3M demonstrates 10-finger multitouch at CeBIT

Though there are bigger multitouch screens out there -- and ones that can support more simultaneous touch points -- 3M's brand new C3266PW is the company's largest, said to be suited for industrial-strength installations with multiple simultaneous users (the company is quick to note that the ultra-wide 178-degree viewing angle along both axes is great for that, since folks can crowd around and start touching). They demoed the new unit here at CeBIT in two ways: three of them in a row on a "cascade table" with one high, one slanted, and one low, and another separate unit mounted on a solo kiosk at roughly eye level. The table's set up as a multi-display Windows box running a tech demo with maps, images, and videos that can be flicked between screens, pinched, and zoomed; the kiosk, meanwhile, is running a rudimentary flight simulator designed to demonstrate all ten points of multitouch capability at once with a finger-based aircraft control scheme (not the way you'd really design a game, but a good demo nonetheless).