Intel has published a Direct3D 11 demo focused on the Touch API available in Windows 7 and 8. There are 3 kinds of messages for using Touch feature in Windows desktop: WM_GESTURE (simplest API for the basic gestures, available in Win7/Win8), WM_TOUCH (most advanced API for cutomized and complex gestures, available in Win7/Win8) and WM_POINTER (most recent API, only in Win8).
Intel’s demo shows the use of WM_GESTURE and WM_TOUCH messages:
This sample demonstrates how to integrate touch into an application designed for a typical keyboard/mouse paradigm. Functionality has been added for many estures, showing how to map touch interactions to typical mouse interactions along with adding new gesture-only behavior such as two-finger rotate to rotate the truck and two-finger tap to reset it. The sample uses the Windows 7 WM_GESTURE API to provide the touch support and is supported on Windows 7 and Windows 8 with and without a touch screen.
You can download the demo (source code + binaries) here: Touch for Windows Desktop Demo.
Useful links:
Source: Geeks3D forum
Are you going to perform same benchmarks about 3D performance in Win 7 vs Win 8?