I just released Touché beta 3. Again, oodles of bugfixes and performance improvements, but also a couple of new features:

First (and probably coolest) is native support for the format the NUIgroup Flash demo apps use to receive tracking data (e.g. it’s outputting the format that tools like “flosc” create from TUIO output, but doing this directly in the app, obviating the need for the adapter server). This means that using a Flash demo with Touché is now as simple as launching Touché, then launching the Flash demo - it will connect to Touché automagically, without having to worry about anything.

Also, you can now (optionally) choose a thresholding filter based on distance from a reference color. This is very useful if your touch blobs are not necessarily brighter or darker (luminance-wise) than the background, but have a distinct color instead. Alternatively, you could use this to “abuse” Touché into being a color marker tracker for non-multitouch projects.

Another new thing is the ability to specify a maximum blob displacement between matched blobs in two consecutive frames, which is useful against the not-so-rare (especially if you’re using a camera at about 30fps or less, and multiple people are working on the multitouch table simultaneously) case that a finger is lifted off in the same video frame that another one is put down - if the blobs’ distance is larger than the threshold, they will not be matched, but a “touch up” and “touch down” call will be delivered instead. If you find that this is causing trouble with very fast motions, you can make the threshold higher (or lower, if the issue described in this paragraph still pops up).

Apart from this, it’s mostly incremental improvements upon beta 2.

You can download Touché beta 3 either via the built-in Sparkle updater if you already have a previous version of Touché installed, or directly from the homepage. Also, I’ve put up a screencast about the new features again on Vimeo. There are also the Sparkle release notes.

I hope you find the new features useful! Have fun!

hey gkaindl,

Congrats on the update!  I like the addition of colour tracking and shall abuse this function to the best of my abilities!  Also does the removal of flosc make it faster in real terms?  Any way will check this out in the next few days.

Cheers

Really cool stuff. I will check out your video

hi georg
this version of touché is working more reliable for me. and the flash bridge is simply GREAT!

however, the touché constantly crashes in the test application. i don’t know why. but if i use touché with Flash it works pretty reliable.

cheers,
johannes

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 11:17 AM

however, the touché constantly crashes in the test application. i don’t know why. but if i use touché with Flash it works pretty reliable.

Hmm, I’ve tested this before the release and just spent about 15 minutes again, trying to get the touch test app to crash, but I can’t reproduce this.

Could you please send me the crash log(s)? They are in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter. Thanks!

i’ve zipped my crash logs (i’ve got five of them).

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 11:51 AM

i’ve zipped my crash logs (i’ve got five of them).

thanks.

first thing, right when I look at the crash logs: You’re running the original 10.5 release. Could you please run “Software Update” on this Mac and update to 10.5.5 - the update is free. I’m fairly certain that this will help. The crashes look like bugs that Apple has fixed since the original release (If I’m wrong, please send me the new crash logs you’re getting on 10.5.5).

i’ve been wondering why i cannot adjust the exposure slider for my pointgrey firefly cam in touché. the slider is there but it is disabled.

i’ve found out it that especially an adjusted exposure value is crucial for a light sensitive multi-touch setup.

Could you please run “Software Update” on this Mac and update to 10.5.5

whoops. must have completely forgotten to update my mini. i’m only using it with windows and the touchlib…

i’ll give you an update as far as the update process is finished.

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 12:03 PM

i’ve been wondering why i cannot adjust the exposure slider for my pointgrey firefly cam in touché. the slider is there but it is disabled.

that is because when libdc1394 queries your camera about its capabilities, it reports the exposure setting as not being supported in manual mode, so the slider is disabled. I’ll have to have a look at this.

ok, now i’ve updated everything properly and the test app is not crashing anymore. however, i’ve got another strange issue:
when i start the test app it displays all recognized blobs properly. then i start to whirl my hands around on the screen for like five times and afterwards it displays only a fixed amount of blobs. i’ve restarted touché 3 times and it behaved always in that manner. the first time it happened the test app only displayed the first finger that touched the screen (so i could remove my hand and then replace the five fingers back on the screen and only under one finger there would appear a blob). The next time it only displayed 7 fingers, then 5 then 4.

however, that only pertains the test app. in my flash app all fingers appear on the screen.

anyway, touché is a great thing!

cheers,
johannes

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 12:31 PM

ok, now i’ve updated everything properly and the test app is not crashing anymore.

ok, great!

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 12:31 PM

however, i’ve got another strange issue:
when i start the test app it displays all recognized blobs properly. then i start to whirl my hands around on the screen for like five times and afterwards it displays only a fixed amount of blobs. i’ve restarted touché 3 times and it behaved always in that manner. the first time it happened the test app only displayed the first finger that touched the screen (so i could remove my hand and then replace the five fingers back on the screen and only under one finger there would appear a blob). The next time it only displayed 7 fingers, then 5 then 4.

Sounds as if the touch test app is probably overloading your mini - it’s not very efficient at the moment, because it regenerates the images used for the touches on the fly whenever a new touch is registered, using Core Image and Core Graphics calls. I think I’ll make it cache the images in the next release.

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 12:31 PM

however, that only pertains the test app. in my flash app all fingers appear on the screen.

yes, the tracker is definitely not the bottleneck here, but the Core Animation touch test app is, but I’ll optimize it in the future (it’s really just meant as a quick test of the calibration).

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 12:31 PM

anyway, touché is a great thing!

Thanks!

Regarding the exposure setting with libdc1394: I’ve just had a look at it and discovered an insanely stupid bug that causes Touché to ignore it if the camera reports manual exposure is supported (I just omitted a conversion from a Touché type to a dc1394 type). The fix is in SVN already, so you can check out the trunk from the public repository and compile Touché yourself with the “dc1394 exposure setting fix” already included (it’s really just a matter of opening the XCode project, selecting “Release” as configuration and hitting the “Build” button). The repository is hosted at Google Code: Touché @ Google Code

The repository is hosted at Google Code: Touché @ Google Code

i’ve checked out Touché and compiled it and now there i’ve got the modifiable exposure slider. however, after unticking the automatic box next to it i can drag the slider around but nothing seems to happen: the picture from the camera does not change. the other sliders like brightness work perfectly. anyway, i can achieve with all the other sliders what i could achieve with the exposure slider under windows. i don’t know why this behaves that way. now Touché works perfectly for me!

thanks alot again!

cheers
johannes

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 01:08 PM

i’ve checked out Touché and compiled it and now there i’ve got the modifiable exposure slider. however, after unticking the automatic box next to it i can drag the slider around but nothing seems to happen: the picture from the camera does not change. the other sliders like brightness work perfectly. anyway, i can achieve with all the other sliders what i could achieve with the exposure slider under windows. i don’t know why this behaves that way. now Touché works perfectly for me!

It behaves this way because Touché can only query the camera for which setting it allows manual settings for and hope that the camera will actually handle these settings. However, especially with brightness, gain and exposure, some cameras do not really distinguish well between them, so my unibrain fire-i, for example, reports that it supports exposure, brightness and gain, but only exposure and brightness actually do something, while gain is being ignored (even more so, the fire-i claims to support focusing, even though it’s using a lens that you have to screw in and focus by hand!). Conversely, the Apple iSight supports gain and brightness, but not exposure, even though it reports all 3 as being supported. it’s a bit of a mess, but blame the camera manufacturers

lagerkoller - 03 November 2008 01:08 PM

thanks alot again!

You’re welcome. I’m glad you got everything to work!

Hey gkaindl,

I see that progen has released a mouse for tbeta.  I have been using Ben brittens TUIO tester which is a mouse for os x.  What i would like to know is it possible to use the os x frameworks that apple uses for panning swiping scrolling and rotating and intergrate that into touche or any tracker for that matter?  Faking the inputs from the mac track pad by substitutuing them for tuio inputs from the tracker?  Simply in theory!!! But im sure apple has these frameworks locked down.  Anyway this would be a mighty usefull addition to the ever growning armarda that is MT.

Ps i checked out touche.3 and i am very pleased indeed.  It no longer tracks the static bright blobs in a frame. execelent!  This means that my very dodgy alpha setup calibrates like a dream!  The background subtraction is superb!

ajlovegrove - 04 November 2008 08:00 AM

What i would like to know is it possible to use the os x frameworks that apple uses for panning swiping scrolling and rotating and intergrate that into touche or any tracker for that matter?  Faking the inputs from the mac track pad by substitutuing them for tuio inputs from the tracker?  Simply in theory!!! But im sure apple has these frameworks locked down.  Anyway this would be a mighty usefull addition to the ever growning armarda that is MT.

I’m afraid this won’t be possible. The multi-touch trackpads in the MacBook Air, new MacBook and MacBook Pro do not recognize these gestures by tracking any touches, but there’s a hardware chip built into the trackpad logic (I think it’s a Broadcom chip; the same one that’s in the iPhone and iPod Touch), which tracks these gestures, and the driver relays this info to applications by broadcasting a notification. For this reason, the trackpad also doesn’t know where on the pad the gesture was actually performed, only that it has been performed.

However, the Touché framework has an abstract class “TFGestureRecognizer”, of which there are currently two concrete sub-classes: A “zoom/pinch” recognizer and a “tap” recognizer. Have a look at the source code for the TFCoreAnimationDemo to see how to use them.

If you want to implement a gesture recognizer for rotating and swiping, I’d suggest to do this on top of TFGestureRecognizer, so I may even add it into the framework later on

ajlovegrove - 04 November 2008 08:00 AM

Ps i checked out touche.3 and i am very pleased indeed.  It no longer tracks the static bright blobs in a frame. execelent!  This means that my very dodgy alpha setup calibrates like a dream!  The background subtraction is superb!

Great to hear you got it working!