Absolutely not!! Sure you can find a specialist developer for gaming engines like Unity or Unreal to beautifully design programs specially for interactive multi-touch tables. But simple web design features can make touch tables a real joy to work with.
Much of the benefits from touch table interactions is the ease with which a person can intuitively manipulate the imagery laid out in front of them. A great example for anyone, especially on their first use, is to superman fly around to spy above their own house using Google Earth. This is but one example of how insight during data discovery can be quicker with the functionality of intuitive and interactive user controls.
As another example of how standard web development can potentially be of tremendous benefit to NASA scientists and engineers, I would like to highlight some beautiful work carried out by Olaf Frohn, a blogger for the Planetary Society and passionate advocate for maps and infographics. Demos of his infographics are extensive and detailed. They range from the displaying the history of rocket design and engineering to interactive celestial maps.
The design and usage of general web tools are incredibly powerful on touch tables, and seed ideas for further development in this area. So if you have a great project in current development or an idea that you want testing, we want to hear from you!