interested in multitouch every since I saw Johnny Lee's awesome
finger tracking videos. Specifically, multitouch as it relates to game development. With the impending release of windows 7 tablet PCs, I have hopes that it might open up new possibilities and markets for games on the windows platform. I'm planning on picking up a
Dell SX2210 monitor to start playing with it.
I sought out to find out the state of multitouch. So far, I'm not too impressed. Here are two great references to get you started:
- Multitouch Madness: Brian Peek posted the slides and source code to a presentation he gave on multitouch. I really wish I could have been there but the source code and slides are a great resource.
- XNA And Windows 7 Multitouch: Great article that shows how to get a touch enabled xna window rendering in windows forms.
The thing that I walked away with is that the solutions that Microsoft seems to be proposing have pretty specific dependencies on windows forms, wpf, and silverlight. All things that I would rather not really deal with when I am making an XNA game. I would really prefer not to have to resort to making and managing my own window. In addition to the APIs not even really being available; Brian's slides mention that System.Windows.Input.Manipulations isn't even redistributable yet until .NET 4.0 is released.
So I'm going to be looking into how one can take advantage of the built-in touch APIs without onerous dependencies on unreleased assemblies and hacking windows forms in the near future. Anyone have any tips on where to get started?
