In step 7 (and possibly others further down), it would be helpful if you could mention that the “Windows 7 x64 DEBUG Build Environment command prompt” is labeled “CMD Shell” in the SDK’s start menu folder. After using the Visual Studio command prompt right before, of which there are several versions so the correct title is important, it’s not evident that the “Windows 7 x64 DEBUG Build Environment command prompt” is just *any command prompt found in the Windows SDK 7.0 folder*.

Even though it eventually wouldn’t do any harm, I’d have liked to be reassured that there’ll be more corflags warnings like the one from step 7 when running the commands for step 9, which can be safely ignored.

Some troubleshooting: When I (thought I) had first completed the steps up to step 9, I tried to run the simulator, but I’d invariably end up with the following error messages:

“Surface-Eingabe kann die in der Registrierung konfigurierten Filterassemblys nicht laden. Stellen Sie sicher, dass die Pfade zu den Filterassemblys korrekt angegeben sind. Weitere Informationen zum Fehler finden Sie in den Anwendungsereignisprotokollen im Pfad Microsoft-Surface-VisionSystem/Operational.”

(possibly a translation of “Surface Input was unable to load the filter graph specified. Make sure the filter graph is correctly specified, and that all calibration data is valid.”, though it doesn’t quite say the same.)
and then:

“A communication error occurred during initialization. Please reinstall Surface SDK.”

I realized that this was due to the wrong Windows SDK version installed. Your tutorial talks about SDK version 7.0, and SDK version 7.1 was installed on my machine already. Hence, I thought that it’s just a little bit more recent by a minor version number, probably just having some bugfixes over 7.0, so I just proceeded.
The truth seems to be, however, that the difference between 7.0 and 7.1 is crucial. 7.0 is bundled with the .NET SDK 3.5 and 7.1 with the .NET SDK 4.0, but the Surface SDK requires the .NET SDK 3.5.

So, after installing the correct Windows SDK version (in addition to the SDK 7.1) and reinstalling the Surface SDK, I could run the simulator as described in step 10.
However, it seems quite buggy to me. I haven’t yet been able to solve this problem and I’m grateful for any hint. This is what the simulator looks like on my computer: http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa367/fhvis/SurfaceSimulator.png

As you can see, the surface simulation covers only about 4/5 of the client area of the simulator window. What makes this really severe is that simulated touch input is still mapped based on the actual window size. That is, in order to activate the button in the bottom right corner of the surface simulation, I have to click the bottom left corner of the simulator window. The closer I get to the top left corner of the simulation, the more closely clicked position and simulated touch position match.
What’s more, the exit and minimize buttons in the title bar do not work. They just don’t do anything. My only way to gracefully close the simulator is via the context menu for the simulator’s task bar button.

Ignoring these problems for now, I went on with the instructions and noticed that the paths indicated in step 11 contain a directory named “Common 7″. After unsuccessfully copying and pasting that path into my Explorer address bar, I realized that at least in my Visual Studio installation, that is actually “Common7″ (without a whitespace).

Lastly, step 14 and 15 imply that for every Surface project created based on those templates, the target platform has to be manually changed to x86. Shouldn’t it be possible to modify the templates so they always pre-set the required values? After all, that’s what templates are there for.

Thanks again – and please let me know if anyone has a hint on how to fix that simulator scaling bug

thanks

Lee

Helaas lukt het me ook niet om met isManipulationEnabled dit werkend te krijgen, ook niet met deze source code. Dus ik heb het idee dat het ergens anders aan ligt.

Ik zie het nut niet zo in van die multitouch schermen. Handig is toch anders?
Al valt er voor uw punt dat het een goeiekoper alternatief is dan een Surface wel iets te zeggen – om te ontwikkelen.

Kus
Sofie