3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize

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3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday September 13, 2003 @02:02AM from the new-ways-of-looking-at-old-stuff dept.

MadFarmAnimalz writes "Science Magazine's reporting on the results of the NSF's Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge and the first prize in the Illustrations category has been claimed by the Innolab 3D File Manager, which was developed on linux. Apparently this involves arranging data in a ferris wheel type structure." The data is arranged by its relationship with its content, rather than by its physical position on a hard drive or its file system.

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Re:3D GUIs? by slug359 · 2003-09-13 02:14 · Score: 5, Informative

The Jurassic Park Park GUI is actually a real filemanager for IRIX called FSN.
3D File System Navigator for IRIX 4.0.1+
Another Linux 3D file manager by Krunch · 2003-09-13 02:15 · Score: 5, Informative

I just found another 3D File manager for Linux. From the page:
Quake style controls enable the user to navigate their file system.
Yeah I can now frag my /mnt/windows directory.

--
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
1. Re:Another Linux 3D file manager by Nooface · 2003-09-13 02:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  My site has been collecting 3D UIs for some time.
  
  Here are links to some of the 3DUIs that are available today:
  
  - FSN (pronounced "fusion") produces a cyberspace rendering of a file system. This was the original 3D file system navigator shown in Jurassic Park ("Hey, this is UNIX. I know this!").
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (IRIX)
  
  - FSV is modelled after FSN, but runs on Linux. FSV lays out files and directories in 3D, geometrically representing the file system hierarchy to allow visual overview and analysis.
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Linux)
  
  - Xcruise lets you fly through a filesystem in 3D as if it were interplanetary space. Directories are represented as galaxies, files are represented as planets (whose mass is determined by the file size), and symbolic links are represented as wormholes.
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Linux)
  
  - TDFSB is a 3D filesystem browser for Linux. Take a walk through your filesystem!
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Linux)
  
  - Visual File System is a 3D file system visualizer for Windows. The tool scans a drive selected by the user, and then models the contents of the drive in 3D, based on the directories that are selected in a tree browser on the side of the display.
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Windows)
  
  - 3Dtop is an extension for Windows that represents desktop icons in 3D, letting you to fly around your desktop. You can create coloured spotlights, background and floor textures, "paintings" (bitmaps), clocks, and "flags" that represent shortcuts.
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Windows)
  
  - ROOMS turns a Windows desktop into a 3D world. You can see the world either through a first person perspective or with a map view, and you can populate the world with sounds, animated images, and 3D icons.
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Windows)
  
  - CubicEye organizes windows into a navigable cube. Cubes can be arranged by thematic or functional subject matter, and can be explored either individually or collectively as part of a more comprehensive structure of multiple cubes representing various areas of interest.
  [Screenshot] | [Download] (Windows)
  
  - Vizible WorldViewer distributes windows across the exterior and interior surfaces of spheres, providing the means to visualize and navigate large numbers of web pages and data sources simultaneously.
  [
  
  --
  
  Nooface
  In Search of the Post-PC Interface
Link here... by watzinaneihm · 2003-09-13 02:16 · Score: 4, Informative

When it is an opensource product , it is bad manners not to give a bittorent link with a story posting. while Ican't do that either , here is an actual download page ... Kinda slow

--
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
1. Re:Link here... by broeman · 2003-09-13 02:54 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Just tried it (as he said later, remove the pdf in the link, and download 3dfm, configure, make, make install). It is quite nice done, pretty fast and a nice overview. It looks like most of the features already are done, and there is also preferences ... Since it compiled that easy, I will propose it to Gentoo.
  
  --
  
  (yes this can be compared with sex)
Re:3D Directories for OS X (link update) by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-13 02:18 · Score: 2, Informative

Screenshots for above project are here:

Updated screenshots link
Obligatory FSN/"Jurassic Park" reference and link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-13 02:19 · Score: 1, Informative

Check out FSN, an old 3D file navigator for IRIX.
(As paraphrased from "Jurassic Park": "I know this! This is a Unix system!".)

http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html
Re:That structure looks unwieldly by Krunch · 2003-09-13 02:21 · Score: 3, Informative

I must admit I still have to see a 3D file manager that is easier/faster to use than a "normal" one.

--
No GNU has been Hurd during the making of this comment.
Re:3D GUIs? by jon787 · 2003-09-13 03:15 · Score: 2, Informative

SGI's FSN it only works on IRIX machines though.

A buggy Linux variant: FSV

--
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Re:OT: 3d file manager by amblin · 2003-09-13 03:27 · Score: 2, Informative

People are trying, see Fresco and E17's Evas
Re:Can it be downloaded and taken for a test drive by Anime_Fan · 2003-09-13 03:29 · Score: 5, Informative

It seemed to draw massive CPU, but here it is. Note that the reason it wasn't so responsive was because I was compiling openoffice-ximian in the background. And I was running the XFree nvidia driver, instead of their proprietary... Maybe you'll have better luck.

http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/sf/subcat/in/ in nolab/3dfm-1.0.tar.gz

Credits to: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=78355&cid=6951 573
Re:No screen shots? by Awptimus+Prime · 2003-09-13 03:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Thanks. I went straight to the 'results' site expecting a screen shot there.

For others who didn't find it the first time, here's a decent shot:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/301/5 63 9/1476/F1

Doesn't look very practical, but I'm always negative.
Re:OT: 3d file manager by xanadu-xtroot.com · 2003-09-13 03:39 · Score: 2, Informative

while it seems obvious that the next step is going to be a fully 3d-enabled desktop

What, kinda like 3dwm?

--
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Some 3d file browsers by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-13 03:41 · Score: 1, Informative

http://www.hgb-leipzig.de/~leander/TDFSB/
http:// orbis.sourceforge.net/
Evolution's VFolders -- for file systems by Spoing · 2003-09-13 04:33 · Score: 4, Informative
If you smiled, you probably get it and can skip the next paragraph.
Data has to first be organized in a meaningful way; how it is displayed -- 3D, 2D, a list, ... -- is output not content. Get angry; In 0.21 seconds Google! can find just about anything on the planet, yet the local network or the computer in front of you may take hours of effort and asking people to pull out the one important detail you need at the moment. Personally, I've spent months attempting to get basic documentation on systems I'm working on...not because it doesn't exist, but because nobody knows where it is!
Here are five ways to organize and retrieve data using computers;
1. Manual; you put the data in one place and the computer holds it for you till you need it next.
2. Search; you organize the data and run a query on a specific subset of all the data.
3. Virtual; you run a query and save the specific query off as if it were the real thing (like Evolution's VFolder).
4. Ad-hoc query; Do not spend much time to organize the data but spend more time on the query (like a search engine or Google!'s appliance).
5. Automatic: Do not spend any time organizing or searching; specific data is already organized.
Right now, file systems are handled by manual and basic search tools. (Minor frustration: Why doesn't Windows by default have something like the unix-style 'find -amin or -cmin'? Is it the tools or the file system?)
The next step should be system-wide VFolders and unlimited Ad-hoc queries. To be truely valuable, the results should show up as real and potentially persistant objects not as fake tool-specific or GUI-only results.
Unfortunately, in the name of 'ease of use' the Automatic structure that is tool-specific will probably become dominate in both Windows and MacOS...leading to more data being ignored and eventually lost.
Gnome and KDE developers are moving in the right direction with virtual file systems (VFS, ioslave) though the device concept is specific to the UI or the supporting libraries and has no reality at the file or device level.
--
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
3dfm download and corrections for the source code by erlkonig · 2003-09-13 11:12 · Score: 2, Informative

You can download the source code from http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/opsys/linux/sf/subcat/in/in nolab/3dfm-1.0.tar.gz

Be aware that there are some library checks left out of the configure.ac that will prevent ./configure from finding all the library dependencies. To fix this, add the following lines in configure.ac in the library check section, to wit:

# Checks for libraries. AC_CHECK_LIB([Xi], [XOpenDevice]) AC_CHECK_LIB([Xmu], [XmuLookupStandardColormap]) AC_CHECK_LIB([GL], [glVertex3f]) AC_CHECK_LIB([GLU], [gluOrtho2D]) AC_CHECK_LIB([glut], [glutBitmapCharacter]) AC_CHECK_LIB([m], [cos])

Then run "autoconf" to update the ./configure, and proceed as usual.