Needs better touchscreen

[Natsu]

Also, on the official site, rather than say "Unlike most smartphones, the Pyra has a resistive touch screen", which serves to differentiate it from what most people are familiar with, maybe it would be more effective to say "Like the Nintendo DS and 3DS, the Pyra has a resistive touch screen".

Not a handheld, but you can say the Wii U too.

 

[zonova]

I eat with my fingers...

 

[Rivaan]

^Well there is the LCD screen and the touchscreen layer applied to it.. they are separate entities.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation. I just remembered that I've once seen for sale, a sheet that one could purchase to turn a regular screen, say that of a laptop, into a touch-sensitive interface.

I agree with you Rivaan , that line needs to be changed. I would have a brief line explaining the benefits of why it was chosen. Ie higher accuracy for menu selections, low latency etc.

Just looking on the site, although it's in two different blocks, it does mention in one that it has fast response times to prevent ghosting, and in another that it has great accuracy. (tech specs page, under the Full HD Screen, and Touchscreen blocks)
And I just realised another minor correction, which isn't crucial. In places, the screen is referred to as "touchscreen", while in others, "touch screen".

Also, on the official site, rather than say "Unlike most smartphones, the Pyra has a resistive touch screen", which serves to differentiate it from what most people are familiar with, maybe it would be more effective to say "Like the Nintendo DS and 3DS, the Pyra has a resistive touch screen".

Not a handheld, but you can say Wii u too.

True, although for marketing purposes, to resonate with a wider audience, we need to take into account the fact that the DS and 3DS systems are a lot more popular than the Wii U. Looking at the sales numbers, the combined unit sales of the DS and 3DS consoles are about 195 million, while currently only 6 million Wii U systems have been sold. It may not hurt to mention the Wii U, but the reference to Nintendo should appear casual (even naming the DS and 3DS may be too much). If we had to choose our association between DS and 3DS, I would say choose the 3DS. It's the current system (so it doesn't seem an outdated reference), DS owners will most likely know what it is (or at least make the assumption that it's like the DS they have), and in its own right the 3DS has sold almost 43 million units. I know I'm probably thinking about this too much; it's a problem.

 

[vcoleiro1]

^ the response time it's referring to there is the refresh rate which is different to touch latency.


Also, expanding the accuracy wording to mention why it's important , like selecting small menu options, would help.

 

[Rivaan]

^ Oh right. Yeah, that would make sense. I guess it's too early in the morning for me. :lol:

And I completely agree about giving reasons/examples. I find that examples help greatly when I'm explaining to people why something is good or bad, rather than relying on and assuming what they may already understand about the point.

 

[Natsu]

I know I'm probably thinking about this too much; it's a problem.

You kind of are. So, forget that I ever mention it.

 

[gadgetoid]

Of course with that kind of pixel density, you need a touch screen with a precision that matches the resolution.

Unlike most smartphones, the Pyra has a resistive touch screen, which offers great accuracy and can be used with both fingers and a standard stylus.

It can also do a fake multi-touch so you can use it for gestures like pinch-to-zoom or rotate.

To:

The high pixel density screen of the Pyra demands a high precision touch screen. This is why we've selected a resistive touch screen, like that of the Nintendo 3DS. Resistive technology offers extremely high accuracy and lightning fast response times; this is essential for interacting with desktop applications and mouse-driven games.

The touch screen can be used with your fingers or a standard stylus, and can even recognise simple gestures such as pinch-to-zoom or rotate.

Edit: I suggest using either Markdown in GitHub, a specially set-aside Wiki or Google Docs to aggregate all the content from the Pyra Handheld website and re-write it concisely and intelligently. Currently, it's just awful. There are a lot of good points towards the end of this thread, and I'd love to see this sort of input across other sections.

 

[EvilDragon]

The current website is just a quick information site that should cover quick facts, no explanations.

Those will be in the blog.

It doesn't make much sense to change a minimal website, I rather suggest the real website should be started soon.

 

[gadgetoid]

The current website is just a quick information site that should cover quick facts, no explanations.


Those will be in the blog.


It doesn't make much sense to change a minimal website, I rather suggest the real website should be started soon.

If it can be changed quickly and simply then it's probably worth doing, since any effort we make to improve the text would surely be useful for the real website.

I've started a GitHub repo, anyway, in the Pyra-Handheld org, which can be used to collaborate resources for a full web build and house the website when it starts to come together. See it here: https://github.com/Pyra-Handheld/Pyra-Handheld.org

It's a little O/T for this thread, but I'd suggest using Issues to discuss text/design/build proposals and having a small group of people actually able to implement them.

This would also facilitate forking and pull requests for change proposals.

 

[EvilDragon]

Sure, I can include small changes.

Well, couldn't we use that git for working on the new website together?

I could set up a cronjob that pulls in the git every few minutes so that the pushes to the git can be viewed live on some development website url on my server.

 

[Granitehead]

Sure, I can include small changes.

Well, couldn't we use that git for working on the new website together?

I could set up a cronjob that pulls in the git every few minutes so that the pushes to the git can be viewed live on some development website url on my server.

That's not even necessary, you could even do it like this if you want: http://pages.github.com/

 

[gadgetoid]

Sure, I can include small changes.


Well, couldn't we use that git for working on the new website together?


I could set up a cronjob that pulls in the git every few minutes so that the pushes to the git can be viewed live on some development website url on my server.

That's not even necessary, you could even do it like this if you want: http://pages.github.com/

True! GitHub pages is pretty good. I suppose it depends what we're deploying to and what platform we're using- if it involves a PHP CMS and custom theme/templates etc then pages is perhaps not the way.

 

[EvilDragon]

Oh, neat, didn't know that

So should we start with something like that for the development website?

 

[Rivaan]

I'd love to help out with the web development, but I'll need to learn to use GitHub first (and to finish some assignments for college). h34r: I know HTML (4 and some 5), CSS (2 and some 3), PHP, MySQL, CodeIgniter framework for PHP, and am currently learning JavaScript. I'm alright in the design department, and am able to implement the designs of others.

 

[gadgetoid]

I may not be able to get overly involved in the design and build, but I'll try to lend some sanity to the process. We need a new thread


Hi Rivaan! GitHub will be a great skill to pick up. If you lurk in IRC or on Skype then I can offer some guidance.


We should start with a list of goals for the website, moving to a wireframe/site map, writing content, design and finally implementation.


That doesn't mean we can't make choices about implementation now- however - but there's a lot to do before any build can commence- if we want to do it properly!

 

[EvilDragon]

There's a forum section about the website, you know? Maybe start s thread there

 

[Plasmax]

Why not an electromagnetic digitiser instead of a resistive touchscreen? Such digitisers (e.g. Wacom) offer much higher precision, the ability to track an object that is not touching the screen and can gather much more information about the stylus (such as pressure levels) when compared to resistive touchscreens. There's good reason why electromagnetic digitisers are used for graphics tablets... (please consider)

 

[PokeParadox]

If you skim through the thread, you'll see it has been considered and overall resistive is the choice made.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

(such as pressure levels)

Resistive touchscreens do that as well, the Pandora screen already recognizes around 16 pressure levels, which can used by e.g. GIMP.
Have you ever opened up a tablet? The technology behind those inductive screens is so simple that a short comparison with the price of tablets should give you a pretty good explanation why that's just not an option - someone's milking the cash cow dry.

 

[Plasmax]

Letalis Sonus: resistive screens may recognise up to 16 pressure levels but electromagnetic digitisers can recognise up to 1024 pressure levels (e.g. the Galaxy Note 3) or even 2048 pressure levels (the Intuos 4 graphics tablets). That's a big difference.

On your second point: I don't know whether anyone is milking the cash cow but Wacom graphics tablets have been around since 1984 so most of the patents would have expired by now and Wacom isn't the only company making them.

The Oqo pocket computer used an electromagnetic digitiser (incidentally a Wacom) so why can't the Pyra? The Oqo company was also very small.