The Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface (the Surface 2.0), which was announced at last year’s CES, has been awarded a “Best of Innovations 2012” award (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/surface/archive/2012/01/13/ces-award.aspx).
Compared to the Surface 1 unit we have in T4G’s Moncton office, this is a great step forward. The Surface is a computer vision based system for doing multitouch systems. In Surface 1.0 this meant that the solution relied on a DLP projector, and a set of cameras to detect touches by fingers or objects. This made the Surface 1 large, heavy (around 200 lbs), and limited deployment options (for example, the Surface had to be horizontal.
Surface 2 is still a computer vision based system, but uses a new technology called “PixelSense”, in which there is an IR sensor attached to every pixel. This allows the device to be much thinner than the original (about 4 inches), and weigh less than half as much. It also allows it to be deployed horizontally, vertically, or anywhere in between.
Other specifications have also been greatly improved. The Surface 2 is a FullHD 40 inch LCD, compared to the original unit’s 32 inch, 1024×768 DLP projection. The new Surface also has considerably more processing, video and memory capacity than the original (as it should – the original’s specs were from 2007!)
It is also made of Gorilla glass, making it say to deploy in “uncontrolled” environments. When it was announce last January, it was the largest piece of Gorilla Glass ever produced, but at CES 2012, Perceptive Pixel demonstrated an 82 inch touch display made of Gorilla Glass).
Also improved is the development model. While the original was programmed in .NET using either WPF or XNA, it extended those frameworks in a way very specific to the Surface. In the Surface 2.0 SDK, it builds upon the touch support designed into .NET 4.0, and allows applications to be built to run on either the Surface or Windows 7 touch devices with minimal code changes.
FredSpace 