Microsoft patents radial text interface for typing with controllers

Microsoft has patented a new radial interface for typing using a game controller.

Titled “Text Entry Interface”, the patent shows a wheel with three sections. The letters go backward, right to left, and start with capitals in the first row following lower case letters in the second and third. Symbols are spread between.

The patent was filed back in March of this year but it has only just been published to the public. We don’t quite know what the patent is for yet – although it does mention VR, AR.

There may be a need for this, however, especially when it comes to navigating a full keyboard in mixed reality. QWERTY keyboards can be quite cumbersome to use with a controller, although they are easy to get used to.

The patent reads:

The QWERTY layout was designed and optimized for a two-handed, 10 finger input. However, it is inefficient and unnatural for the gaming, VR, AR, MR, and other input modalities (e.g., gamepad interaction, gaze, hand gestures, etc.). These modalities, by nature, are less efficient compared with simultaneous ten-fingers input. They are used to sequentially navigate a cursor or other indicator to desired characters on the QWERTY layout from character to character.

When Microsoft will reveal the intended purpose of this new patent we do not know, but it certainly will be interesting.

Source: Windows Central