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3Dwm Updates
Robert Karlsson writes "3Dwm, the Three-dimensional window manager, an open source project at Chalmers Medialab, has just released a new, extensive release of 3Dwm, release 0.2.2 - VNC support, 3D scene graph, big texture splitting, client connection, framework, 3D materials support, testsuite added." miles away from a real desktop, but a great testbed for those ideas that are way ahead of their time.
--Ben
The critique of the idea of a 3D windowmanager doesn't take into account it was built for a computing environment that ISN'T a desktop (the Cube) and secondly, there may very well be some applications of this we aren't yet aware of.
I agree that burying Linux, typically the darling OS of the "why do I need a GUI when I can just grep -v -x | sed -qvf | tar -qt32pir2 : smeek -frfk > kibble.rpm ?????" set, in a 3D window manager seems weird: a total waste of CPU cycles, a criminal waste of memory, and an exponentially bad version of Microsoft Bob (eye candy that actually got in the way).
But who knows? Maybe someone will come up with a way of visualising and representing data that'll only make sense this way.
Time mechanics data? Physics data? Who knows?
Just because I can't think of a reason for this yet doesn't mean one exists.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Yes, the program that she was using was a real program available for real unix systems--you can download it from SGI's web-site.
-rozzin.
Big deal, almost every window managing system ever made has incorporated the dimension of time. Though some implementations are spottier than others. For instance, the dimension of time seemed to crash and freeze quite often on my old windows box, though the other two dimensions seemed mostly unaffected.
I did some work using EMG signals to operate as a system controller. It gets to the point after calibration (which takes many many minutes) that you can control the signals with slight twitches instead of full motion. I think that haptics/gloves are more or less stupid unless it's a system that is designed to interpret natural movement and not a programmed controlling (Move your hand 4" up, then 2" right then 2" left and wiggle your thumb to right click). With EMG reads you can twitch.. slight muscle movements that are barely perceptible that become like second nature. That was the goal, my term working on this we never got a "functional" interface.. the mouse just got real jittery but it was a starting point.
If you are interested in fully interactive controls look at that technology - biocontrol has some cool toys to play with too
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather this existed than not, but wtf, how is this "way ahead of its time"!?!?!?
If the only thing we can vary in our user interfaces is how many dimensions they display, its going to be a long time before we make any inroads into dealing with large amounts of data using arbitrarily generated paradigms that minimize the energy input required to acquire a particular piece of information.
DATA--that is, what computers deal with--DOES NOT require a user interface mapped to the tangible nature of our reality.
People seem obsessed with the question, "Where is it??? How is it arranged?? How is it layed out???" while the question "WHAT is it??" seems to elude them.
Sorry if this post seems angry, but this isn't ahead of its time at all. Our interfaces and computers are BEHIND the times. (assuming objective time... yeah, we're both wrong I guess)
Just my $.02, and yes, I am working on my own interface, but I am only 1 person, so it's going to be awhile.
--
Disgruntled AC
The reaction of /.'ers to some cool (but not immediatly useful) technology is, to say the least, scary. You'd think nobody ever said,
"An x86 UNIX clone? Who needs that? What's the point if we have BSD already? And its not like x86 will ever be fast enough to run UNIX or anything! Why bother?" -Microsoft Weenie circa 1991.
Be open to new ideas or the dynamicism and vision that made computers successful will dissapear. Even if an idea isn't immediatly useful in raising your Q3 fps or running your JAVA project faster, it might still help in the future. The thinking that I've seen on Slashdot lately is probably the same thinking that led Xerox to invent a networked set of GUI computers exchanging email and not capitalize on *ANY* of it!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Just thought I'd point out that one of the main limiting factors of 3Dwm, Berlin, and similar projects becoming more than just toys is that the hardware support just isn't there. (Yes it is, if you're running under X, but that's kind of defeating the purpose, now, isn't it..?) We need a lower-level hardware acceleration protocol. DRI is nice and all, but it's X-only. Unless people start pulling X and it's drivers apart, the ball's never going to get rolling, and we're going to end up with a lot of projects that started off great, but never really went anywhere because normal everyday users couldn't use 'em.
... Well, I'm guessing you can. I still haven't found one, myself.
Several attempts have been made already to rectify this, but it doesn't look like there's been anything major really accomplished. DRI is still where all of the manpower goes, even though projects like GGI/KGI exist.
Hopefully, someone will come out with a standard soon, and we can eliminate this kind of waste of effort. (Well, it's not likely, but we can hope, right..?)
Preferably, such a spec would allow for:
- kernel-level drivers that just pass along commands
- a library where all of the actual code exists, to keep the junk out of the kernel.
Actually, this is what KGI and GGI are.. but you can read about the XFree86 peoples' reasons for not going with their way of doing things for yourself.
(Incidentally, can anyone think of any reasons why this sort of thing ISN'T a good idea..?? I still haven't figured out myself why the XFree86 people are so hesitant to split X like this. Granted, it's an extra pipeline, but then again, that's pretty much what DRI is, too. And considering the added safety of not having a root application playing with kernel registers..)
James
Well something similar has been done with Doom already, so why not Quake?
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
This is something that actually could serve a more general, practical purpose than a 3d game engine: 3D visualization of workspace data. This, in my opinion, is a better justification for a hardware purchase than Q3.
I could tab-switch between the objects on my desk, and they would float 2 feet above it in front of me one at a time...
Seriously, though, this is a good point. If we're going to have a new sort of WM with new dimensions of navigation, then we should ideally have new input devices along with it. The mouse/trackball/whatever is already really inadequate in 2D space (to me)...
I seem to remember some people having gotten a Nintendo Power Glove connected and working with a PC as an input device, though that might not be the best idea unless you could still type, and preferably de/equip it quickly and easily. I remember trying the Power Glove when it first came out, and it wasn't exactly the easiest thing to use (although the argument could be made that neither is a mouse unless you're used to it, which is the same argument I use about Windows vs $OS)
Sotto la panca, la capra crepa
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Or were you trying to be funny?
-----
Klactovedestene!
The 3D graphical file browser seen in Jurassic Park was fsn, a throwaway, proof-of-concept tool developed at SGI. It was real.
Free Hans!
Quake is a great engine for FPS games, but its not nearly dynamic enough to be a useful core for something like this project. Are you going to wait 30 mins to a few hours while a new vis'd BSP data set is generated each time you want to rearrange the layout of your 3D desktop?
John Carmack thoughtfully GPL'ed the Quake engine, why can't this be used for a WM?
Quake is a lean 3d graphics engine, and now with programmers working on it at sourceforge it can only improve. Heck, since you can run it from the command line you can completly bypass X! (Although too much software depends on X now...)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I'll admit that my desktop is crowded with apps and terminals and the extra dimension would give my alot more room to work. At the same time, I constantly loose stuff on my 'real' 3D desktop. I would be really pissed off to search for my email client for 10 minutes only to find it minimized in the far corner behind Mozilla.
Or is there some other "VNC" acronym in play here?
Ummm...The original poster said *Quake* not Quake III.
IIRC the minimum requirement for software-rendered Quake was a P60.
Just for perspective, a web browser requires more than that now days.
What's up with that 'more portable' comment anyways?
It's totally out of context...'More efficient' or 'lighter weight' would have been appropriate,
but 'more portable' makes no sense in a statement about resource usage.
--K
---
There are some things that will create their own market. Of COURSE there's not much you can do with a 3d WM right now, 'cause there hasn't been one on which to do it! I'm sure there are plenty of applications in the dream-stage right now that will benefit greatly from such a setup.
Of course, you have to remember, this could also just be the first step to a real 3d WM. What I mean is, no matter what kind of 3d accelerator you have, no matter what 3d FPS games you play, no matter which 3dWM you use, you're still staring at a flat (or reasonably so anyway) screen in front of your face. Once the technology exists for TRUE holographic (or whatever) 3d display systems, you'll see the REAL benefit of all this. Of course, who's going to construct cool holographic displays before there's a good 3d WM to run on it.....? Get my point? I say more power to ya. Wish I could code like that so I could help ya.
IF you ask me, this could well be the killer app that would put linux and/or other opensource/free software OS' on every desktop. (you do realize we need a killer app for that right?)
Surely a lot of people will just say no! waste of cycles, waste of memory, waste of time!, but i couldn't disagree more. If i could have a 3d view of 6 different programming sessions with a real time representation of runtime results i would. it doesn't matter how much hardware i throw at my current system, i just can't do this today. same for designers, engineers, etc. this would mean a real productivity boost.
which brings me to my point... with the current pointer/icon/double-click/window interface, there isn't much to gain on the productivity side even if you throw in 5 years of moore's law. we're stuck. it's the same thing that happened when the GUI first came along, everyone said it was a waste of resources, but now that we have the hardware we're glad they worked on it nonetheless.
of course we need a good navigation system an efficient way to handle objects, but both exist today: i'm pretty efficient in moving around in quake and homeworld, and i can move objects in 3d pretty easily using truspace or Max...
actually i think we're late in doing this. the hardware to support a totally 3d desktop is here (GTS Ultra, 1GHz CPU, 512MB Ram would probably do the job). it's just a few years before similar hardware is standard configuration for most. If by then linux (or similar) are the only platform that will give you an intuitive 3d environment, lots of people would get it.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
There's a program called fsv that looks similar and works just fine under Linux and Mesa.
-jfedor
This sucker is not a window manager. Not mainly.
This is the 3-D equivalent of X-Windows.
Like X-windows, it allows many programs to run using the same resource. Only, instead of that resource being a 2-D plane, it's a 3D volume.
Take a look at this screenshot. It looks to me like the desk and the screen are being generated by two separate programs, through 3dwm. And it's apparently network-transparent.
What's really new about this seems to be the display of several 3-d programs in the same space, not the notion of a three-dimensional desktop.
It's from Jurassic Park. The girl sits down at a console with a fake 3d window manager and says "This is unix! I know this!"
Actually, it wasn't a fake 3D window manager, it was a real 3D file manager. It is actually named fsn and you can read about it and download it from here.
-jfedor
I'm one of the core developers of 3Dwm, and I've watched with horrid fascination as the webserver was nearly toppled by the tremendous /.-onslaught just recently (have a look at the logs). Now, browsing the comments, I thought I should post and clear up some points.
First of all, yes, 3Dwm is misnamed. 3Dwm is NOT an X11 window manager, it is a user environment (the beginnings of the 3D-equivalent of X11). However, the name has stuck with us since our first appearance on Slashdot, so we don't want to change it.
Secondly, the main platform for 3Dwm is not normal desktop computers (though it does run on desktop systems), but Virtual Reality devices (like this one). In Virtual Reality, you have some amazing 3D interaction possibilities that few existing applications exploit.
As for VNC support, 3Dwm has VNC client (not server) functionality, just as one observant slashdotter pointed out. This allows us, in a network-transparent fashion that is in keeping with the distributed nature of the rest of 3Dwm, to display graphical desktops of any major windowing system (including Windows, X11, and MacOS) in 3D.
There's always skeptics who wonder what you would use a system like this for when 2D is perfectly fine. To that I can only answer that there are, in fact, areas where 3D could help a great deal, mainly in the fields of design, modelling, and information visualization. Why, take a look at this (and this and this) screenshot for a prototype 3D web browser.
Btw, today marks the one-year anniversary of our last slashdotting (I wrote up a short summary of the comments we got last time). Cool, eh? :)
IRIX has come with a *four*-dimensional window manager for years: 4dwm.
wog