Stylus for Surface Pro - Calibration

[Nemesis296]

I did some simple Google searching after reading some reviews that the stylus for Surface Pro works much better after calibration. Does anyone know how to do this? I looked at a glance within Settings and nothing jumped out at me. I half-expected there to be a utility of some sort but nothing has presented itself yet. If anyone has ideas, please share, thanks!

 

[bosamar]

Surface Pen | Digital Pen | Handwriting on Surface

 

[magicrobots]

Does this help?

How to Calibrate the Pen on a Tablet PC | eHow.com

I know it's for win7, but some of it might be similar?

 

[krypticide]

Easy. Just go to Search, type "calibrate", then select Settings to search in settings. You'll find it there. Tested this out on a Pro in the store. Calibrating is always something I do.

 

[Nemesis296]

Interesting, calibration seemed to work ok but I can't actually get the contrast and brightness to scale up and down on the display calibration. Any suggestions for that? The pen seems to work better now thanks for the tip.

Maybe I should ask if there is a really good in-depth user guide to using Windows 8 somewhere, I'm much more well-versed in Windows 7 and XP.

 

[dlacaba]

Calibration doesn't seem to work for me. I calibrated mine and at the corners, the cursor shows where I want, but in the middle of the screen it's off by a centimeter. When I delete the calibration data, it's opposite, the corners are off, but the middle of the screen is fine.

Anyone else have issues with their calibration?

 

[machistmo]

Interesting, calibration seemed to work ok but I can't actually get the contrast and brightness to scale up and down on the display calibration. Any suggestions for that? The pen seems to work better now thanks for the tip.

Maybe I should ask if there is a really good in-depth user guide to using Windows 8 somewhere, I'm much more well-versed in Windows 7 and XP.

Windows 8 cheats, Hints and Tips application in the Apps Store is a good place to start.

 

[AdventureCat]

Calibration doesn't seem to work for me. I calibrated mine and at the corners, the cursor shows where I want, but in the middle of the screen it's off by a centimeter. When I delete the calibration data, it's opposite, the corners are off, but the middle of the screen is fine.

Anyone else have issues with their calibration?

Yes! I've been having the exact same problem. For me it's most prominent on the top left corner. When the digitizer is not calibrated the cursor works well in the middle of the screen but as I go farther towards the top left corner, it starts to overtake the pen tip by a few milimeters. it gets worse when the pen is tilted, at 60 degrees from vertical I can actually get the cursor to stray about 1/4th of an inch off towards the corner, and the pen starts clicking things by itself. Using an older stylus pen from my 2006 Fujitsu T4020 the same thing still happens. When the pen is perfectly upright the straying is not very noticeable though.

 

[krypticide]

Wacom's digitizers have always suffered from "edge effects" with the magnetic field, so using the pen at the edge of the screen will be erratic. I would just try to calibrate it so that the pen is accurate in the middle of the screen.

 

[souldier]

I tried to calibrate the pen. It became really inaccurate. So I reset the calibration data and I like to just use everything as is.

 

[vook]

I have been messing around with the calibration and have a few tips:

1. Go into the calibration tool and reset the pen calibration if you have already adjusted it.
2. Start the calibration. The first time you calibrate, there is a more detailed (16-point) "major" calibration. For this part, view the tablet from directly above, and hold the pen straight up-and-down (perpendicular to the screen). Tap all 16 targets.
3. Test the pen. I use one note with line rulings and try to trace the lines, and write directly on the lines.
4. It probably won't be right yet, now go into the calibration tool again. This time there will be only a minor calibration of 4 points. For this calibration, hold the stylus as you naturally would and tap all 4 targets.
5. If there is still weirdness, you can repeat the minor calibration, and hit the targets intentionally off center to compensate. Doing this last part will require some trial and error to get it perfect.

I have improved over the default using this method, but there are still some edge and corner issues. Overall it is better than the default, but if you still have problems the default is not bad. What they really need is a more thorough calibration that will have some targets near the center. Hopefully they will improve the tool. Hope it helps

 

[vook]

Quoted from Dartesian in a different thread:

You might try:


Reset any existing calibration in Tablet PC settings.

Press Win key, type "Run"

Copy and paste the following into the Run window:

tabcal lincal novalidate XGridPts=10,60,110,360,660,960,1260,1560,1860,1910 YGridPts=10,60,170,330,490,650,810,970,1020,1070

Run the command, allow permissions, go through the calibration. This makes for near perfect pen accuracy, but it's never going to be perfect. Corners will still be messed up, but that's how it works, apparently. More X and Y points can be added to the lists for even more precision. Each number just corresponds to the X or Y coordinate of a pixel on the screen.

Source: Improved Pen Accuracy with a 100 Point Calibration Grid : Surface

This fixed all my problems I held the stylus normally and it works perfectly in every part of the screen (minor corner issues seem to be unavoidable)