Android multi-touch interference

Question

I'm currently developing an air-hockey simulation for android. For the multiplayer mode I'm tracking two touch events on the screen, which works well as long as the touch points don't get to close.

When the two fingers get to close, android only recognizes one touch event, in the middle of both points.

To make it even worse, android sometimes messes up the IDs after the collision.

I already thought about estimating the next touch points ans assigning IDs manually, does anybody know a better way, or knows about somebody who already fixed this problem programmatically?

NOTE: I'm testing on a Samsung Galaxy S 3

Answer 1

Not necessarily a logical fix to the issue, nevertheless a possible solution to the application:

If I'm not completely mistaken, air-hockey games shouldn't allow opponents to intrude on each others game field. If we assume a thick border cross the center of the screen (in portrait mode), then I wouldn't be allowed to do anything beyond that border, hence there is no point in tracking my finger after it reaches the border line.

Encapsulating your tracked touch events into valid physical locations as described might just help you in ignoring invalid points (given that the physical locations doesn't intersect, that is).

You might also have to keep track of direction of the touch vector: if the vector is stretching from the center of the screen towards "your end" it might be the opponents intruding finger or your own returning finger. In neither case should they affect the hockey puck (perhaps).