Microsoft's Surface Input Simulator Allows Development On Win7 PCs

Microsoft's Surface never really became the next generation of tables. But it's 2011, and people are not only not flying around in Jetsons vehicles, but they're still driving the same cars they did a decade ago. Sometimes things move fast, and other times, well, you get the Surface. There's no question that the Surface is an amazing idea -- a touch screen table definitely sounds like something we could all use -- but prohibitive pricing and questionable development leads haven't helped. Instead, most newsworthy development is happening in the mobile space. But that might change.


Microsoft's new Surface Input Simulator enables consumers and developers to write Surface applications on any Windows 7 machine, rather than having to have a Surface by your side. This means that devs can finally write these apps at home, on planes, or pretty much anywhere they are. The Simulator looks pretty robust as well: you can simulate fingers, tags and blobs on your monitor, and you can ontrol whether a given input device is down by holding down your left mouse button (as an example).


Head to the Via link below for more details, and hopefully we'll see a lot more Surface action in the near future.