9 – March – Dropped AS3. Hello .JS-TUIO

I started exploring more with the libraries to work with TUIO and even though I felt more comfortable working with AS3 (ActionScript), I found out that eventually I was going to find myself isolated from Web technologies. Even though Flash (AS3) is still way more powerful than any technology to visualise and develop interactivity on the Web, when it comes to future Web technology, the communities that support it will eventually die. On the other hand, working with technologies such as JavaScript (JS) which is well received among Web communities, presents a more sustainable panorama.

I had a very long discussion with my friend Paul Booth who works with data visualisation on the Web, primarily with JS and we came to the conclusion that perhaps working with JS might show a more clear panorama especially when working with RDF and Json documents.

For this reason I decided to drop AS3 and start working with JS for the tangible interface. I managed to connect TUIO through JS and present it through a web browser.

05 – Dtouch and Flash // Character with specific response.

After experimenting with the markers on planes, I wanted to test it on the actual character intended to use on the interface. When the background is not very clean, it becomes very problematic for DTouch to detect the object. The same happens to the shadows on the object.
On the other hand, it is a good way to distribute tools through the interface: by assigning them to the attributes of the character.

04 – DTouch and Flash // Targeting areas

DTouch and Flash // Targeting areas

 

I have established some sensitive areas where the user can make rome reactions happen by matching positions of objects over other objects. This can be used to explore areas of specific artefacts and launch extra information.

03 – D-Touch and Flash // Mapping coordinates and draw line.

On this exercise I mapped each marker to a specific movieClip. Then a line is drawn in between each movieClip. The text presented is loaded externally from an RSS Feed and the mapped ‘head’ o one object and body to another. I am going to bring more markers and interactive elements on the next sets of experiments.

 

02 – DTouch and Flash loading RSS feeds

RSS Feeds navigator with DTouch

 

This experiment I used the markers to load a new story on the RSS feeder. This may prove helpful when loading text or information from websites that are required to be displayed in the interface.

Loading images from external websites should be much easier, since it only requires a direct URL, meanwhile an RSS has different levels (parents/childs) to explore in the XML structure.

01 – D-Touch and Flash

Exploring DTouch and Flash.

 

I have managed to get my markers to connect they way I wanted and in the order I wanted with the Dtouch Server. Once plugged into Flash, I activated the position of the instance depending on the marker ID that was visible.  This made me think about using the markers like ranking or hierarchic values.

The next steps will be to experiment with ‘hit’ areas and loading objects onto ‘containers’.