Snowflake Suite General Manual - Information about the applications and general package

Getting Started

Requirements

Natural User Interface® Snowflake Suite operates under Windows® XP, Windows® Vista and Windows® 7. The operating system is assumed to be updated with the latest patches and updates, including the latest Windows Service Packs.

System requirements

Recommended system for best performance:
Core2Duo 3GHz
2GB RAM
NVIDIA Geforce GTX 460

Important

Make sure the latest video card drivers are installed. When running Windows 7, ensure that the video card drivers are Windows 7 certified. Some slightly older cards may not have Windows 7 certified drivers and as such, will not be compatible with Snowflake on Windows 7. Check the webpage of the video card manufacturer for more detail.

The window

The application window

By touching the window frame of an application (window mode), users can perform actions like drag, rotate and scale.

To rotate, you drag your fingers in a circular motion, in the same direction that you want to rotate the window.
To scale, drag your fingers closer or further away from each other. Note that a frame has a minimum and maximum size, for usability purposes.
By double tapping on the frame, the application will go from windowed mode to full screen mode.

Interacting with the application window

By dragging the frame with one finger, the window can be moved around the screen.

Tip

When moving the window quickly, it will slide upon release. This can be used to close an application by 'throwing' it from the canvas.

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The corner menus

All applications have menu buttons in the corner of the window. In the menu you will find options like; Exit, Lock/Unlock, Fullscreen/Window and other options.

The corner menu

The menu is accessed by pressing down on one of the corner buttons for a second, which will make the menu options appear. To select an option, drag and release on top of one of the buttons. To close an application, press the menu button, then drag the finger to the exit button and release.

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The application menu

The grid menu

The grid menu displays the included applications layed out on a grid. To start an application, simply tap the icon for that application.

The rotating menu

The rotating menu displays the applications that are included in Snowflake Suite. To start an application, tap on an icon in the rotating menu.

The sliding menu

The sliding menu displays the included applications as a sliding queue. You can drag the menu by putting down a finger on or around it, and then dragging either left or right. To start an application, tap an icon.

Customizing the menu

Via the Snowflake Suite Configuration application you can select which applications should be included in the menu.

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Applications

3D Viewer

The 3D viewer is an application used to view and interact with 3D models. Snowflake Suite is packaged with a set of default 3D models.
Users can place their own 3D models in Snowflake Suite, without having to contact NUITEQ. Supported formats include; obj, 3ds and dae.

When opening the 3D viewer, a menu appears with the loaded 3D models. Rotate the menu to find a specific model to have a closer look at.
To zoom into a model, put your finger on one of the models until the loading bar is filled and it will start zooming in on the selected 3d model.

Rotate the model in X and Y axis with one finger.
Rotate the model in the Z axis by using two fingers.
Zoom in and zoom out by drawing the fingers closer or further away from each other.

When zoomed in on a model, press the model wheel button in the menu to go back to the 3d models overview.
To see a model in wireframe, press the wireframe button in the menu. To go back to see the model in a solid form, press the same button in the menu.

Note

In order to showcase non default 3D models, put the models in the "INSTALL_PATH\bin\applications\Teapot2\data\Models" folder.
Supported file formats for the 3d viewer include: .obj .3ds .dae

The 3d models are required to be triangulated before being exported, when using the file formats obj dae or 3ds.
Contact your content provider or NUITEQ if assistance is required.

Sometimes a .dae model might be missing a texture, this happen when mirroring a copy of a mesh by scaling it with -1 in one axis. This can be solved by using a proper mirror tool.

Interested to be able to load additional file formats? NUITEQ would love to hear your recommendation.

Air Hockey

Use your finger to control the pad and try to smash the puck into your opponents goal. The player with points left after reducing the opponents points wins.

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Bugs

Bugs is a game, where users pair bugs of the same species to make them bigger and bigger. Every time when pairing bugs, they fuse. The first player to only have one big bug left wins. To pair the bugs, draw a line that surrounds the bugs. If there are only bugs of the same specie within the selection they fuse.

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Connledge

Connledge is a multitouch application developed with the purpose to visualize data from Wikipedia. It is embedded in a zoomable Environment to deal with the pure amount of data available. The user can zoom in on every topic individually with a 2-Finger Pinching gesture as well as he is able to zoom into the whole world and get to lower layers of information.
A small green arrow resembles that the topic is connected to an upper layer of information. "Press and Hold" a Page to search for connected pages and a Click on the "Triangle"-Button to open the page and show its content.

The name comes from "connected knowledge" as it not only shows pure wikipedia-pages but also the connections between pages.
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Draw

Draw is an application where users can show their artistic skills and save it on the computer or print it out.
Pictures that are saved, automatically show up in the Media Viewer.

From the palette, users can choose drawings colors. The palette can be moved around and rotated. If the palette gets outside of the screen, it will bounce back into the canvas. The color picker indicates the selected color. To change the drawing color, press it and drag towards the selectable color.

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DrawOnVideo

The DrawOnVideo application allows you to draw on videos, which makes the application ideal for sports analysis, weather forecasting and similar purposes.

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Drums

This application allows to you play around with a drumkit.

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Flow

Flow is a special Media Viewer (images and videos) that links pictures of the same category together when interacted with. For example if a group of images of real estate is located in a specific folder, the pictures visually link to the other real estate images in the same folder. The same will happen with a folder called nature. Tet however images of the folder real estate and nature do not interact visually with each other.

Tip

To replace the default content in Flow with different content, follow the steps below:

Example

1. Locate the directory INSTALL_PATH\bin\applications\Flow\data\, which is located in the main data folder for the Flow application.
2. Change the graphics for "back.png", "backDown.png", "BackgroundMenu.png", "BackgroundViewer.png" etc if required.
3. Check the folder "Structure". In this folder folders/buttons can be added to create a different menu structure (an example structure is included). 
4. Add folders/buttons by creating a new folder inside "Structure". Name it "[number]_[name]", so that they are sorted correctly.
5. Inside the newly created folder, add "Icon_pressed.png" and "Icon_unpressed.png" images to be used for the menu button.
6. Create sub folders (similarly to how you created the first folder), to create more menu buttons.
7. After reaching the final menu layer (i.e. when satisfied with the structure), create a folder named "Media".
8. Place the content in the "Media" folder
9. Create a "Content.txt" file (also in the "Media" folder)
10. Edit the "Content.txt" file as follows:
+image name, category name
+for example:
+pigeon.png, birds
+dove.png, birds
+volvo.png, cars
+saab.png, cars
+etc... 
11. Names written in "Content.txt" should correspond with the image names.
12. Now when starting Flow the newly created menu structure is visible
13. Additionally the "Settings.txt" file located in the Flow data directory can be edited.

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Froggy

Froggy is a fun game for up to 4 persons playing at the same time. The aim of the game is to collect the highest score within the timeframe, by jumping from leaf to leaf and eating flies.

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Gravitoy

Gravitoy is a physics application where users can play around with physics, create shapes, play around with joints and change the gravity.

Gravitoy

Simply create a shape by drawing it. When drawn lines cross, the shape will break and fall apart. All shapes that are drawn will interact with each other like real objects.
There are several joints to use to connect shapes together to let the shapes interact with each other in new ways. These joints are available through the corner menu.
The gravity of the sandbox can be changed with the gravity widget. The arrow indicates the direction and the strength of the gravity. Change the gravity by pressing and dragging in different directions. The further away the finger is, the stronger the gravitation is.

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Map

The map application is a great tool to show maps with selectable hot spots, where the user can get further information by tapping on the hot spots, be it cafés, hotels or stores.

Media Viewer

The Media Viewer is a digital content viewer to showcase and interact with both pictures and movies.
The content can be customized, allowing users to showcase and interact with custom content of for example products and projects.
All pictures and videos are located in the following folder: "INSTALL_PATH\BIN\applications\Viewer\data\Media".

Note

Supported media file formats include: jpg, png, bmp, mov and pdf.

Tip

1. To add more media viewers with different content, copy and paste the viewer folder in the “INSTALL_PATH\BIN\applications” folder.
2. Change the name of the folder, for example viewer02, AND the .nui file in it (the name of the folder and .nui MUST have the same name) and fill the Media folder with new content.
3. Create new icons and place them in “INSTALL_PATH\bin\applications\< new folder >\MenuButton.png”.
4. Open up Globalmenu.xml and create a new line with application information accordingly to the folder names and icons, for example: < Button name="Viewer02" />

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PDF Viewer

PDF Viewer is a browser to view PDF files. Flip a page by swiping left or right, or by dragging the slider at the bottom.
To zoom in on a page, double tap it. To scroll through the page, drag vertically.
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Piano

This application allows to you play around with a piano.

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Pong

Pong is the remake of the old classic game, woth multi touch controls. User can use their fingers to move the paddle. If hitting the ball while moving the user can make it screw. First player to get 10 points win.
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Puzzle

The Puzzle application lets an user select a puzzle image, before piecing it together again. Position and rotate the puzzle pieces correctly, in order to complete the puzzle.
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Slider

Slider is a browser to view images. Flip a page by dragging the slider at the bottom.

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Slots

Slots is a slotmachine with virtual money. The user can chose how many slot wheels he want to use by dragging the two arrows on the slot screen. Then bet money by dragging coins from the coin stack and finally spin the wheels by dragging the slot wheels with the fingers.
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Snowdoku

Snowdoku is a winter themed game, where the user has to solve sudoku puzzles. Snowdoku allows for several people to join in, to solve puzzles together. The users can click on the Hint button, to get help with solving the puzzle.

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Special Effects

Special Effects showcases various particle effects. Select different particle effects via the corner menu. Every finger will create a beautiful effect that was selected via the menu.

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Stacks

Stacks is a stacking game where users compete against an opponent to stack objects to the designated height.
The stackable objects range all the way from squares to triangles, all with different mass and attributes.

Tip

To give the game a little twist, or just give the player the opportunity to mess things up for the opponent, there are power ups, which can change the gravity, add or remove objects or reset the scene.

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Tap

Tap is reaction game, where users quickly have to press upcoming buttons. The quicker buttons are pressed, the more points are received.
When 20 buttons filled up the screen at the same time, the game has ended.
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Tracer

Tracer is a simple application, mainly meant to show off the capabilities of different hardware solutions. Simply touch and drag, and Tracer will create colored lines for you, along with brief information per touch point.

Wong

Wong is a multi-player game similar to Pong. Instead of moving a paddle, users can create walls by putting down two or more fingers, to bounce the object on. In Wong multiple walls can be created.* If a wall is too wide, it will start to blink, to avoid cheating.
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Add external executables

Snowflake Suite comes with the support to add exernal executable files to the Snowflake Suite menu. To do this, please check through the manual for external applications.

Keyboard shortcuts

While running Snowflake Suite, the following keyboard shortcuts can be used:

Key	Description
F1	Shows version information
F2	Shows FPS information
F	Toggles showing/hiding of input markers

Autostart a single application

Snowflake Suite has the ability to launch a specific application upon launching Snowflake Suite. When doing this, only the specified application is loaded and automatically started in maximized mode. None of the other applications (or menus) are loaded.

To launch a specific application:
1.
Create a new short-cut to Snowflake Suite/bin/release/Launcher.exe

2.
In the target field, add "exclusive <application folder>"

For example:
Target: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Snowflake Suite\bin\release\Launcher_tc.exe" exclusive Viewer

Would launch the Viewer application.

The "Start in" value should always be the Snowflake Suite/bin/release folder (for example "C:\Program Files (x86)\Snowflake Suite\bin\release")

Configuration Editor

Use the configuration editor to customize Snowflake, such as specifying the default menu layout, adding a global exit button, specifying which applications are included in the menu, and a whole lot of other things. The configuration application can be started via Start -> All Programs -> Snowflake Suite -> Configuration.

For more information about the Configuration Editor, check out Configuration Editor

Configuration parameters

Below a brief description is listed of the editable configuration parameters that can be found in the general Snowflake Suite config file located at INSTALL_DIR/bin/Config.cfg. See Config.cfg for further details:


Name	Description
WindowWidth	Window width resolution
WindowHeight	Window height resolution
WindowBPP	Window color buffer size
WindowMode	Specifies which window mode to use (windowed, fullscreen)
CalibrationProfile	Tells Snowflake Suite which folder to use for calibration configurations
GlobalInput	Sets whether inputs should be global even if projection is adjusted
BackgroundTexture	Specifies the path to the image used as background in Snowflake Suite
LoaderSplash	Specifies the path to the image used when loading Snowflake Suite
ShowInput	Specifies whether to show input markers or not
ReceiveOSC	Specifies whether Snowflake Suite should listen for OSC/TUIO events
InputMarkerRotationSpeed	Specifies the speed of rotation for the input markers
InputMarkerSize	Specifies the size of the input markers
ScreensaverVideo	Specifies the path to a video to use as screen saver
ScreensaverTimeout	Specifies the amount of seconds of inactivity before the screen saver starts
ScreensaverClosesApps	Specifies if any running apps should exit when the screen saver starts
AudioVolume	Specifies the volume for sound effects in applications (not video)
DefaultApplicationSize	Specifies the size of an application once launched
StartMaximized	Specifies if apps should start maximized when started from the menu
RenderTextureWidth	Sets the rendering width of the apps, increase for higher quality
RenderTextureHeight	Sets the rendering height of the apps, increase for higher quality
MaximumRunningApps	Sets the amount of apps that are allowed to be run at the same time
BottomLeftMenuEnabled	Sets if the bottom left corner menu should be enabled for the apps
ConfigInAllUsers	Puts the TouchCore calibration files in the All Users folder
UseRotatingMenu	Set to true to use the rotating menu instead of the sliding one

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Snowflake Suite General Manual - Information about the applications and general package

Table of contents

Getting Started

Requirements

The window

The corner menus

The application menu

Applications

3D Viewer

Air Hockey

Bugs

Connledge

Draw

DrawOnVideo

Drums

Flow

Froggy

Gravitoy

Map

Media Viewer

PDF Viewer

Piano

Pong

Puzzle

Slider

Slots

Snowdoku

Special Effects

Stacks

Tap

Tracer

Wong

Add external executables

Keyboard shortcuts

Autostart a single application

Configuration Editor

Configuration parameters