Simon Phipps Looks At 'Looking Glass'

CitizenC writes "Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist for Sun Microsystems, describes his experiences using Project Looking Glass, Sun's prototype three-dimensional computer desktop, in this post on his weblog. He mentions a couple of demo videos too."

Comments

This could actually turn out to be pretty cool

[corebreech]

It all depends on finding a terse and intuitive gesture mechanism through which the interface may be navigated. I think my preferred approach would be to present the nominal view of the user's desktop as though it were the interior of a hemisphere, wherein all of the various windows and widgets reside, as though they were affixed to the interior of this sphere. Then, a simple move of the mouse rotates the sphere along the X and Y axis, and when finally something of interest is in view, you either click or use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom in and make it the active window.

Kind of like a big virtual desktop, only you get to peek at what's over the horizon.

From the given picture, it doesn't appear that they're doing this though. It seems as though all of the objects have transformation matrices that are independent of one another, and without any common point of reference, which suggests an elaborate interface.

But as they say, it's a prototype.

We do need to do something about windows. It's been twenty years already. We should be better than this. Is the answer to display them at funky angles? I'm not sure. But it's nice to see that somebody somewhere is trying, even if the whole exercise is about nothing more than moving Sun's price on the market.

Re:3D Control

[shadowcabbit]

A mouse should be enough. Scroll wheels-- or perhaps even a four-directional switch near the scroll wheel-- could be used for additional axis control.

Interface

[dumeinst]

I've always imagined people using something other than a monitor to view a 3d desktop and something other than a mouse to navigate it. Something Like VR glasses that could also track your eye movement, etc.

I don't find a 3d desktop using current interfaces that exciting, nor do I think it would be a boon to productivity. Sure does look purty though

I don't think I want this

[Schlemphfer]

The video's unrunnable already because their server is no doubt getting hammered. But I looked at the sample screen and the write-up and frankly, I don't get it.

The more dimensions you've got, the more places things can get lost -- this applies equally for car keys, lost souls, and music files. One of the beauties of a two dimensional windowing environment is it puts everything right up front where you can see it. A three dimensional environment creates the same problems I've already got in my house; things could be anywhere.

How long will it be before people using this environment spend an hour rummaging around for something they know they left somewhere, but turns out to be hidden behind some other item? It'll be just like today, when you spend two hours looking for you checkbook, wondering if you accidentally threw it out, and finally find it had fallen under your old hiking boots in the closet. I get quite enough 3D at home, thank you. I think I'll pass on using it for my windowing manager.

Add to this that, in the absence of 3D goggles, everything in 3D is going to appear annoyingly false. And while I bet goggles will be amazing for games and certain specific applications, I don't want my day-to-day working environment to gratuitiously throw in an extra dimension I don't need. It's just one more thing to keep track of. And at the risk of sounding like an old man, the sample screen shot looks like something that would give me a massive headache if I had to deal with it all day.

Have you seen the screenshot?

[elyalvarado]

Can you believe it that was OpenOffice.org in the screenshot, and not Sun's own StarOffice.
The way I see it even Sun knows the future is in Opensource, after all it is their advanced software lab using openoffice instead of staroffice.

Signature? why do I need such a silly thing. If It makes me think, I don't want one.