Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 will appear on both traditional PCs and tablets. However, as the company gears up to release the operating system’s beta in February, followed by the final version sometime in the second half of 2012, it is increasingly clear that tablet functionality is a prime concern. This marks a sea change from Windows 7, an OS whose interoperability with tablets often felt like an afterthought.
In order to optimise Windows 8’s functionality on tablets, Microsoft’s Windows teams are employing sensors in a variety of ways: not only to adjust screen brightness to compensate for ambient light conditions and rotate the elements on the screen to match the tablet’s orientation, but also to enhance apps.
App enhancement is particularly important, given Microsoft’s desire to transform Windows 8 into a viable tablet competitor to Apple’s iPad. The operating system will feature a mobile-applications store familiar to anyone who is used either Apple’s App Store or Google’s Android Marketplace; Microsoft has spent the past few months encouraging developers to think about creating apps for the platform, arguing that Windows’ built-in audience is potentially a very lucrative one.
Hence, Microsoft’s requirement for its hardware partners that any Windows 8 tablet feature a performance-calibrated combination of gyroscope, three-axis accelerometer and magnetometer. “Combining the input of multiple sensors to produce better overall results is a process we call sensor fusion,” Gear wrote. “The ‘magic’ of sensor fusion is to mathematically combine the data from all three sensors to produce more sophisticated outputs.”
Active sensors also drain power and impact system performance, which led Microsoft to tinker with ways to minimise both. As a result, most sensor fusion data processing occurs at the hardware level, sparing the main CPU from having to burn power and cycles in order to wrestle with algorithms. In addition, Gear added, “We implemented powerful filtering mechanisms that we tied directly to the needs of sensor apps running at any given point of time,” a decision that meant “sensor data is only sent up the stack at the rate that apps need that data, and no faster.”
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Windows 8 support makes it clear that the new OS will support accelerometers, gyro meters, magnetometers, compasses, an inclinometer and device orientation sensors.. But the difference is that with iOS and Android, cloud computing isn’t possible with your Windows computer. However, with a Windows 8 smartphone, this is possible.. Windows 8 Support