Digitizer Ripples

[wundram]

I'm trying to figure out if this problem is unique to my unit, or a weakness of all unites due to the n-trig digitizer. I'm noticing that I cannot draw a straight line, it has a little of little jigs and jags, the slower I draw the worse it is. As an experiment I tried using a physical straight edge and draw a series of parallel lines very close together, an without drawing too fast (like a second or two per line). I get the result you see below, where you see that all of the ripples in the lines are a regular grid. I assume this lines up with the sensor electrodes in the screen or something like that. Are other people seeing the same problem?

 

[xboxonthego3]

Hmmm.. I tried this in OneNote Desktop. I am able to get fairly straight lines. And I have some bumps but not as often as your lines. I then found some card stock and was basically able to draw a straight line with ease. What program are you using to write with? OneNote App? OneNote Desktop? Something else? Also just out of curiosity how hard do you press down to write while using your pen. Hard to describe that but do you apply any force or do you just glide it across the screen?

 

[jbaylon]

Just curious, can you post a screenshot of the same test, but with each line drawn much more quickly? You said it gets worse if you draw more slowly, and I'm just curious what the variation is.

Generally, I have heard reported that such jitter is inherent in many ntrig pens, and isn't all that shocking. I don't have any personal experience with ntrig or the SP3, so I can't say anything definitively, but I don't think I've seen anyone else complain about the same problem with the SP3, and I'd bet that if everyone experienced that much wiggle, everyone who owns an SP3 would be up in arms.

Maybe calibrating your screen and checking for driver updates, especially from ntrig, would help?

 

[FragMonkey90]

I get this too. When doing a quick swipe along an edge, I get a straight line. When doing a slow swipe, I get the rough lines as seen below:



I suppose it is a pen limitation thing

 

[Atomic Walrus]

N-trig's wobbly lines are one of the three widely known, major (depending on your perspective) issues with the technology:
-High Initial activation force.
-Hover lag.
-Wobbly lines.

The faster you draw the better the lines are, but that's not a great solution depending on your drawing/writing technique. I've actually already seen the wobbly line issue appear in diagrams people have made with the SP3 and posted to forums while trying to address other concerns with the device. It's one of several reasons the SP3 isn't an option for me, but as with the throttling I can see how the average user might not care; Most writing is done with relatively fast strokes.

Actually wobbly lines are kind of a signature of touch input tech in general. Try slowly drawing a line on the SP1/2 with your finger and you'll see it exhibits a similar effect. The n-trig implementation just uses the capacitive touch digitizer with an active stylus, so it's not surprising that they have this issue. Some software-level smoothing (like Manga Studio's stabilization) can help, but that also introduces more latency which is equally undesirable. Apple's capacitive touchscreens show this effect less than many others, but Apple has always been ahead in touch interface tech in terms of accuracy and latency (see: laptop touch pads).

Basically it's trade-offs all around for digitzers, though I still think Wacom has the better technology at the moment. Unfortunately the less bezel you want the worse the edge accuracy gets on Wacom devices (it needs extra digitizer beyond the edge of the screen) so it may not have been a great option either with this particular design's small bezels.

Over time I expect that this issue will get better, but by that I mean in the next version of n-trig's technology. Software/driver updates can only apply smoothing to the lines like I mentioned before, introducing more latency in the process. Of course Anandtech did show that n-trig's latency was lower than Wacom's, so maybe we could us that 25-30ms gap for a bit of driver-level smoothing?

 

[smoheath]

I was just noticing this issue today and it really bothers me. Kind of glad I'm not the only one noticing this. I tend to draw pretty slow which will probably make me quite frustrated. It won't be a problem for writing since I write fairly quickly. The accuracy and precision doesn't seem to be as good as the sp1/2. It's decent, but not great. I'll have to play around with it some more.

Sent from my Surface Pro 3 using Tapatalk