The continuum bends notes by moving your finger all the way across the surface. If you slide from C to E, it stops because you stopped. If you slide from C to E three octaves higher, it slides three octaves higher.
That first video you linked is using a very specific overlay, based on an experimental synth controller that precedes MPE by many years. I don’t know that it used pitch bend in quite this way, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Anyway, yes. Bending to pitches is sort of an abstract challenge if pitches aren’t laid out at a fixed interval along one axis.
There’s a secondary trick in play, where a controller can apply varying amounts of pitch quantization as your finger approaches its destination. When pitches are laid out on two axis, bending calls for a more robust algorithm. Geoshred (on iOS) does thus well, but that’s really the exception.
Your second video, with the piano layout, is indeed more intuitive in the way you’d expect.
