16 fingers?
That'll be handy. I assume they'll stop at 21 (or 20 for the women-only version).
Are you ready for an iPad that's curved to fit around your forearm? Or an LCD TV that's as interactive as an iPhone? Displax, an off-shoot of Portuguese internet services company Edigma, reckons it can make these devices possible. It has developed what it claimed is the first multi-touch tech that can be applied to any …
Can track 16 fingers? It is to provide aliens-compatibility?
There are two big drawbacks with large touch screens - finger grease and fatigue (try holding your arms half-stretched out in front of you for any length of time).
The first one will make sure that no one will want this capability on their big LCD TV because even a small greasy spot on the screen is extremely irritating (as anyone who has both a TV and children can attest).
The second will limit the use on big screens to specialised applications - CAD, perhaps, military (combat information centre screens) etc but not the mass market - that's just IMHO.
For small devices though sounds like an interesting development.
This sounds like an excellent thing for a tabletop/worksurface. Especially since the capacitive screen should (I hope) be able to ignore pint glasses, condensation, beer mats etc. while still allowing you to tap on the menu under the touch surface or request information to be displayed in the middle of the table (3D holograms may take a little longer!)
Imagine an architects drawing board, tilted at an angle, but with either a large LCD, or a video projector behind it shining onto slightly frosted glass. Use it for laying out magazines and web pages, sorting photos, pulling up maps etc.
Grease spots, of course if this wasn't a capacitive screen, you could just wear white cotton gloves while working ... but there are ways around that with conductors in the gloves ...
... but for any situation where you don't need a display behind the touch, then finger grease doesn't matter ... e.g. projecting a keyboard or navigation bar beneath an image so you can type in your destination in a kiosk, or required house details in an estate agents ... or tap away at your sleeve keyboard from proper old-skool sci-fi usage (or in a warehouse/restaurant or other place where you might have bare hands (capacitive touchscreen, remember?) and want to be able to capture data/selections without pulling out a pad.