reacTIVision / News: Recent posts

reacTIVision is a computer vision application framework for the fast and robust tracking of markers attached on physical objects, and the creation of multi-touch surfaces. it was designed for the rapid development of table-based tangible user interfaces.

* new AVFoundation camera driver for MacOS X (including controls)
* new videoInput camera driver for Windows (including controls)
* improved Video4Linux2 camera driver for Linux (including controls)
* list all available cameras and formats (via -l startup argument)
* support MJPEG decompression for higher USB camera frame rates
* support IIDC-over-USB cameras through libdc1394
* added frame cropping configuration (xoffset,yoffset,xwidth,yheight)
* multithreaded thresholder for reduced latency on multicore CPUs
* allow the adjustment of the threshold tile size
* updated FrameEqualizer for faster background subtracion
* sending correct TUIO 1.1 source messages
* added a quicker and less tideous calibration mode
* migrated the user interface to SDL 2.0 (less CPU overhead)
* fixed a MIDI configuration file location bug on MacOS X
* added fullscreen toggle (via F1 key)
* added a headless mode (via -n startup argument)
* improved Linux desktop integration
* updated oscpack, tinyxml, portmidi and dc1394 libraries
* added x86_64 and dropped PPC architecture on MacOS X
* provide x86_64 and i686 binaries for Mac OS X and Linux
* updated XCode and Visual Studio 2012 projects
* added a project for the Codeblocks IDE on Linux
* removed the dtouch fiducial tracker
* removed the now outdated VdigGrab, DSVideolib and Video4Linux drivers
* new application icon

reacTIVision is a computer vision application framework for the fast and robust tracking of markers attached on physical objects, and the creation of multi-touch surfaces. it was designed for the rapid development of table-based tangible user interfaces.

This is the final release of reacTIVision 1.4

* finger blob tracking, with on screen setup (F key)
* increased standard set of 108x2 fiducial symbols
* additional small set of 12x2 fiducial symbols
* improved fiducial rendering (smaller footprint & better proportions)
* improved and more robust fiducial tracking (with secondary blob tracking)
* improved calibration precision
* improved DC1394 camera support and configuration on Mac and Linux
* improved V4L2 camera support and configuration on Linux
* on-screen and XML configuration instead of command line options
* added MIDI channel selection for note ON events
* removed initial camera dialogs on Mac and Windows

Dear reacTIVision and TUIO community,
I'd like to point you to a new and hopefully more convenient forum page, where you should direct all you questions from now on, suggestions and all other enquiries related to reacTIVision and the TUIO framework.

http://apps.sourceforge.net/phpbb/reactivision/

Please consider the old SF forum as obsolete, but it will of course remain there for future reference until most topics are covered within the new forums. ... read more

Dear multi-touch community,
Almost four years have past since the initial publication of the TUIO protocol, which we had initially developed to define common method to connect different interactive surfaces such as the reacTable and the tDesk. Since then the protocol and its implementations in the context of the reacTIVision project have grown to a quite versatile SDK framework for the easy development of tangible or multi-touch interactive surfaces.
Also, since David Wallin decided to adopt TUIO within touchlib, the protocol and framework has gained more interest and importance within the multi-touch community. And nowadays, many open-source multi-touch projects are using TUIO in many ways and there is also a growing number of third party client implementations in addition to our own software. There are even some interesting implementations available for devices such as the iPhone or the WiiMote, which I wouldn’t have considered in the first place.... read more

Thanks to the efforts of Michel Maas and Andreas Lykke-Oleson there is an updated TUIO client for Flash available, which not only fixes some bugs in the FlashOSC translator but more importantly implements the full TUIO protocol, including the cursor messages.

Finally reacTIVision 1.3 has been released. The new features include:

* finger tracking using mini stickers for the finger tips
* alternative MIDI messaging (mapping via XML config)
* improved object tracking performance
* reduced camera latency
* improved calibration procedure for distortion correction
* additional TUIO clients for PureData, Max/MSP and C#

The most notable change is the multi-touch finger tracking with the help of small stickers that need to be attached to the finger tips. The updated TUIO clients for version 1.3 are able to receive the according cursor envents.... read more

an updated build for the win32 platform is available, which corrects an DLL dependency problem.

After a series of 1.2 releases with unexpected bugs, this should be the final 1.2 release before 1.3 comes out.

* fixed the NaN output in the w32 build
* fixed another calibration crash that emerged with the new w32 builds

* fixed a crash when no camera was found
* fixed MacOS X 10.3 & 10.2 compatibility
* updated the SDL library to version 1.2.11
* updated Win32 build to Visual Studio 2005
* made verbose output machine readable

* fixed another small object tracking bug
* fixed a linux firewire driver bug
* fixed the linux RPM package script

bugfix release: the transmission of multiple fiducial IDs introduced in version 1.2 was not working correctly

This update to the TUIO backends introduces an API update to the TUIOListener interface. We now include both the session_id and the fiducial_id in all the methods (such as addTuioObject or removeTuioObject)

This release enables the multiple usage of the same fiducial ID in the same table setup. TUIO assigns a session ID to each object appearing in the scene and transmits this session ID along with the generic fiducial ID. You will need to use the updated TUIO backend examples from below in order to take full advantage of this feature.

reacTIVision 1.2 also improves the calibration procedure and enables the distortion feature for all three fiducial engines. It now allows the correction of lens distortion on round, square and rectangular tables.

* made application more user friendly:
- on screen fiducial id
- on screen help message
- on screen error messages
- added application icon
* included all three fiducial engines in the binary
* updated d-touch sources
* improved fidtrack thresholder
* removed the need for a default all.trees file
* fixed freezing when camera was removed
* V4L_DEVICE selects USB camera in Linux
* universal binary support for MacOS X

The TUIO C++ backend now includes a graphical OpenGL Demo and the TuioListener now works as a Thread in the background.

The TUIO Simulator now has a reset feature and a few bugs were fixed.