In my opinion, the killer app is digitisation of paper documents, tracking changes, and live multi-user editing. The 3d scanning stuff is a neat addition on top of that, but a much more niche use case.
e.g. My colleague writes a document and emails it to me. I open it, print it out, and bring it to Sprout, placing it on the capacitive mat. As I'm reading it, I'm annotating it with pen on paper. Sprout tracks my annotations, digitizes them, and adds them as a digital layer to the original document.
While I'm annotating, my colleague joins the "session" and wants to make more changes and incorporate some of my suggestions. I see that notification, chuck away my piece of paper, and have Sprout project the digital document onto the capacitive pad. While I watch, my colleague makes changes which are live-updated to my document. I see her copy my hand-written notes which have been digitised and OCR'd. She takes my notes, changes the font, and sticks them into one of the paragraphs. Likewise, I can use the stylus to make more annotations that my colleague sees in real-time, or, since the document is digital this time around, I can just edit the paragraphs directly too.
Think Google Wave + Collusion for iPad + the ability to do fairly seamlessly with both digital and physical documents.
How does Sprout do great OCR or facilitate joint collaborations?
These are both problems that need solving but have nothing to do with Sprout. PR often has things like this ‘solved’ for their mockups which people then falsely associate with the product.
See the mass delusion many people have with the Minority Report interface.
Why not just edit the email/document using a keyboard, you can even do it in a google doc so the other person can live collaborate, but as we know live collaboration is fine in movies but in real life is very very hard to do. Humans are just not build for it.
This isn’t about applications or Sprout, it’s about solving very hard problems.
Yes, it'd be a very complex application, solving some fairly hard CS and CV problems, along with probably needing to invent a whole suite of new UI paradigms.
Actually find a workflow that allows live collaboration to be more efficient than working individually might be hard to capitalise but would be revolutionary and change the world. I’ve never seen Pair programming in XP really work, for instance. It’s certainly not common practice for most workers.
Each solution would be amazing for plant earth, Sprout doesn’t help solve either.
Because some people prefer a pen to a keyboard when trying to mark modifications to a draft?
Surely you can imagine of at least one situation where a pen is a useful input device.
I don't like the lower screen with a projector - then the image is obscured by the shadow your hands make...
I could see some applications taking advantage of this when it comes to working with physical items
In a two screen scenario, I suppose the user would have to image the paper, then composite it digitally. It's an interesting approach although I wonder how often it would be used.
That being said, I think a second screen would be preferable all the same, but it would probably bump the cost significantly.
"It's a unique machine that combines an all-in-one Windows 8 PC with a set of 3D scanning cameras, a giant tactile touchpad and a downward-facing projector (for displaying graphics on said touchpad). The design is built around a concept HP is calling "blended reality" that blends the 3D physical world with our 2D digital one. The obvious target audience is creative types. You know: makers, tinkerers, designers, etc... Rather than the traditional method of control built around mice and keyboards, Sprout focuses on touch and pen input. The 23-inch LCD serves as the primary display, but it's the bottom display, the 20-inch capacitive pad positioned under the camera and projector that serves as the primary point of interaction."