Microsoft has filed a patent application covering a novel way to construct a “vibrotactile” touchscreen — a display that uses technical tricks to convince users they are actually touching the ridges, bumps and textures of a displayed image.

Microsoft proposes using a layer of shape-memory plastic placed above a large touchscreen to distort the surface of the screen when different wavelengths of ultraviolet light strike the pixels from beneath. The plastic becomes hard and protruding when one wavelength of ultraviolet light is transmitted at a pixel, and soft when another wavelength hits it. By modulating these wavelengths, texture can be created, the patent claims.