Touchscreen Responsiveness

[vfx]

The Tegra 2 should be a good performance improvement over the Tegra 2 (which I have in my Samsung Galaxy Tablet). A summary of performance differences here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/01/fi...ore-chip-just-slightly-faster-than-apples-a5/

How about an more beautiful AMOLED display?

https://negrielectronics.com/samsung-p6800-galaxy-tab-7-7-16gb-wifi-3g-unlocked-black-grey.html

 

[howabout2]

If you don't give a visual or audio response within half second, you're frozen and the user will start hating on you. If you don't show something within 1/10th of a second, you're slow - if you can't actually do something by the time 1/10th of a second passes, you have to at least show a wait cursor. If it's interactive (e.g., dragging or pinch zooming), you can't be more than two ticks (1/30th of a second) behind. Successive refinement at idle time is just about always the right answer.

User events must be treated as real-time interrupts, and all the heavy lifting has to happen at idle time or on a background thread or in another process.

Just stopped into this thread for the first time and SByer has it precisely right. When designing a touch UI, responsiveness is the utmost concern. Very small delays add up to great user frustration. This is why I consider my Android phone "slow" compared to its iPhone contemporaries. Android will periodically stutter and fail to respond.

The reason users start hating on you when your user interface appears to "freeze," as SByer says, is that they don't know whether you processed their input. This is especially likely when dealing with a touchscreen since there is no tactile feedback. So the impatient among us, such as myself, will press again and possibly even three or more times if the pause is more than a second. Once the user interface awakens from its slumber, often the result is a spastic processing of a sequence of "clicks" in rapid fire, which can be even worse than the delay itself.

You'd think that impatient folks like myself would be trained by sluggish devices to just wait. But I can tell you flatly that I never learn. When a device--my Android phone, my Kindle Touch, my AT&T U-Verse DVR, whatever--doesn't respond to something in about half a second, I immediately tap the screen or press the button again. User interfaces absolutely must run at the highest-priority and respond immediately with something, even if it's just an indicator that the input has been received.

I too have been nervously awaiting an opportunity to test the user interface responsiveness of a production-ready Model S. What I have seen on videos to date appears distressingly unresponsive. I can almost feel the tension in the air that exists for those sparing tenths of the second while the Tesla representative has to decide if she should tap the "maximize" button again. You can see that she has been trained to be extremely deliberate with her taps in the videos too. A touch UI needs to work for deliberate, casual, and rushed use...

Especially a touch UI in a car! Consider the risk of an unresponsive user interface when the user needs to know that their input was successfully captured immediately because they need to get their eyes back on the road. Knowing myself, I fear the small fits of rage that I will have if the touchscreen doesn't process my rushed input and I have to take my eye off the road for more than a tiny fraction of a second to more deliberately press some on-screen button.

 

[widodh]

I feel the same ^ ^.

It could be that the Tegra2 isn't up to the job, it might be that they are waiting for the Tegra3 GPU's which should speed up the whole UI?

I hate slow touchscreens as well, it should just respond to what I'm doing, simple as that.

 

[neroden]

There are a LOT of things that can affect the touch screen responsiveness. On hardware side the NVIDIA Tegra processor should be up to the job, although we don't know which model or what clock speed will be used. The amount and type of RAM that is used can dramatically affect performance. We also have no idea what the touch screen controller is, or what the touch panel is. It looked capacitive from the way it was being touched and responding which makes it nicer to use (but hard/impossible to use with gloves on).
On the software side there are tons of variables to tweak, there is the OS, which I understand it Linux based, the power consumption optimization settings for the touch controller including its sleep settings, is the processor being put to sleep? (as in your cell phone is). As others have mentioned the maps may not be stored locally so downloading adds delay dependent on where you are and the cell network loading. It would be nice if the put a few GB of extra NAND memory in the car and had all the maps stored on the car, (not sure that google offer that though?) as I assume after 3 years or so we will be picking up the cars cell phone data plan bill?

It's probably going to be none of the things you mentioned. :-( Slow response is, these days, almost always down to bad programming at the final, user program level. Which is not a great sign, unfortunately. The hardware is optimized, the Linux kernel is optimized and designed for real-time operation, the low-level libraries are fast, but UIs tend to be sloppy resource hogs. Which is exactly what everyone doesn't want.

 

[brianman]

but UIs tend to be sloppy resource hogs. Which is exactly what everyone doesn't want.

At least it would be fixable with updates, if it's a pure software issue. Silver lining?

 

[slavi]

Most of the slowness would be down to the 3g connection, especially for the maps. And yes, NVidia's Tegra3 is far faster. I do hope there is a slight sound or feedback to a touch, like the small vibration on a touch screen phone.

 

[AnOutsider]

Most of the slowness would be down to the 3g connection, especially for the maps. And yes, NVidia's Tegra3 is far faster. I do hope there is a slight sound or feedback to a touch, like the small vibration on a touch screen phone.

Maps downloading isn't the issue as stated earlier in the thread. If the maps are loading, there should still be an instant visual or auditory cue to let the user know that their input has been received and that the system is working on the request.

 

[Todd Burch]

Even if it were a slow Edge connection, while the maps are downloading a grid should be displayed which still rapidly reacts to input. As grids of map data come in, they should be seamlessly overlayed. On the betas, it's not like that.

I'm hoping that software improvements, hardware improvements, or both will make this entire topic a moot point by the time production rolls around.

 

[attar]

I had lots of problems with 2013 S. Screen all black. You could drive it but no control on heat or fan. Software reset did not do anything. SC told to wait for the fix or upgrade to MCU2. That fixed all the problems Before I did not had navigation .now with the upgrade Screen is faster more detail and bright. Memory is 64gb and network and navigation. Ytube and Netflix. Here in Vancouver I was charged $2000.00 can. I am happy with it.

 

[beatle]

Did you really find the oldest touchscreen thread to reply to?