Extreme anti-gosting coming to the masses...

[Paul Dietz]

I have some exciting news to share. As some of you know, the SideWinder X4 is unlike any other keyboard on the market. It features extreme anti-ghosting - basically 17KRO - at an unprecedented price point. This is made possible by a resistive multitouch technology developed by Microsoft's Applied Sciences Group. It allows the internal electronics to read any combination of keys, without the use of diodes, at high speed and with low power. This is a fundamental breakthrough in keyboard technology, and solves a long standing problem in the industry.

Not surprisingly, we have been receiving requests from other keyboard manufacturers to license the basic technology. Initially, we were hesitant to do this, wanting to keep this proprietary advantage to ourselves. However, we soon realized that this viewpoint was counterproductive. Game developers need to know that they can count on this capability before they make serious use of it. And as the makers of Windows, it is clearly in our interest to see a robust and evolving PC gaming market.

As such, we are creating a licensing program for our keyboard technologies. This will include both extreme anti-ghosting, as well as pressure sensitivity. Since our goal is to encourage wide adoption of these technologies, license costs will be purposefully modest.

I know that many of you are big fans of "mechanical" keyboards. This technology can be applied there to save some cost. However, a major benefit of this technology is that it works with inexpensive membrane-based keyboards, and adds minimal additional cost. My hope is that in a few years, virtually every desktop and laptop keyboard will have this technology.

The licensing program should be launching very soon. Stay tuned for the official announcement. In the meantime, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks!

--- Paul

P.S. Full disclosure: In case it wasn't obvious, I work for Microsoft as a researcher in the Applied Sciences Group...

P.P.S. In case you're curious, I got special permission to post this here before the official announcement. I argued that this forum was filled with people that understand, and are passionate about keyboards and that you would get the significance of this...

[Nadger]

That is very good news, getting better nkro to the masses, and this "pressure sensitivity" thing sounds very interesting.  I can see pressure sensitivity being a HUGE deal for pc gaming...allowing things like analog control of the gas in a racing game.  It would also be interesting if the drivers allowed you to customize at which sensitivity point you could have the key register, so your actuation force could be as light or heavy as you wanted.

Its nice to hear you are not going to hoard it to yourselves unlike apple, and you realize your brand will grow stronger with solid peripherals like this.  I look forward to seeing what all the other companies will do with this technology.

Edit: oh and thanks for breaking the news here first, keyboard snobs do appreciate this kind of news!

[.XL]

Coming Q3 2011 - made by Nokia

In all seriousness, this is really cool. I've gotten to the point where I really enjoy mech keyboards and probably wouldn't pick one up, but I know many of my gamer friends don't want a mech, but they still want the functionality. And the pressure sensitivity is fantastic.

Licensing it to other companies is a great idea...business wise as well as technological advancement wise. BIG MONIES in this for MS.

Sharing is caring, right?

[dp88]

If that pressure sensitivity feature pans out, then I would definitely pick up one of those tiny keyboard game pads just for that feature.

[.XL]

If that pressure sensitivity feature pans out, then I would definitely pick up one of those tiny keyboard game pads just for that feature.

...I didn't even think of this.

Where do I sign up?

[SirDrexl]

I think pressure sensitivity would only work well if the switches are linear, which is how the analog triggers on console controllers behave.

[kill will]

i think a better idea is membrane potentiometers plotted to midi and usb .. thats velocity sensitive and full nkro with midi supprt

[clickclack]

Paul Dietz-

Thanks for the interesting info! I hope things work out well and are implemented quickly. no pressure... =)

I think pressure sensitivity would only work well if the switches are linear, which is how the analog triggers on console controllers behave.

Perhaps, but my good ole playstation 2 controler is tactile with pressure sensitivity and was/is a real treat to use.

=)

[elef]

Well, I can't get excited about 17KRO. I never cared and I never will. Maybe gamers have 17 fingers and can or want to press that many buttons at the same time, but I'm quite happy pressing 3 at a time at most, 2 of those being some permutation of Shift/Ctrl/Alt.

Now, that pressure sensitivity, on the other hand... that sounds intriguing. Does such a feature currently ship in any keyboard? What does it do? Is there any software that makes use of it? What technology does it use and how much does it cost?
All I found online was some small news item from August 2009... if MS itself couldn't be bothered to bring this to market in a year and a half, do we have any reason to expect it will be picked up now? I guess if the license is cheap enough somebody else might take a gamble with it... but it will need special software, so unless MS gives it some real support it's not gonna fly. If Windows included the drivers for this and pages scrolled slower/faster depending on how hard you're pressing the arrow button or games could use analog throttle/steering/running without any programming acrobatics required from the game developers, I could see this taking off. If you just throw the tech against the wall it won't stick. It needs to be plug & play for mass market appeal.

[Findecanor]

I think pressure sensitivity would only work well if the switches are linear, which is how the analog triggers on console controllers behave.

It could apply to only one phase of the stroke, where the force graph is linear, or almost linear. I think it makes the most sense to have it below the activation point.

[HaiiYaa]

I wonder how fast this will be out. Razer should make a v2 of their blackwidow with this techology

[elef]

Thinking about this, MS should bake the basic drivers into windows and make some keyboards with a pressure sensitive arrow cluster and normal rubber domes everywhere else. That probably wouldn't drive up the costs too much and give plug & play access to the main use scenario. Scrolling and navigating MS Office documents and browser windows would be so much nicer.

[SirDrexl]

It could apply to only one phase of the stroke, where the force graph is linear, or almost linear. I think it makes the most sense to have it below the activation point.

Hmmm, that sounds similar to the Gamecube controller, which had analog triggers where most of the travel was linear, then there was a tactile bump at the bottom with a click.  This tactile point was transmitted as a different button.

Imagine media keys for Rev/FF where the speed is determined by the force applied to the keys, with the bottoming out point being prev/next chapter.

[RiGS]

Well that's very good news.

[Paul Dietz]

Well, I can't get excited about 17KRO. I never cared and I never will. Maybe gamers have 17 fingers and can or want to press that many buttons at the same time, but I'm quite happy pressing 3 at a time at most, 2 of those being some permutation of Shift/Ctrl/Alt.

The technology actually allows for full NKRO. The 17 key limitation on the X4 is kind of artificial - it was driven by limitations of the particular processor that we chose. But I get your point - even 17 sounds excessive.

The thing that most people don't realize is that most keyboards start having trouble with 3 keys pressed at the same time. For a regular key matrix, a bit less than 5% of the 3-key combinations simply do not work. So a lot of the value of the technology is that it makes it so ALL of the 3-key combinations work.

There are a number of keyboards out there which claim to have anti-ghosting on a certain subset of keys. Typically, this is achieved by permuting the matrix so that some small group of keys is guaranteed to work together. That means the bad combinations have been moved, not eliminated. And there is no guarantee that those anti-ghosting keys will continue to work if you add in a press from a key outside the special set. Microsoft has permuted their matrices for years because it does help, but we never claimed this was a complete solution. Now we have one.

[itlnstln]

This is good stuff.  If you're going to work on a solution to allow larger combinations of keys to pressed without blocking, you might as well make it so all the keys can be pressed together without blocking.  Thanks for sharing this insight, Paul.

[Paul Dietz]

Thinking about this, MS should bake the basic drivers into windows and make some keyboards with a pressure sensitive arrow cluster and normal rubber domes everywhere else. That probably wouldn't drive up the costs too much and give plug & play access to the main use scenario. Scrolling and navigating MS Office documents and browser windows would be so much nicer.

There is a presumption that it's much cheaper to add pressure sensitivity to only a few keys. The point of the new technology is that we developed a way to matrix the circuitry. So it's about the same cost to do a few keys as to do the whole keyboard. Of course, just because the functionality is there doesn't mean you have to use it all the time. For example, you might want pressure sensitivity on ASDW in games so you can do proportional angle moves. But you might not want it while doing forum posts...
:wink:

[Senor_Cartmenez]

I sure hope tho that this significant development in the rubber dome sector does not get overshadowed by Logitech's next G1234 keyboard which spots an all new LED screen that can display more colors than ever before and is compatible with a ****load of useless apps....

cross posting this to german forum now

[Mr. Perfect]

P.S. Full disclosure: In case it wasn't obvious, I work for Microsoft as a researcher in the Applied Sciences Group...

On an unrelated note, you can set a custom user group for yourself in the user control panel. Right now you have "Junior Member" under your name, but you could change it to "Microsoft Applied Sciences Group" or if that doesn't fit, "Microsoft Engineer". Feel free to be creative too, why not be a "Microsoft Boffin"?

[Paul Dietz]

This is good stuff.  If you're going to work on a solution to allow larger combinations of keys to pressed without blocking, you might as well make it so all the keys can be pressed together without blocking.  Thanks for sharing this insight, Paul.

Sorry I wasn't more clear on this. The technology is full NKRO - i.e. nothing blocks or ghosts. However, there are a number of reasons why a manufacturer might chose to limit the number of simultaneous keys. These include processor limitations (debouncing 100 keys at once takes more memory than many low end processors have), communications issues, OS issues, and much more subtly, component variation issues.

[audioave10]

Its good to see this technology finally moving forward...Thanks!

[Findecanor]

I hope that you at Microsoft are giving us a new, decent USB keyboard protocol for N-KRO and pressure-sensitive keys while you are at it ...
If you could get MS Windows to support it out of the box, then more keyboards and systems will.

[Peter]

For all I care, you can keep your proprietary 'technology' entirely to your selves,
it's bad enough that we defenceless consumers have to deal with your stupid Windows-logo keys,
the lawyer-babble on the stickers and all the nonsense language from your marketing-division  .

But Hey, since you have decided to not make a trillion dollars on this it
may end up as a bigger success than the other 'technology' 'invented' by Micr0$0ft,
'Bob' ....

PS : I'm pretty certain that 'Extreme', 'anti', 'ghosting', 'The Masses'
and any combination are Registered Trademarks or patented 'technologies' .

[RiGS]

For all I care, you can keep your proprietary 'technology' entirely to your selves,
it's bad enough that we defenceless consumers have to deal with your stupid Windows-logo keys,
the lawyer-babble on the stickers and all the nonsense language from your marketing-division  .

But Hey, since you have decided to not make a trillion dollars on this it
may end up as a bigger success than the other 'technology' 'invented' by Micr0$0ft,
'Bob' ....

PS : I'm pretty certain that 'Extreme', 'anti', 'ghosting', 'The Masses'
and any combination are Registered Trademarks or patented 'technologies' .

You just talked to my heart.

[Koeitje]

Lets not turn this into a Microsoft bashing topic. Paul and his team developed some nice new technology, there is no reason to bash him because he did so under the Microsoft flag.

[itlnstln]

A bunch of bull**** from a guy whose screen name is another word for "****."

Let me guess.  

You guys are from OCN.

Average age is 30 at Geekhack.  Not 12.

Reminds me why I haven't come around here as much lately - I'm an adult.

[digitalleftovers]

Thank you for posting this Paul.  I look forward to seeing it in action.

[itlnstln]

Time for the World's Only Doubleshot Windows Logo Key

Show Image

You spelled defenseless wrong you moron.

And "yourselves."  Hey, but what do expect from an 8th-grader?

[Mr. Perfect]

Hey, maybe he hasn't got a fence in his yard! Do you have a fence in your yard? :peep:

[itlnstln]

Hey, maybe he hasn't got a fence in his yard! Do you have a fence in your yard? :peep:

Ha! Everyone here in Texas has fences around their yard/property.  When I go up to Chicago or Cleveland, hardly any of the houses (in the suburbs, anyway) have fences.  My GF's sister has a neighbor with a fence around their backyard; probably the only one in their neighborhood.  Not surprisingly, that family moved there from Dallas.

[elef]

There is a presumption that it's much cheaper to add pressure sensitivity to only a few keys.

Well, partly. Depending on the tech, the pressure sensitive keys could be awful to type on, so you don't necessarily want them on the alphanumeric section... But that's not the main point; you have entirely sidestepped all the relevant questions. Does this ship in any keyboard right now, and is MS planning to give it some driver support? If not, it will probably go from the lab straight to the museum...

[manfaux]

Time for the World's Only Doubleshot Windows Logo Key

Show Image

You spelled defenseless wrong you moron.

i'll pay up to $100 for this key, PM me for details.

[FunkTrooper]

Actually, he didn't spell defenceless wrong, he just spelt it the British way.

[Findecanor]

Spelt. More nutritious than regular wheat. Some people say that it tastes better also. I dunno, but my pancakes were yummy.

All keyboard  engineers have to do is reverse engineer the Sidewinder X4 USB interface.  No new protocols needed.

So the Sidewinder X4 has pressure gradient sensitive keys then? ...

I think it would be best if the spec was published on a public web site for everyone to use.

[Daniel Beaver]

Neat, I hope this technology gets more widely distributed. I like my 6+KRO boards.

[Reaif]

It would be pretty cool if pressure sensitivity was also variable (on or off) with some kind of switch or setting. That way you could type on it regularly without the world going haywire.

[Paul Dietz]

It would be pretty cool if pressure sensitivity was also variable (on or off) with some kind of switch or setting. That way you could type on it regularly without the world going haywire.

You can think of it this way - all keyboards are pressure sensitive, but most only have 1 bit of resolution (on or off). We're just adding more bits. But you can always ignore those extra bits. Or you could use them to set a different on/off threshold. It's just code...

[nigritude]

this is exciting... minus the fact that (if waiting for clickclacks and leopolds are any indication), it will take forever to migrate to mechanical keyboards

[quadibloc]

Congratulations.

Other people here might be able to answer the question I have, though.

The Model F was around... for a long time. Why hasn't anyone, except Topre, used capacitative technology to provide better multitouch without diodes? Is Topre's approach - which I presume is well-protected by patents - the only one possible, apart from the buckling spring (or the beam spring, which is too expensive to consider)?

I would have thought that you could just take a rubber dome sheet, paint conductive dots on it, and then coat it with an insulating layer - and, poof, you have a capacitative keyboard that works, and, no, you don't need the springs. What am I missing?

[TexasFlood]

Cool news, much more interesting that I expected.  When I first read the thread title quickly, I thought it said "extreme anti-goating coming to the masses...", maybe it's because I recently watched "The Men Who Stare at Goats", :wink:.

[digitalleftovers]

Hey, here's an idea. Don't be a douchebag.  He didn't have to tell us a damn thing.  He didn't have to make an attempt to associate with the community.  He sure as hell doesn't owe you a damn thing. If you don't like him or what his company sells, there are alternatives.  Get linux, get a mac, get a goddamn dog, I don't care.  We'd like to encourage more developer discussion with the enthusiast community, not discourage it.

seconded.

Oh! he could get yellow-dog linux and run it on a mac! (possibly ashamed of that comment).

[chimborazo]

You spelled defenseless wrong you moron.

And "yourselves."  Hey, but what do expect from an 8th-grader?

I thought it said "extreme anti-goating coming to the masses...", maybe it's because I recently watched "The Men Who Stare at Goats"

rofl oh gosh


the technology that could

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

I'm a mechanical keyboard fan (cherry mx variety specifically); but i do think this is a good step.

Majority of people won't want to spend a wad of cash of a keyboard on the get go, since CPU, hard drive, graphics card, monitor etc usually takes precedent. So a starter rubberdome keyboard with the side winder's tech for that 17KRO would be amazing.

I do think 17KRO is overkill, but the gist of the matter is, at least it ain't 2-6kro.  6kro probably ok, but if your a nit picker like me, we do after all have 10 fingers (cough cough).


Anyways, will this side winder usb nkro tech make it to mechanical keyboards or is it strictly going to be for rubberdome ?

I'm more interested to know about the up take of this tech on mech keyboards.

[slueth]

Alright! Cheap 17KRO..

A couple years ago me and my brother played liero on one computer and I wish this technology existed.

The problem is that only gamers really need anti-ghosting technology, and if it affects prices then people might just grab the one without anti-ghosting and call it a day.

If the licensing fee is not too high(define cheap), it would be worth it for companies to add this technology; the masses would have this technology and it might be a new standard for cheap keyboards without diodes.

Pressure sensitivity .. is that in game controllers yet?  

Microsoft can be aggressive when they push their "new" technology but you can't stomp all competition.

I live in Seattle, I should drive to the campus and give you guys all high fives!

[Findecanor]

When I first read the thread title quickly, I thought it said "extreme anti-goating coming to the masses...", maybe it's because I recently watched "The Men Who Stare at Goats", :wink:.

And here I had thought that the anti-goating movement was protesting against goatees, not goats.

[Ekaros]

So when we get HID-driver which works with more than 6KRO?

I got nothing against MS(or maybe a bit with Nokia...), they are very decent hardware company, even if their OS is quite popular and not always the best option

[ch_123]

Given that Ghosting is a pretty severe keyboard design failure that most keyboards don't have, the OP title is like advertising a car with "EXTREME ANTI-EXPLODING ENGINE DESIGN".

Someone needs to figure out the difference between ghosting and blocking...

Other people here might be able to answer the question I have, though.

The Model F was around... for a long time. Why hasn't anyone, except Topre, used capacitative technology to provide better multitouch without diodes? Is Topre's approach - which I presume is well-protected by patents - the only one possible, apart from the buckling spring (or the beam spring, which is too expensive to consider)?

I would have thought that you could just take a rubber dome sheet, paint conductive dots on it, and then coat it with an insulating layer - and, poof, you have a capacitative keyboard that works, and, no, you don't need the springs. What am I missing?

Keytronic and BTC used to have capacitive foam'n'foil switches back in the day. The more simplified mechanism you describe could work, but perhaps it would not be precise enough to provide reliable capacitive switching?

Either way, the last I checked, diodes are pretty cheap compared with capacitive contacts. IBM did at one point have a patent for a capacitive membrane, but seemingly nothing came of it.

[keyb_gr]

Given that Ghosting is a pretty severe keyboard design failure that most keyboards don't have, the OP title is like advertising a car with "EXTREME ANTI-EXPLODING ENGINE DESIGN".

Someone needs to figure out the difference between ghosting and blocking...

I think rechecking the target group definitions might do. A thread title like this is clearly targeting the un-/misinformed masses. Fine all by itself, but not ideal in a place where people are aware of said difference.

Either way, the last I checked, diodes are pretty cheap compared with capacitive contacts.

They require an awful lot of solder joints though. Thus I'd expect capacitive concepts to be more reliable, especially under tough conditions (heavy vibration etc.).

[quadibloc]

Keytronic and BTC used to have capacitive foam'n'foil switches back in the day.

Of course, foam and foil - used on the Atex keyboard, as someone here mentioned - is generally considered pretty horrible from a tactile point of view.

Either way, the last I checked, diodes are pretty cheap compared with capacitive contacts.

It isn't so much the diodes, as soldering them in to the circuit board. But even capacitative - since it usually uses a PC board for the contacts, rather than a membrane - adds significant manufacturing costs, which is likely one reason why it isn't used more.

[clickclack]

...Other people here might be able to answer the question I have, though....

...I would have thought that you could just take a rubber dome sheet, paint conductive dots on it, and then coat it with an insulating layer - and, poof, you have a capacitative keyboard that works, and, no, you don't need the springs. What am I missing?

....Keytronic and BTC used to have capacitive foam'n'foil switches back in the day. The more simplified mechanism you describe could work, but perhaps it would not be precise enough to provide reliable capacitive switching?....

I don't think I am any kind of authority on this subject but I do believe I have seen numerous keyboards that have what you (quadibloc) suggest. Painted/printed conductive dots and/or patterned traces on membranes with corresponding conductive dots on the rubber domes. I have a number of keyboards with this with either the conductive material on a membrane or PCB, both with rubber domes.

I don't know if that helps but there ya go.
 =)