I'm sadly bearish on this kind of stuff. The Mac touch-panel showed that even a context-aware, reactive and fully integrated input struggled to break the flow gained by keyboard+mouse.

Even today some people are still on the fence about the new fangled mouse!

The Mac touch bar sucked, that why it didn’t gain traction.

Likely valid, but can you say why it sucked? And why any other input wouldn't struggle with the same faults?

It sucked for the following reasons:

- too easy to accidentally touch while reaching top-row keys.

- cannot be used by feel.

- replaces existing keys, removing functionality.

- turns off sometimes, so we have to tap once to wake it first.

- some common actions used to be 1 key, are now two taps (volume, brightness).

- does not always register my taps. No unambiguous indication that the tap was recognized.

I have an Anker PowerConf 300 webcam which (on Mac or Windows) can go up to 115 degrees with the AnkerWork software.

I thought this was around the corner years ago when Intel and partners had RealSense modules being built into laptops but it seems like all the players have shifted focus to more enterprise and industrial markets.

Wii Remote (2006), Wiimote Whiteboard (2007), Kinect (2010), Leap Motion (2010- Ultraleap (2019)),

There are infrared depth cameras in various phones and laptop cameras now.

[VR] Motion controllers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_controller#Gaming

Inertial navigation system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system

Inertial measurement unit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_measurement_unit :

> An inertial measurement unit (IMU) is an electronic device that measures and reports a body's specific force, angular rate, and sometimes the orientation of the body, using a combination of accelerometers, gyroscopes, and sometimes magnetometers. When the magnetometer is included, IMUs are referred to as IMMUs.[1]

Moasure does displacement estimation with inertial measurement (in a mobile app w/ just accelerometer or also compass sensor data?) IIUC: https://www.moasure.com/

/? wireless gesture recognition RSSI: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=wireless+gesture+recogn...

/? wireless gesture recognition RSSI site:github.com : https://www.google.com/search?q=wireless+gesture+recognition...

Awesome-WiFi-CSI-Sensing > Indoor Localization: https://github.com/Marsrocky/Awesome-WiFi-CSI-Sensing#indoor...

3D Scanning > Technology, Applications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_scanning#Technology

Are there a limited set of possible-path-corresponding diffraction patterns that NIRS (Near-Infrared Spectroscopy) could sense and process to make e.g. a magic pencil with pressure sensitivity, too?

/q.hnlog "quantum navigation": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222625#36250019 :

> Quantum navigation maps such signal sources such that inexpensive sensors can achieve something like inertial navigation FWIU?

From https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=36249897 :

> Can low-cost lasers and Rdyberg atoms e.g. Rydberg Technology solve for [space-based] matter-wave interferometry? [...] Does a fishing lure bobber on the water produce gravitational waves as part of the n-body gravitational wave fluid field, and how separable are the source wave components with e.g. Quantum Fourier Transform/or and other methods?

Because the digitizer

> e.g. a magic pencil with pressure sensitivity, too?

Wouldn't such a capability also be useful for surgical AR/AI, robotics, and training?

I'm sure you've heard of TrackIR, which can do head tracking with some head-mounted reflectors. But without mounting anything to your head, the tobii eye tracker can do both head and eye tracking completely passively. It seems like adding hand/finger gesture controls, and peripherals like stylus, mouse, etc... would be an obvious next step, but it doesn't look like they or anyone else is doing that.