TFT Touchscreen

[NCW]

Hi Guys,
Does anybody out there have experience with touch screens?

I have found a site that sells a 7" TFT touch screen VGA monitor, and I am thinking about getting one. I would like to use it for my PMDG series FMC.

Any instructive comments would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Neil

[fweinrebe]

I bought a 12 inch LCD screen with a touchscreen from a vendor that sells IBM POS systems to a supermarket chain here. The screen had an extra USB cable for the touchscreen part of the TFT monitor. I was told that Windows XP already has a driver for the touchscreen.

I never got to test it, since I disassembled to screen for my PFD.

[CoNa]

I currently use a 17" touchscreen. Mostly for pressing buttons in the 2d cockpit in FSX , but otherwise with touchbuddy freeware for Lockon or IL-2.

I had a 8" that I sold to another FS forum guy, with the idea just for the FMC. I have pictures of it (see link) and it works just fine he says.
He has rotated the monitor and it fits perfectly.

http://www.fsnordic.net/discussion/index.php/topic,77855.msg903289.html#msg903289

[alaxus]

I used a 8" touch screen with the PM fmc, worked great.

[Paul G]

I use a 10 incher for FMC. Had to mess around a bit with the settings, some of which were not what they at first appeared.

It works well but it's a completely different feel. I would recommend going for at least 10inch, preferably 12. Reason? Well touchscreen buttons need to be quite big to work well.

Most touchscreen kiosks have enormous buttons and only require single clicks. When you are punching on the keypad using several keys, on an interface which doesn't allow you to go back and correct anything other than the last character, it can soon get frustrating.

Physical buttons give a much more accurate feedback. You can sometimes turn on a 'beep' response so you know you registered 'hitting' the touchscreen. However this is NOT confirmation that you hit a button.

One thing that also frustrated me at first was that I would inadvertently drag the FMC out of position when intending to click a button. I have corrected this now. An option to register a click without moving the cursor (I think that's more or less what it's called) freezes the interface so you cannot drag. At first I assumed this means when you click a button on the touchscreen, the cursor which was on another panel would remain where it is. I guess it could mean that too.

Nice thing about touchscreens is that you can also drag other panels which you might need. The learjet is a good example of this, provided you scale it large enough so it's easy to hit the right toggle switch or button.

[nax228]

The 737 FMC measurs just about 10,4" witch is a standard screen size. If you drag your FMC (PMDG) to a smaller size, some buttons can stop working.
I guess 7" is a bit small for this purpose.