XP-Pen Artist Pro 27 Gen 2 touch not recognized as touch on macOS – bug or feature request?

[Nilz]

THE PLATFORM: MacOS
NOMAD APP VERSION: 2.9.29

Hi, I just got an XP-Pen Artist Pro 27 Gen 2 and I’m trying to use it with Nomad on macOS.

What I wanted was basically the same workflow I have on the iPad. Pen for sculpting and touch for moving the camera around.

The pen works fine and touch itself also works on the Mac. In Safari for example I can scroll with two fingers and pinch to zoom without any problems.

In Nomad it seems like the touch input is only recognized as a mouse though. I can rotate the model with one finger, because that basically behaves like a left mouse drag, but two finger pan, pinch zoom and two finger tap for undo are not recognized at all.

I also tried turning “Use Wacom Multi-Touch” on and off, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.

I did some testing on macOS to see what the display is actually sending. The touch part of the Artist Pro shows up as a separate device called eGalaxTouch D5310B, Vendor ID 0x0EEF, Product ID 0xC300, Usage Page 13 and Usage 4, so macOS does see it as a touchscreen/digitizer.

I couldn’t get the individual finger contacts directly, but the gestures themselves definitely arrive in macOS. Two finger movement is coming through as continuous scroll events and pinch zoom comes through as a separate gesture event.

I even made a small bridge just to test it. It converts the two finger scroll events into a middle mouse drag and the pinch gesture into mouse wheel zoom. With that running, two finger pan and pinch zoom actually work in Nomad.

So from what I can tell, the hardware and the XP-Pen driver are sending the gestures, but Nomad doesn’t seem to recognize them as touch input.

There is one separate limitation on the XP-Pen side. Two finger movement seems to be axis locked, so diagonal movement gets interpreted as either horizontal or vertical scrolling instead of proper free 2D movement. I’m pretty sure that part is an XP-Pen driver issue.

My question is mainly whether non-Wacom multi-touch displays are supposed to work natively in Nomad on macOS at the moment.

If they are, this might be a bug. If Nomad currently only supports Wacom multi-touch on desktop, then I guess this would be more of a feature request.

It would be great if the Artist Pro could work more like the iPad version, with the pen for sculpting and touch for orbit, pan and zoom.

I can also provide the logs or test anything if that helps.

[stephomi]

In the gesture menu, does it change something if you change the trackpad option (2 fingers pan/orbit)?

[Nilz]

I tried all of the trackpad options in the gesture menu, but unfortunately it doesn’t really change the behavior.

The strange thing is that two-finger vertical movement actually does something. If I move two fingers up or down on the display, Nomad zooms in and out.

But horizontal two-finger movement does nothing, so I can’t pan the model left/right. Changing the trackpad option between the different 2 finger pan/orbit settings doesn’t seem to affect this.

So Nomad seems to receive at least part of the gesture input from the XP-Pen, but it doesn’t behave like normal multitouch/trackpad input.

Pinch and two-finger rotation also still don’t work natively.

[Nilz]

I did some more testing and I think I found something useful.

I wrote a small Cocoa test app witch chatgpt and the XP-Pen is actually generating native macOS/AppKit gesture events.

Pinch arrives as NSEventTypeMagnify / magnifyWithEvent: with normal began, changed and ended phases.

Two finger rotation arrives as NSEventTypeRotate / rotateWithEvent: with actual rotation values in degrees.

Two finger movement arrives as precise NSEventTypeScrollWheel events with horizontal or vertical scrolling deltas.

So the XP-Pen driver does seem to provide normal macOS gesture events. It isn’t just emulating mouse input.

My Cocoa test app receives magnify and rotate correctly, and Photoshop handles all of these gestures correctly as well.

Nomad receives the scroll events, but doesn’t seem to react to the native magnify/rotate gestures from this device.

Would it be possible that Nomad on macOS currently doesn’t handle magnifyWithEvent: / rotateWithEvent: and relies on the Wacom multitouch API or another input path instead?

Just let me know if you need any other data or want me to test anything else.

[stephomi]

I can add them yes.

For the panning you will need to enable one of the trackpad option though.

[Nilz]

Awesome, thank you!

I already tried the different trackpad options. At the moment horizontal two finger movement still doesn’t pan for me, while vertical two finger movement zooms in and out.

But I’ll test it again once the magnify/rotate support is added and let you know how it behaves.

[plewis]

I’m having pretty much the exact same issues with two finger movements as you describe, but with my Wacom Cintiq 24 Touch. Also, tapping certain buttons, such as the home button or the orientation cube with either the pen or a finger doesn’t register at all, so nothing happens. And any tapping of any buttons with the pen or finger has to be made slightly higher up the border of the button rather than dead on, or it doesn’t register. Wacom just updated their drivers for Mac OS 27, both of which are what I’m now on, but touch gestures on Nomad are no longer working as they did prior to the release of Mac OS 27.

[Nilz]

Hey Stephomi,

I wanted to share something we got working with Nomad on Mac and my XP-Pen Artist Pro 27 Gen 2, because it feels really good to use.

I had wondered whether the XP-Pen touch input could somehow be fed into the Wacom touch support that’s already in Nomad, so I asked Codex to try it. Just to be clear: Codex did all the programming and modifications. I’m not a programmer — I only had the idea and tested how it worked.

According to Codex, it built a small adapter that reads the XP-Pen’s touch contacts and passes them into Nomad through the existing Wacom multitouch interface. Nomad then handles the gestures itself. It also filters out the extra mouse events from the XP-Pen touch driver and gives the pen priority, so resting my hand on the screen doesn’t interfere with sculpting.

From actually using it, it feels very close to Nomad on the iPad: sculpting with the pen, then moving around the model with my fingers. That’s exactly the experience I was hoping for, and it honestly feels amazing on the big display.

It’s currently working with 2.12.1, although Codex has to reapply the adapter after an update because it modifies the local app.

I hope I haven’t overstepped by trying this. I can only pass on what Codex tells me about the technical side, but I thought the result might still be useful to you. I’d be happy to share the code and Codex’s explanation if you’re interested.

[stephomi]

Did you try to change the trackpad option first?

[Nilz]

Hi, yes, I tried that first with Wacom multitouch turned off. It works, but I can either orbit or pan, I can’t combine both movements like I can on the iPad.

Maybe my expectations were a bit different, but that freedom to move around the model like on the iPad was exactly what I was looking for.

Sorry if I’m explaining this in a confusing way! English isn’t my first language, so it’s a little tricky to describe what I mean.

[stephomi]

But it’s not just “pan” vs “orbit”.
You can do the 3 pan/orbit/zoom with both of these mode.

“Pan” works exactly like the iPad:
2 finger to pan, pinch to zoom, and if you release 1 finger then it will orbit.

“Orbit” works differently:
2 finger will orbit, pinch to zoom, and if you release 1 finger then it pan.

At least it works on my MacOS trackpad.

[Nilz]

with the wacom touch and codex

And this is with the pan setting enabled. By the way, I can’t select subtools with my finger either, even though touch selection is enabled in the settings.

And yes, you’re right,the gestures on my trackpad work exactly as you described.