I'm running Win 8 with a Bamboo touch-enabled tablet and can zoom in and out (with the somewhat annoying + and - overlay graphic) but cannot rotate the view, is there any trick to removing the indicators and enabling view rotation?

Like this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_rfaVmmH8

I'm running the Aug 1 beta

Hi rhadiem, MoI uses new touch events in Windows 8 but from what I understand those are usually generated by a touch screen and not usually with a separate opaque (meaning not a display screen also) drawing tablet.

Most likely the tablet is not generating the same kinds of events as a touch screen would and is instead probably emulating a scroll wheel with the zoom in and out gestures. Also the + and - overlay is probably something from this emulation layer that the tablet driver is providing.

I discovered this myself when I was trying to implement this stuff, I initially tried to use a logitech multitouch pad but I was surprised to find out that it did not generate any real touch messages like a touch screen does. I had to get an actual touch screen device instead.

There are some discussions on this about the Bamboo not fully supporting multitouch same as a touch screen on these links here:

http://gguuss.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/wacom-bamboo-pen-touch-review/

http://forum.wacom.eu/viewtopic.php?f=4&p=14876


Basically the bamboo does not generate true "WM_TOUCH" or "WM_POINTER" events and instead sends kind of higher level messages like scroll wheel messages to applications instead. In order to get the stuff that you're referring to working in MoI, MoI needs to receive actual touch events.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, I guess my upgrade to Win 8 and purchase of a $200 tablet was in vain. At least I can return the tablet.

Another thing you can test to see if a device has actual full Win8 touch support is to go into Windows paintbrush (do Start and type pbrush should find it) and then inside the canvas area there try to do brush strokes with multiple fingers down. With full multi-touch you will get simultaneous brush strokes with one point per finger.

If you only get one single brush stroke in there and it is not responding to multiple simultaneous touches, it means the device does not generate full touch messages and is instead one of these things where the device driver is the only thing that receives the actual touch data and it only sends things like scroll wheel messages to applications rather than sending full touch data through to applications.

I'm not sure but it may be some limitation in Windows too, it seems that the new windows multi-touch stuff is very focused on touch screens and not so much on touchpad like things.


There are a couple of projects out there that try to adapt touchpads or other devices to generate Windows touch events, it's theoretically possible that one of those might work with the Bamboo, but it's pretty hacky. There are some links in this message here to that stuff:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5671.3


But basically if you don't see multiple simultaneous contact points in Windows paintbrush you are not really getting true touch events from the device.


Unfortunately every touchpad like device (rather than touch screen) has seemed to fall into this category of not actually generating real touch events. Another part of that is that these manufacturers are also trying to support older versions of Windows like Windows XP which predates a lot of this stuff, so they have to do this system of doing their own driver and generating things like scroll wheel events there instead anyway.


- Michael

Thanks, I tried this too, with drivers and with them uninstalled and nothing.. hopefully one day they'll release native support.

It's still nice for freeform line drawing and tracing sketches I've made, but unfortunately not as I expected due to Wacom's goofy Win8 support.

Ah well, thanks for checking this out for me.

The wacom touch tablets are crap IMO.

I bought an Intuos 5 Touch before Windows 8 came out, both because my Intuos 4 pen was broken and because I expected the touch to enable me to use, well, touch. :-)
What I got instead is basically a huge Laptop-Touchpad-like thing that is more in the way than helpful.
It doesn't really interact with Windows 8s touch stuff since it isn't seen as the right touch device, but more like a mouse.

Now Wacom is the worlds leading pen tablet manufacturer and it simply never occurred to me that they would create a touch tablet that isn't usable in absolute mode, like with a pen. If it was, it could be used like a touchscreen (even if not as visually direct) . Instead you are moving stuff around with it like with a mouse and the multi-finger gestures only are used for triggering some commands or emulate mouse movements.

Touch and pen are by default enabled at the same time, and it is very easy to confuse the driver about which to use, so I ended up having to disable touch altogether to make it half usable, otherwise you always trigger something or move something inadvertently.

All their Windows 8 drivers were totally unusable, because the lag with the pen was so large, that for instance if you moved a program window across your screen, from the moment you press down the tip of the pen (left-click) and started moving, it could take up to 2 seconds for the driver to realize what you are doing and moving the window...
The main point of using a pen is fine, direct control, but if the reaction is delayed like that, that is gone.

Wacom blamed Microsoft for it and said, that to get certified for Windows 8, they had to use the Microsoft pen system, and that it was this that creates the problem and one should contact Microsoft. Now if I buy a Wacom Tablet, I'm not prepared to go through the Microsoft Support to make it usable.

Thankfully the Intous 5 Pen is the same as the Intuos 4 one, so I put the Intuos 5 on the shelf, reactivated my old Intuous 4 with an old, pre-Windows-8-driver and was able to work again.

Now just recently, after about a year, Wacom finally released a driver where there is a checkmark to disable the annoying Windows 8 Pen stuff.
So while that doesn't make the touch stuff usable, at least the tablet as such can be used now.

I know this doesn't help with your problem, but I can confirm that Wacoms idea of multitouch doesn't help anybody.

Cheers,

Tom