Sat 18 Oct 2008
The hacktastic story of how inamo became arguably the world’s first two mouse Flash installation
Posted by bernie under Client-side web programmingIt’s been a long time since my last post so I’m making up for it with a long one.
Sometimes a single sentence in a specification can balloon into a task as daunting as most of the other sentences put together. This is the story of one such sentence that led me on a three month quest to allow a flash application to be used with two separate mice each with its own pointer.
I give you, in all it’s geeky detail: the hacktastic story of how inamo became arguably the world’s first two mouse Flash installation.
Do e-mail me with comments and suggestions (bernie @ [this website]) or post a comment. In particular, let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to go into more detail on.
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October 20th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Good article.
Just wondering why you went through all of that trouble instead of implementing the app using an xmlsocket server to collect and broadcast the multiple inputs.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
That’s exactly what I ended up doing.
The first version of that approach, the latency was too high because sending data over TCP on a thin client computer takes to long. The mouse pointer movement trailed quite a way behind your finger movement.
The current version still uses XMLSocket, but now the pointer is drawn to the screen by the socket server application, so it doesn’t suffer the TCP delay.
October 20th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Fantastic work, and lovely story.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Dear Bernie,
What a great program! I would like to know if you would please get in touch with me as my brother is interested in your services. We have a established Pan Asian restaurant in Harrogate.
Thank you and I hope to hear from you soon.
Serena
March 13th, 2009 at 4:28 am
I am very interested in your program. I own a japanese restaurant myself in Indonesia and would like to know if we can acquire your services here. Thank you.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
Why didn’t you just set up separate instances of the application running on separate machines, that were tied together, rather than create one application for every two people?
How do you handle parties of 3 or more, one application and multiple cursors?
Do you have one PC per table?
July 30th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Good question: why not run one instance of the system for each person?
We currently have one PC per table. Running two instances of the OS with one mouse each would have required either twice the number of computers, or a more powerful computer to virtualise two instances of the OS on one computer. Our solution can scale to any number of users without significant extra processing costs.
Also, the two on one table sharing the same UI can interact qute a bit. They control the “tablecloth” background image for the whole table for example, and play two-player games. Both of these would have been significantly harder if the interaction happened over a network.
Bernie :o)
July 31st, 2009 at 5:18 am
Dear Bernie
I was looking for this kind of software for one project that I’m working.
Please contact me to talk more about it, I am very interested in your product
Thank you
March 17th, 2010 at 1:36 am
I am very interested in your program, I´have a restaurant in brazil, and a need too much your help, if possible contact-me by email please
rodrigomfr@hotmail.com
thank´s very alot