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I am supposed to design an application for a large multitouch screen. By large, i mean newscaster large (around 55 inches and above). The application is an interactive map.

My questions is: which technology to develop the application in. My first idea was to make it in Adobe Flex, but then there is HTML5 too... There must be some awesome Java library for touch interactions too, but then on Windows platform there must be C# library too?

Could someone please point me in the right direction.

The backend is probably going to be in Java EE.

Is there a specialized touch maps sdk?

Marci-man
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    `The best` language is the language you `know`. Can't see a way how can this question become answerable in Q&A fashion. It's pretty broad and certainly opinionated. I'm sorry, but I'm voting to close... – walther Apr 02 '13 at 23:20
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    i need opinions... i need to weigh my options.. please lemme see some answers before closing.... as the answers come in I will try to reformulate the question to make it a better fit to the forums directives1 – Marci-man Apr 02 '13 at 23:23
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    If you need opinions and discussion, it would be better to find a forum and ask there. I'm afraid this isn't really a place for this question... http://stackoverflow.com/faq – walther Apr 02 '13 at 23:24
  • as the answers come in I will try to reformulate the question to make it a better fit to the forums directives... with the answers I get from here, i will know which forums to post my question to... – Marci-man Apr 02 '13 at 23:26
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    @Marci-man is this going to be a Windows application? or a Web-application? or a multi-platform? [This is the video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpoLEGlkDGU) that made me fall in love with WPF and XAML. – Federico Berasategui Apr 02 '13 at 23:29
  • it is going to be windows... thank you so much for not trying to close the door in my face :) – Marci-man Apr 02 '13 at 23:31

1 Answers1

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Why reinvent the wheel?

Ventuz hands down best touch software I have used and I use it daily. It's specifically for large multi-touch presentations.

If you are looking to build it yourself, you will have a long long way to go. Ventuz is extremely flexible and will let you do anything you'll need to do with touch for the most part.

(And they are based in Germany, like you)

Here are some demos they showed last year at NAB

Election Map Multi screen
(source: ventuz.com)

Glorfindel
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corylulu
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  • the thing is, the application is supposed to be doing a lot of specialized tasks with a map of a particular country... it is suppose to help in analyzing election coverage of a local news channel – Marci-man Apr 02 '13 at 23:35
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    That is fine. Ventuz has done many election coverage of local news channels. In fact, I have build one myself. You can import 3D models and bind each individual model to touch events to do things. It's all non-linear and allows you to integrate it into whatever other application you need as well. There is also scripting engines and logic machines heavily built into the Ventuz software. – corylulu Apr 02 '13 at 23:37
  • since the website does*t really talk about prices... could you perhaps tell me what sort of price range am i looking at when I go for a 55" display? additionally, is there an SDK – Marci-man Apr 02 '13 at 23:39
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    http://www.ventuz.com/news/2012/207/NAB_recap_%E2%80%93_Got_screens.aspx Here is an example of an election map they made for NAB. My company is actually close partners with them and are offical OEMs. The licenses are different for Runtime and Designers. Designer if for creation, Runtime is for playback. If you only need one licenses, a Designer will do both. Designers are $10000 Euro and runtimes are $1000 Euro last I checked. They also have a much cheaper touch designer as well. – corylulu Apr 02 '13 at 23:43
  • And no, not an SDK to access the renderer directly, but all the tools you'll need are there for the most part, and anything that isn't is possible through scripts and other methods. There is a little bit of a learning curve, but believe me, this is a huge project and it would take years by yourself to build what you really need to make all this work. – corylulu Apr 02 '13 at 23:44
  • Here is the price list. http://esd.element5.com/product.html?cart=1&productid=300487035&backlink=http%3A%2F%2Fesd.element5.com%2Fproduct.html%3Fproductid%3D300487035&cookies=1&showcart=1 – corylulu Apr 02 '13 at 23:48
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    You can try the software for free though by requesting a PLE key to use the watermarked version. There are lots of great tutorials to show you how to use it. Try it out. – corylulu Apr 02 '13 at 23:49
  • The application is supposed to load a lot of data from a backend database... data of elections of the past. Is there a way to integrate data from a database? – Marci-man Apr 03 '13 at 00:01
  • Yep, there are a billion ways import data including directly through a database, RSS, XML, OSC, MIDI, and many many more. This is all very normal in Ventuz. Usually, I write backend apps to provide data and then send them in via OSC, but that's just my practice because it's the most integrated, but many people use the database nodes within the application. – corylulu Apr 03 '13 at 00:04
  • let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/27446/discussion-between-marci-man-and-corylulu) – Marci-man Apr 03 '13 at 00:05