Everyone with eyes in their head can see the bright future of multi-touch displays, but the huge variety of technologies out there makes it hard to place a bet. Will capacitive film rule? Or will it be the IR overlay? Or will Microsoft’s foresight in nurturing the Surface project pay off once they reveal their new, flatter display? Well, there’s one more competitor joining the already-crowded field, and they’re coming in heavy with $18 million in funding.

FlatFrog doesn’t appear to offer any revolutionary features, although they claim to be the only current solution for large-scale displays (40″ and above). This video demonstrates that the display, which is 10cm thick all-inclusive, can handle multiple touches (up to 24, we’re told) and seems reasonably precise and responsive. It’s an in-glass solution they call planar scatter detection — which I’m choosing to understand as detecting interruptions of infrared light suffusing the glass (like the FTIR mouse). The best news is that a FlatFrog device is supposed to be rather cheaper than a Surface, probably because it uses more traditional display tech.