When I started working at LogicaCMG’s Frontend Centre, one of the first projects I got my hands dirty on was helping out a student who was graduating on a multi-touch prototype. Remember, this was before the iPhone/Microsoft hype happened ;). Multi-touch was new for me, and for a lot of other people too.
We got together and decided to give building the prototype in flash a try. Boy did we have fun :) It is tricky though…. operating systems (and the products -e.g. flash- running on them) asume there will be only 1 pointer. Think about it…. flash has had onRelease for ages…. but it doesn’t incorporate a way to get which mouse is down.
So to get this working, you’ll need some sort of mouse overriding feature built into your code. And that’s exactly what I did. The mouse pointers inside the example below are just plain ol’ movieclips. They just happen to look like mouse pointers :). The only icky part is that you now have ot handle all the down/over/drag/click mouse events yourself.
Worked out quite nicely though :)
I heard about a youtube movie of the prototype being made. When I get the link to that, I’ll post it here. Such a shame iPhone stole our Thunder….
P.S. If anyone needs the source code, drop a note/mail.
Update: The video is posted….
15 Responses for "Multi-touch interaction with flash"
Hi,
i’m doing my master’s thesis and it’s all about multi-touch. I’m was thinking of doing a presentation of it all in flash, and I would be greatful if i could have a look at the code you have produced!
Sincerely / David
Hi David,
I’ll try to get the source to you asap (not in a place to be able to now). Help in reminding me!
Ben
Thanks Ben that would be great.
Keep in touch,
/David
Hi,
Could it have been this one? http://youtube.com/watch?v=TJF4sUs0dZ0 This is supposedly all done in Flash and Actionscript
Just got your mail with the source code. Thank you and I hope to get a good use of it.
Cheers
could you send me the source code, please? thanks.
Hi Ben,
I am making doing a project that is a multitouch application for kindergarden learning. Could you please send me your source code? i would relaly appreciate it!
thanks,
ayah
Sure Ayah, mail is underway.
Good luck!
hello ben,
I am working on an educational project for children, I am trying to build a multitouch interface. Can you send me the sources also?
Jup, underway :)
Hi, i’m Max
i’m a graduated student and i work(for free) at University of Rome and, after a thesis on an interactive one touch windows for pos with rfid, i’m helping students doing their thesis. Now i’m working on multitouch and multi input interfaces. I’ had the same problem you described because windows recognize only one mouse, so i tought to write something that deals with windows api to make (or more :D) mouses. How did you solved that problem? Could you please send me your code? Thank you
Hi Max,
The hardware we used (smartboard) had a JAVA API present which dealt with all these kind of issues so I do not really have an idea on how to handle this deep down in windows. I don’t even know if it’s possible in plain windows to use multiple pointers. The way I did it, is that the JAVA API of the board, passes events to flash through a socket connection or external interface connection, this data is used by flash to draw it’s own ‘pointers’ where the trick is that these aren’t real pointers and that you need to think about everything that is normally handled automatically for you (with the one default pointer).
Ben
Max,
Email with the source bounced, illegal attachment it said. (zip)??
Ben
Hi!
May you please e-mail me the source?? :) I am urgent looking for source code regarding multitouch. I am so happy that i found your site.. Is it done by flash 8? Thanks, my e-mail is shujuan20@hotmail.com
I’m more than happy to send you the source. But i’m also curious what you are using it for. Any insights, links or examples?
Cheers,
Ben
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