There's a lot of this sort of thing showing up in the DJ/VJ space and with visual and audio performance in general.
I think there are definitely strengths and weaknesses to the use of touch-oriented control surfaces. On the negative side, they require you to look at the control surface a lot more often than a setup featuring jog wheels and sliders. But on the positive side, being able to customize the control surface and allow a level of more "analog" control compared to pointing and clicking or typing.
There are a lot of less expensive options that use more common USB interfaces to map hardware controls to software functions which can really help if your only other option is that pro (read: expensive and proprietary) gear you mentioned. Still, you're always limited by the number and layout of pads, buttons, sliders, and dials that can be mapped to software functions.
I've played around a bit with software like TouchDesigner which is meant for creating custom touch interfaces and programming the ways that each control affects parameters in software. It's like a more open and flexible alternative to the old Crestron and similar systems where you could define the control surface in software but were limited to their processors and peripherals.
It's something I don't really do much in my work (since we use those aforementioned Crestron-type systems) but in my spare time, I like playing around with using software-defined interfaces to make interactive audiovisual projects.
I think there are definitely strengths and weaknesses to the use of touch-oriented control surfaces. On the negative side, they require you to look at the control surface a lot more often than a setup featuring jog wheels and sliders. But on the positive side, being able to customize the control surface and allow a level of more "analog" control compared to pointing and clicking or typing.
There are a lot of less expensive options that use more common USB interfaces to map hardware controls to software functions which can really help if your only other option is that pro (read: expensive and proprietary) gear you mentioned. Still, you're always limited by the number and layout of pads, buttons, sliders, and dials that can be mapped to software functions.
I've played around a bit with software like TouchDesigner which is meant for creating custom touch interfaces and programming the ways that each control affects parameters in software. It's like a more open and flexible alternative to the old Crestron and similar systems where you could define the control surface in software but were limited to their processors and peripherals.
It's something I don't really do much in my work (since we use those aforementioned Crestron-type systems) but in my spare time, I like playing around with using software-defined interfaces to make interactive audiovisual projects.