In Part 1 and Part 2 I focussed on 2D features. This makes a lot of sense for Surface applications, as fundamentally items move in two dimensions, however there are particular scenarios that lend themselves to 3D, one of which I'll describe later in this post. More...

In Part 1 I introduced a generic framework I have produced for a Surface-enabled WPF layout control which has basic physical interactions.

Aswell as demonstrating some additional physical behaviour, I wanted to focus this post on some Surface-specific features. One of several key tenets of Surface development is multidirectional applications. This is often overlooked, even when developing for Surface as the developer typically uses a standard development PC with a vertically-oriented screen. I should say that the radio buttons down either side of the demo aren't part of the framework I describe here - they are merely present to allow me to illustrate different features over several pages - so should be "ignored" when it comes to a discussion about multidirectional UI. More...

I've recently been doing some work on a physics engine sample for Microsoft Surface. The principal purpose of this work was to investigate how adding physical characteristics to virtual items adds to the realism of a Surface experience. The work had three main areas of focus:

• To add physical behaviour to virtual items in a Surface experience
• To combine physical behaviour with 3D WPF templates, textures and lighting sources
• To demonstrate how the object recognition capabilities of Microsoft Surface can be used to interact with these items

In addition to these points, I wanted to provide this functionality within a WPF layout control closely analagous to the Surface ScatterView control. In this way, it should be relatively easy to swap out a ScatterView implementation for a physics-based alternative. More...