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Sun to GPL Project Looking Glass
elleomea writes "According to The Register, Sun is releasing Project Looking Glass, their new GNU/Linux based 3D window managing system, under the GPL during their JavaOne conference (beginning today)." The screenshots of Looking Glass make it out to be very pretty. I'm not sure if I have the spare CPU cycles to power such an environment, but it's sure nice to drool over.
I'll believe it when I see it. And BTW, what about Java?
Well, if there is any code for hardware acceleration, that would be very nice to have in a linux GUI, and it could be ported to GNOME and KDE.
Josh
Here's hoping it's as functional as it is good looking, or it is all for naught.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Game over. Insert Coin to Play.
Stick Men
Yes, it is very nice looking, but how does it improve my interactions with the computer? The whole tilted window thing looks good but i dont think it'll be a huge bonus when it comes time to actually use it... I'd rather use those CPU cycles for something worthwhile i think...
drunk chemists
I saw a demo, and kept thinking when is the linux port. So by open sourcing it maybe it can come to linux sooner!
NO ONE will have the cycles to run this. Ever.
How having multiple Mozilla windows open and at 90 degrees horizontal is somehow more efficient than having multiple tabs open?!? I mean I really don't see how this is supposed to improve efficiency at all.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It looks like a "pretty" big waste of time and screen real estate. The last screenshot labelled "organize" is pretty damn ugly. It reminds me of CDE turned on its side.
I prefer to keep my desktop a clean slate. The taskbar and a single row of icons. The second I need more than one row I have to clean up. This would make my desktop a disaster area.
While the idea is a cool one I'd prefer to keep it clean and keep it fast. I have a feeling that this project will do neither.
Is this some sort of high-concept System Shock 3?
Where's SHODAN? Where are my cybernetic zombies?
Looks like they dumbed down the interface so they could an X-Box port as well.
Shame shame.
I guess my subject pretty much expresses my enthusiasm. It's nice to see this coming from Sun. Looking Glass looked really cool, but I was always concerned that they wouldn't open it. Now with this news, it should allow desktop developers to try new things.
Pretty cool stuff.
Jason Lotito
"This is a UNIX system! I know this..."
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I mean, come on, everyone *want's* the latest and greatest, it's just those of us who can't justify it that don't actually go out and buy them :-)
:-)
:-(
Personally I've stuck with a Matrox G450 for what seems like the longest time simply because it was the one of the first (and the best) at dual monitor display, and I *like* that - 3200x1600 displays are really nice when you've lots of editor windows open
Ah well, if it does take off, guess I'll be getting an nVidea or ATI card, which means a PCI-X motherboard, might as well throw in an Athlon-64 (maybe FX), and I'll want PC3200 RAM. Damn that's an expensive desktop
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
No, it still sucks and is useless no matter what platform it's for
It will suck even more if MS does it
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
And think in the nice animations and graphic effect of MacOSX, if they are happy with it, maybe will not be so bad under Linux.
Haven't we learned yet that these "real world" interfaces, while pretty, don't really help the usability of an app, ultimately leading to consumer frustration?
You can't see past the status quo, much like the rest of the Great Unwashed. That's why the world is stuck on cruft like Windows. Think for a minute, if you dare, about what might be possible with this if it were to be adopted and developed by a small community of people.
Instead of wasting time of super cool, awesome 3D spinning, rotating and flipping translucent windows with shadows, how about establishing some GUI standards for Linux to make it easier to use for the grandmas and grandpas of the world. No amount of Linux screen real estate bling bling is going to make it a better OS for the common user.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
We should all give Sun a big round of applause for this one!
...Well, the ability to annotate arbitrary windows might be useful, as long as the sesison management was good enough, but the "rotate the window away" thing seems just as useful as shading windows on any current window manager - not very useful, as you always end up with a bunch of shaded title bars underneath some new windows.
I don't have enough screen real estate to devote half of it to things I'm not currently using.
good way to get attention aye :)
No one was confused or even thinking about Looking Glass Games. Thanks for wasting our time with a pointless comment though.
Very true. I was going to post about whether eyecandy was really what the Linux Desktop needs right now. I mean, I embrace it as another choice that you can use, and sure, it's nice to have something that looks different, but will it actually change any ways in terms of usability? The reason why I minimize windows is so that I have more desktop real estate; if it becomes a nice 3d-ed perspective window, it's not really doing much. I applaud Sun for GPLing this. I wonder where this project will go.
I'm not sure if I have the spare CPU cycles to power such an environment, but it's sure nice to drool over.
Borrow some from neighbor.
Looking glass and Nvidia SLI dual GF6800 video cards...I can see where this is heading!
Evolution of Language Through The Ages: 6000 BC : ungh, grrf, booga 2000 AD : grep, awk, sed
...I'll be waiting for psyonic monkeys that sound like chimps to start throwing brainwaves at me from behind the browser window.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
it's interesting in that "it works a bit like [FILL IN FAVORITE SCIFI FILM OR BOOK], but pretty? sorry those screen shots look like windows 3.1 texture maps on simple 3D polygons and then beat with the fugly stick.
Or for that matter, the band Looking Glass, which scored a single hit in the early 1970s with "Brandy"
The sailors say Brandy, you're a fine girl, what a good wife you would be...
Unknown host pong.
Just from looking at the screenshots, I see zero reasons why this would be better then a traditional 2d desktop. In alot of ways, its inferior to a normal desktop, not to mention the wasted cycles spent rendering the damned thing.
... does it really help you know what your document is, be seeing some strangely distorted side view of it? Perhaps things like 3d navigation could be handy... the ability to not only scroll up and down, but in and out... or to link relevant data not only in a tree based structure ( like the start menu ), but also group information based on relationships to other information, with perspective aswell.
Really, to take advantage of 3d desktops, we either need full immersive 3d ( alah, the 3d headsets, or perhaps holographic displays ), or the need to take a different perspective on computing then todays window'd concept. Really, what is the value of rotating a windowed view
But as it stands, just texturing an existing window onto a 3d billboard... really, whats the point? It will be interesting to see how microsoft exploits the 3rd dimension, given that avalon requires a 3d gpu to run. Hopefully, they do it better then SUN does. If I recall, there was an alternate windows manager called the Cube, that worked similar to this... what ever happenned to it?
Microsoft demoed something almost identical in 1998, and that's exactly what happened on Slashdot.
They aren't quite rotated 90 degrees.
I think the slight preview is kinda neat. It only takes a small amount of screen real estate, but looks like the window.
This should make it easier for someone to remember what these half minimized windows are.
Myself I'll stick to shading windows, but I think this could be useful.
Which everybody seems to forget its more then a GUI, but a framework to develop 3D aplications as well.
So yes, it's a waste of cycles as a just another desktop, but plenty apps can benefit from a common 3D interface.
That is what is interesting about looking glass.
What's the difference between this and using a task bar? I mean, why waste the CPU to tilt a window?
;)
Probably still has issues with true-window-transparency..
It seems that most of the value in this windowing is the wya you can move stuff out of the way. How is this technique more effective than say minimizing? It looks really neat, but I'm not convinced that it's actually an improvement.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I find it funny that this was modded offtopic. Microsoft is continually bashed for the enhancements it makes to its GUI. I'm always hearing complaining about sliding/fading windows etc making the code bloated, or slowing things down, or soaking up CPU cycles.
Now something comes out for linux that is seriously just eye candy and it's suddenly the next big thing. For god sakes people at least TRY to be objective.
Their last round of layoffs, their insecurities with regards to Linux. Had they spent all those resources making decent products instead of fighting Microsoft, people would still have a reason to buy Sun products.
Do you remember how well engineered their workstations used to be? Their new low end stuff sucks ass. Sparc doesn't cut it anymore, either, and now that commodity 64bit desktops are possible, say bye bye to the CAE/CAD people too.
Murk
The use of transparent windows seems to be standard now, but would it be possible to create an OpenGL context which allowed the application to specify a transparent background color, which allow the current desktop to be seen underneath?Combine this with the "no window frames" option of X-windows, and some really cool visualisations could be written.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyone else unable to properly view the demostration screen shot series (start/stop) under Firefox 0.9 for Windows?
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
Running a render farm? Calculating protein in DNA strands? If you are, you are already most likely running a streamlined optomized setup, so you wouldn't even consider this....but for the average schmuck....?
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
First, people say this every damned time an improvement is made to a GUI. If anybody listened, we'd all still be using CLI exclusively. Second, most people using their 3 GHz machine for office work most certainly DO have the spare cycles.
Additionally, it looks like the improvements will really make a usability difference in how we interact with the UI. Keeping notes on an application window, tilting the windows to keep most of the perceptual information (btw, using foreshortening to effectively compress windows is a great idea), making multiple desktops more perceptual, etc are all good ideas that will help people interact more intelligently with their programs.
I think this is a great start, and with some tightening and more well-implemented ideas, I can't wait to see this in a mainstream OS.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
slashthink strikes again?
i think its pretty cool. I probably wouldnt use it, but i think gnome takes too many cpu cycles. still wicked cool though.
To all this people blaring that it is pretty useless at the moment: Yes it is, but that doesn't mean that nothing usefull can come from it. This is a technology that allows some awsome stuff and Sun is putting it under the gpl. Now all the Open Source developers can take this and build something usefull with this thechnology.
This is great news and I'm really looking forward to the things to come.
i cant wait to see my spreadsheets and word processor use gb's of RAM, does this interface increase my typing skills ? do my accounts automatically ? how will it increase my workers productivity ?
Looking Glass screenshots are fun to drool over and all I guess, but IMHO the way forward is not adding further complexity to the binary-graphics desktop.
Rather, it's SVG. XML-based vector graphics allow developers to parse and manipulate graphics the way you would a web page or a config file. They also make remoting applications even easier than with a binary protocol like X. What does this mean for end users? Not a whole terrible lot on the surface. But it does make it easier for developers to apply consistent look and feel with widely-known text munging tools and also make rich networked applications; so in the end there's a significant but non-apparent user benefit.
Of course the nature of SVG is such that although it looks extremely crisp and neat, it's basically 2D. I think the tradeoff is worth it.
If you're going to go for the extra overhead anyways, SVG is a much bigger win than 2D any day.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Now think about that. Picture being able to have email in the background and front windows go opaque when and email arrives. You would not have to change windows to see the subject line and no desktop space is used.
Adding 3D would make this even more pronounced.
Cool idea, if you have the spare power and time to setup.
Yawn. Is this as good as it gets? New interfaces that just steal cpu time?
So just how hard is it to manipulate a 3D environment on a 2D display with a 2D input device? I've had minor problems rotating objects in apps like Poser. I can only imagine how difficult some of this could be for people with impaired movement.
Not having had the opportunity to actually try this interface, I was wondering if it take a lot of practice to get good at rotating windows and moving the object around the environment.
How does the os know that I want to move an object up along the y axis instead of "back" along the z axis?
For the most part, the only one in the community who actually believes Sun is in the same ranks as MS and SCO is Pamela Jones. But a zealot of zealot's isn't a representation of the community. Yes, Sun wants to make money. That doesn't make them evil. They have given back a lot and anyone who thinks otherwise is seriously misguided.
Among a few other minor infelicities:
SVG is a much bigger win than 2D any day.
should read "...than 3D..."
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
You must be new here
/.
This is
.. this might not be usefull to the majority of us but at least it will ease the interface design of the operative systems used in movies ... they seem to like that 3d stuff (ex: 3d hacking, 3d viruses, 3d Halle Berry... etc etc)
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
At last, the ability to sort through a whole pile of CD's, just to get to the song I wanted to play.
Oh, wait. That sucks, doesn't it? One of the good things about using my computer is that I can view things like that in a sorted list. Bling bling, indeed.
why is it that this reminds me of the MSIE project ChromeEffects?
if you haven't heard of it, that's because it was shelved in alpha
Sweet!!! I got my first "you must be new here" post.
(I've already been modded Troll today, so call this redundant)
What's the point of make a '3-d' desktop environment, when it's displayed on a 2-d monitor?
Untill we get some type of projected display, or headsey unit, or what have you, it's NOT 3-D... it's 2-d displayed to 'look 3-d'...
Watch TV sometime, you'll see how hard it is to TRULY display 3-d (and, no Tv's aren't 3-d either)
Besides, if it were truly 3-d desktop/filemanager environment, how am I going to be able to move my mouse in the 3rd dimension?
using a space orb? http://www.makeitsimple.com/reviews/space_orb/
sheesh....
Sun: Overpowered applications for underpowered hardware.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
theres a massive difference, with MS you would have no choice , with *nix systems you wouldn't be forced into using it, it would just be a cool show off go faster stripe thats removed after a few days.
mods on crack again... serious outbreak of the old "if microsoft windows doesn't have it then there's no point in it" type of comment to anything positively different in the way of UIs. The only reason we're not seeing any posts berating the use of multiple desktops with pagers these days is because Microsoft is bringing them finally to the market in the form of Longhorn... after having had them hidden away for a long time now as an unnofficial tweakUI app. The moaners have got to go with the flow now as it's been decided for them that multiple desktops are now in... and I've just wasted my ability to moderate any posts in this topic...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Looking Glass was a pretty serious project, before the Air Force passed it on to the Navy. I hope Sun doesn't screw it up...
Proverbs 21:19
Does anyone think that a window manager like this could revive the touchscreen market?
Congradulations on the first post with a valid argument for why this is different that what microsoft does.
theres a massive difference, with MS you would have no choice , with *nix systems you wouldn't be forced into using it, it would just be a cool show off go faster stripe thats removed after a few days.
Actually, you're lying through your teeth about that - or are just plain ignorant.
You can turn off ALL of the flashy effects on Windows. See this web page for details.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I'm still using the same basic UI I was using 20 years ago. Ten years ago I started using a task bar, but beyond that it hasn't really changed. The basic elements of the GUI's I've seen (which I know is rather limited) has been desktops icons and mixes of one or more taskbar, or taskbar menus. 3d is nice eye candy, but when I'm working its all about real estate and end up with most windows maximized or tiled (for terminal window editing) It'd be nice to see a revolutionary way of organizing my information and work besides 5 workspaces and my treed file systems, but I don't think this is it.
Both are very useful for displaying more information. WIth Looking Glass, you see more than a tab: you get to see what's happening in the windows.
Try it with dashboard reporting screens, shared whiteboards, even video streams. You'll be impressed.
when "Jurassic Park" first came out the ... ...
company I worked for at the time had a
spike in interest in the SGI systems we
were selling
until they saw the price tag
SGI still makes some of the finest unix
boxes/racks around. But like the Jurassic
creatures, they are dying off. Their
management kept making big mistakes: spinning
off MIPS for small change, buying and then
selling Cray Research, etc. For a company
that was at the bleeding edge of the internet,
their market timing has since then been fsckd.
Too bad, really.
Look, I don't know if anything useful will ever come of Looking Glass, but I think it's great that it exists and that Sun is opening the source under the GPL. They're trying to do something a little bit different. It might be too CPU intensive to be useful right now, but it might offer some cool code to bolster another open source project or act as the foundation for a better implementation of a 3D desktop. The important thing is that they're being creaive and they're sharing their work with the rest of us.
Project Looking Glass appears to be one of the best things to come out of Sun since Java. And opening it up to more Linux support is the only way its going to get to a stable release anytime soon. I've been looking forward to a beta of it for some time now. I think its one of those things that will make Linux on the desktop "as kewl as OS X" instead of just a Windows replacement. But with Sun's wishy-washy Linux/GPL embracings, open-sourcing it is the only way it will take off. At least this is likely to mean CVS build alphas/betas soon. I can only hope that its Window Manager agnostic since their demo of it was Gnome based. Hopefully opensourcing it will make equally powerful for Gnome and KDE. Then again, if its Gnome only, I might actually switch from KDE. :)
An Annonymous Coward wrote this earlier: ...sorry those screen shots look like windows 3.1 texture maps on simple 3D polygons and then beat with the fugly stick.
:)
I would have nested this, but then nobody would see it because of the AC factor
It does need to be mentioned that this looks like a quite effort to apply 2D windows to a flat plane rendered in 3D. 3D could possibly look quite nice on the desktop. Hopefully soon, graphical artists will figure out how to make widgets that look good in 3D (while being 3D themselves). If it's 3D, it only makes sense that the things you click on have some dimension to them.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I'm liking this. I don't know why everyone is being so critical of something they don't have to use. Sure, it's eye-candy. Big deal. I'd imagine that the first graphical interface was put down by a lot of people simply because "You don't need it." *remembers a scene from Pirates of Silicon Valley where a bunch of Xerox execs put down the mouse*
Well sure, we don't *need* it, but who knows. There may be some applications where it actually comes in handy. Like a Rubik's Cube application for instance. There are probably dozens of applications this could be used for and noone has thought of them yet.
Ok, so it's a little pointless now, but who knows what it could develop into. Plus, being GPL'd, the OSS community can tinker with it and see what they can get out of it.
Here's my favorite quote:
This is a still photo of the Stanford University campus. Just imagine what is possible if it were live video.
They are in dreamland here. There is no way that people are going to accept moving images displayed on a video display. This is just too radical a concept and could never catch on. Obviously they realize this are starting small by only teasing us with the possibiliy of moving images of a building. Luckily, buildings don't move very quickly so people won't get sensory overload from this. A very wise move on their part.
looks pretty. can't imagine it being any better than a good ole 2-D desktop.
I'm glad they've released it. I don't think they've yet fully tapped the 3rd dimension and I myself am not sure how to use it to bring about more than just eye candy and actually improve usabilty but I'm looking forward to seeing what the open source community can come up with to make it more compelling.
Perhaps the people working on the Open Croquet project might have some useful input (check in the download section for the pdf documentation).
-bullshit, you're soaking in it!
You can find a similar one named Task Gallery that MS Research has been working on
;) )
They atleast have done a good job saying
NOTE: This web site is only meant to support the video. Watching the video is the best way to get a feel for this novel user-interface.
You can't do justice to something in 3d with screenshots.
Sun seems to have lost the point and placed just screenshots in their site ( you can find the links for the videos a few posts above this though )
Inspite of all the efforts going into such things, how effective do you think would such technologies be with our current input devices like the keyboard and mice and output devices like the monitors?
However these I guess would be the standard interfaces once we jump into the *real* 3d world in the future. (Proof: The Virtual Control room of Zion in the Matrix Reloaded
I'll stay with my windowmaker till that time
I know this, it looks like Unix
(sic)
Reading through the posts I see numerous people complaining about how this is pointless and a waste of cpu cycles and has no benefits over a traditional 2D desktop.
You are failing to realize that by open sourcing this project, sun can harness the creativity of the open source community to improve this project and make it into something you would actually want to use on a daily basis instead of just a gimmick to show off to your friends.
This is a step in the right direction and I am excited that they are releasing this.
Because one cmd line a much better than 15 mouse clicks !
Visit Tutorials & guides collection
Heck yeah! Depending on how many people have this "dynamic desktop" one could break the world record for most people mooned at once! Also what if you saw someone getting mugged on your desktop and calling 911? "Well, I am not sure exactly where the mugging is happening, but I can see it on my computer desktop...."
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
They said GPL, not BSD.
Get over it.
As eye candy goes, this one has appeal but it still smacks of the "build it and they will come" methodology. Many mainstream vendors didn't survive during the 90's with that gimmick and I'm not certain that this will either.
Besides, it's an improvement on OS X or a direct rip-off, can't tell which yet. I'd prefer that *nix GUI innovate rather than compete for share, IMHO. The market will decide one way or the other.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
I have worked with Looking glass, the Amazing 3D Interface, on my tablet PC. My Tablet PC only has 256 mgb of RAM. My resources are not over run, using the SUN Java Destop, and the interface is quite easy to use.
I find that every loads quite fast, including all presentations within Staroffice, loading movies, etc. I like the Interface very much!!! Glad they are making the Move to GPL
So you have no clue what you are talking about. This might change your life, you never know.
"Nothing new", says open source community
I don't know what to make of all the hype surrounding this 3D desktop. Others have gone before it and died, e.g. the 3dwm project.
Rotating (flat) windows mainly just shrinks them, which I think is a good idea, but we don't need 3D for that. Just put all the shrunk windows at the edge of the screen, and let the user bring them forward by clicking (incidentally, this closesly resembles how the OS X window manager works).
As for their example of the CDs, yeah, nice, but can it beat a straight, sorted list? With a search facility?
The problem with 3D on the desktop is very simple: the display is flat. Therefore, objects that are to the front will occlude objects that are more in the back. I manage to avoid that problem by having a display large enough to avoid overlapping windows. Bringing 3D to the desktop is going to introduce the problems of the Real World into computers. I think it's a Bad Thing.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Joe Sixpack doesn't know what a CPU cycle is, but he knows that he likes the 3D window when he browses this computer at Wal-Mart. Bells and whistles draw a customer in.
I can see how this could have the potential to boost their desktop sales. Any desktop sold based on Linux is a good thing./P
I bought a P-I 200Mhz (without MMX) Sony "90" desktop. It had an add-on desktop called "Viao" I think - layed on top of Win95. It had "tilt-away" windows similar to what I'm conceptulizing this GUI to have.
Similarities? Did Sun take someone elses idea and improve it?
...yup...
This ain't just someone's Ph.D project.
While thinking philosophically, we see problems in places where there are none. -Wittgenstein
Turning it off doesn't make the OS any less bloated.
Thanks. Now I have that shit stuck in my head.
Yet somehow when I try to kill "explorer.exe" it keeps popping back up! Got any fixes for that?
Try to remain within the scope of the discussion. It may not be less bloated, but it's not soaking up CPU cycles if the code isn't being ran.
Whatever happened to NeWS?
Looking Glass is, obviously, going to require panoramic backgrounds. The screenshots show a forest, some mountains, and what appears to be the campus of Stanford. Something is seriously amiss here, as both Scott McNealy and Bill Joy went to Berkeley. They did just cut a high profile deal with Microsoft, though, and there is a William H. Gates computer science building at Stanford. Coincidence? What about the fact that they have a backdrop of a private university in a product whose source code they are about to make public, in the meantime excluding Sun's public (both in the sense of Berkeley itself and the BSD, back when Sun's OS was SunOS) roots. Something strange is definately afoot.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
...with the 3rd dimension, now solitaire cards will feel much better when I play with them. The 2d cards just didn't feel right, especially when shuffling. Of course this will result in me wasting more of the 4th dimension (if that's what you consider time to be anyway)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
... is this don't turn out into something like a 3D Windows BOB
...but really, I dont see how it improves usability at all.
The video just confirmed my suspicions.
I mean really, rotating your windows upside down does anything for usability?
How does sticking notes to the back of windows help usability at all, when you can't see them without flipping each window around? How is this better than normal sticky/postitnotes applications?
There's still as much clutter as normal desktops -- actually more, the minimized windows take up more screen real estate than traditional minimized windows and they dont really convey any more information.
If there's anything truly practical and innovative about Sun's LG, its the use of opengl in the UI. Now that has some serious applications. The rest is just fluff.
Anyway, LG is very cute and all, but I think i'll pass.
In my cube, I am surrounded by a ring of desktop surfaces, filing cabinets, bookcases, drawers, and bulletin/white-boards. I have learned to use them to great efficiency to display things that are critical right in front of me, push less critical things to the side, but not out of site, and index the rest in files for easy access. Although there will likely be a mix of useful features and eye-candy, I'm sure there will be some aspects that will be a great fit to my organizational scheme.
Link for SS1 audio files front page is here. Enjoy!
P.S. It's a pity that SS3 isn't on the horizon, but we can dream though! (Unless Eidos wants to give Warren a whole load of cash to do it).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
It contains applications that are mostly file system representations but interesting nonetheless.
Nooface - 3D UIsTransparency. We can do it today with various 2d windowing environments. But I was trying to figure out today what it allows you to do. I have no idea.
:-)
:-) I get the feeling that the threedee interface is a marketing tool rather than a tool to improve productivity. But maybe I just haven't thought of it yet -- what's the killer app for an interface like this?
I agree that transparent windows look cool -- but how does this translate into usability? It doesn't seem to; at least, not that I can think of.
When I have a transparent window, it enables me to place it over another window and see both at once. Except that, from experience, you can't really see both at once -- if there's information on both of the windows, they are confused together, and you can't really read either one. The only way you get transparency to be useful is if one of the windows has a significant amount of open space in a section of it so that the other window can be read with a bland background. But if this is true then the application has been designed incorrectly -- it wastes a lot of space. Any situation I can think of where transparent windows would be useful, I realize that one application or another had a misdesigned UI instead. I challenge a counterexample.
Okay, what else do you get from a 3D desktop? Fast and precise scaling of individual windows and other widgets. Well, Mac OS X does this already, and it looks really great, in 2d with hardware. This isn't really a 3d thing, but it is incredibly useful, and a convenient side benefit.
Window flipping, rotating, etc.: It depends on how many things you can do with this. I doubt that most people will actually want/need to rotate their windows under normal circumstances. Rotating something to minimize it by its title is pretty much exactly the same as simply minimizing it to a taskbar or shading it, in whatever WM you are using. I don't know about taking notes on the back of a window, considering that you just hid the information you wanted to take notes about! But putting a "sticky" on a window, writing on it, and having it actually MOVE with the window would be a great feature -- if you shrink the window, the sticky shrinks with it, and if you rotate it, you can see that it has a note hanging off it - in 3D, so you can more easily identify windows when their sides are facing you. Also, the thickness of the windows in the screenshots bugs me -- I always visualized windows as paper-thin.
Perspective -- if the user is simply a camera in a world, should there be "sticky" icons that rotate and move with you? What about window maximization? I think Tog and the Mac people have made it sufficiently clear that the edges and corners of a screen are extremely easy to acquire for mouse users. Simply taking the "camera in a world" perspective is probably wrong, then. IMO, it is very important to have some sort of sticky widgets around the edges. Where do you draw the line? Do you have maximization? What happens when you try to pan while a window is maximized? Does a user have to learn about the fact that the environment is 3D to be able to use it? (can you still be a 2d environment). Is it possible to get "lost" in a 3d world?
I think people often have trouble visualizing a 3d interface. Can you interact with something which is "behind" the frontmost window? Is it a regular mouse cursor or some other "manipulator"? If you can move the cursor in threespace, how do you do that (maybe a different hardware sensor on the mouse)? How do you indicate to the user what "layer" his cursor is at?
I have more concerns right now but I should get back to work.
Bring it on,
Lincoln
Does this mean we might see a System Shock 3?
...NVidia had a boom in their stock price!
I don't see too many posts praising this move.. I like the GPL, and am glad they would GPL another piece of software, but I personally don't care too much about it. I'm sure many other people like myself feel the same way.
It's becoming quite common for some people like yourself to scream "LOOK A THE HYPOCRACY!" as soon as two Linux people say something that contradicts something two totally different Linux people said a month ago.
The "Linux Community" is a diverse lot. Don't be so fast to call them hypocrites.
And if you don't know why some people would denounce Microsoft for creating anything less than stellar, innovative software with their market dominance and bank account, you may want to find another site to post at..
Why do I keep typing pythong?
It really looks like Sun is trying to solve the same problem Apple recognized when developing Expose. But Sun's version is less elegant and harder to use (and way too caught up in physical metaphors). Expose does such a great job of letting you see exactly what apps are runnings, and easily navigating among them. Sun's Looking Glass is similar to a degree, but generally less easy to figure out at a glance, and probably harder to work with in terms of keystrokes/mouse gestures.
Buy Text Processing in Python
It's a 3D window managing system
I think most of it looks nice, but it is still just a window manager, with windows that have 2D content. The windows themselves don't have any GUI improvements over older window managers. I think it would be more interesting if it somehow managed 3D content; for example, somehow representing filesystem navigation in 3D. Or if there's a window containing 3D rendering, the objects within that window would also rotate along with the window. It seems like overkill to to have such a fancy window manager. It would require significant hardware resources, depriving running programs of their use. A simpler window manager on a simpler hardware setup could run programs just as well. What I'd like to see is an actual 3D GUI.
I fail to understand why there's suddenly this big kick to move desktops into 3D. (Microsoft's Avalon project is an effort along the same lines as LookingGlass, isn't it?) As far as I can tell, this is all just some kind of ill-thought-out attempt to invent the newest revolution in computing or something. But really, it just seems like a glitzy gimmick with no functional benefit that I can imagine. There's a reason why 2D paper has been useful for thousands of years. It's space efficient and the vast bulk of information encoding schemes that we have devised are 2D in nature... The written word and the painted image convey the great bulk of information we need to exchange with one another in a concise and easily reviewable manner. Audio-visual info is easily conveyed on a 2D screen as well. We don't write books on layered cubes because that's just an unecessarily complex form. Virtual 3D immersion might be useful in "face-to-face" social interactions perhaps, but that added socio-emotional dimension is completely unecessary most of the time when the goal is simply the concise transfer of information. Hyperlinking is all the extra dimensionality we need really to convey topic forking between nuggets of 2D information. Hyperlinking works just fine in a 2D GUI. Looking at the screenshots I wonder what kind of functionality do you get out of having a page that swivels like a stone tablet or something? You get a REALLY BIG icon, that's what. You can't really read the page while it's tilted and it takes up a heck of a lot more space than a plain old condensed 2D icon. You could use a zoomed-out image for a 2D icon if you wanted to keep that preview function that those tilted tablets have and you'd save a lot of screenspace that way too. It all just seems like silly gimmickery to me. Can anyone point out any good functional reasons for trying to force a paradigm shift to a 3D user interface? bif
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bark less
...Is that you gain nothing, functionally, by adding an extra dimension; you gain nothing by working with a collection of predominantly 2D objects in a 3D space.
If you take an honest look at it, and look past the whoop-de-doo factor of seeing objects handled in a 3D space, you'll realize that there's nothing to be gained by handling 2D objects in 3D space. It just looks pretty; in day-to-day use, it's clumsy as hell.
A document, at it's core, is a 2D object. I, as a user, gain nothing by being able to look at it from an obtuse angle, or at a distance, or any other angle a 3D environment would introduce. A 2D document best viewed head-on, so you can view it and operate on it clearly. Now, mind you, thats not to say "all 3D interfaces are bad", but for chrissake, use the right tool for the job.
A 3D desktop is not the right tool for the job when it comes to handling 2D objects.
2D objects are best dealt with in a 2D environment, with 2D tools. Similarly, 3D objects are best dealt with in 3D environments, with 3D tools.
Being able to manipulate a 2D object in 3D space, in many ways, only serves to complicate the issue in a world where most people don't even know what a truly _good_ GUI looks like anymore. 10 seconds past the eye-candy barrier, you'll realize you're driving nails with a socket wrench. Every 3D workspace/desktop argument basically boils down to this conversation
Q: Oh!! But what about having so much room to work in?!!!
A: Virtual resolution, and multiple workspaces work better.
Q: Oh!! But what about the fact you can fly around!!
A:
Q: But you can fly around from window to window!!!!
A: Switching workspaces is instantaneous. Do you want to "fly around" when you want to watch CNN instead of NBC? No. You just want to change the damn channel. *Click*
Q: But what about zooming your view in and out??!!!
A: You can do this in 2D. On a app-for-app basis, it's called scaling. On a whole-desktop scale, it's called virtual resolution.
Q: But with a good design, you can convey more information in 3D!!!!
A: Yup. The same information you can convey in 2D, with good design.
Q: You suck!!!!!!
A: Yes, yes, I suck. I suck because I use the right tool for the job. Wanna buy a hammer?
It's inescapable--There's always a natural gravitation toward approaching a problem with the best possible tool available. For 2D objects, you use 2D tools. For 3D objects, you use 3D tools. For the exchange of knowledge, 2D has been the medium of choice for billions of people, for all of recorded history. I don't think a windowmanager is going to change that.
I don't want to take a whiz on what the Looking Glass guys are doing.. I just wish they'd pick up a book on ergonomics, and concentrate their efforts on reversing the trend towards increasingly bad (re: Microsoft Windows-based) GUI designs, and concentrate on how to make a good (AmigaDOS) GUI design even better.
My $0.02,
Me
It's great that Sun has GPL'ed this desktop, but it has absolutely zero chance of mainstream Linux adoption. Why? Because it requires Java to run, and the Java environment itself is not open source. Remember the whole KDE debacle about Qt not being free enough? Multiply that by a few million times and you'll see why Looking Glass won't make it past "gee, that's cool" in the Linux world.
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I fail to understand why there's suddenly this big kick to move desktops into 3D. (Microsoft's Avalon project is an effort along the same lines as LookingGlass, isn't it?) As far as I can tell, this is all just some kind of ill-thought-out attempt to invent the newest revolution in computing or something. But really, it just seems like a glitzy gimmick with no functional benefit that I can imagine.
There's a reason why 2D paper has been useful for thousands of years. It's space efficient and the vast bulk of information encoding schemes that we have devised are 2D in nature... The written word and the painted image convey the great bulk of information we need to exchange with one another in a concise and easily reviewable manner. Audio-visual info is easily conveyed on a 2D screen as well.
We don't write books on layered cubes because that's just an unecessarily complex form. Virtual 3D immersion might be useful in "face-to-face" social interactions perhaps, but that added socio-emotional dimension is completely unecessary most of the time when the goal is simply the concise transfer of information.
Hyperlinking is all the extra dimensionality we need really to convey topic forking between nuggets of 2D information. Hyperlinking works just fine in a 2D GUI.
Looking at the screenshots I wonder what kind of functionality do you get out of having a page that swivels like a stone tablet or something? You get a REALLY BIG icon, that's what. You can't really read the page while it's tilted and it takes up a heck of a lot more space than a plain old condensed 2D icon. You could use a zoomed-out image for a 2D icon if you wanted to keep that preview function that those tilted tablets have and you'd save a lot of screenspace that way too.
It all just seems like silly gimmickery to me.
Can anyone point out any good functional reasons for trying to force a paradigm shift to a 3D user interface?
bif
wag more
bark less
the Dock and the animations, the video running on the dock as well as the the GL reminds me a lot of the Aqua GUI on OSX. It looks really nice. I'm looking forward to using it on my Linux box :)
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
System Shock 2 was from Irrational Games so it's still possible Irrational could do another System Shock. At the moment they are working on Tribes 3, IIRC.
with a big screen like that, we would not have to stop to stretch... :-) Really, my main problem in my last physical evaluation in the gym was not muscle tonus, but muscle *shortening* due to lack of stretch...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
That's what a real 3D window manager should look like!
But can you remove (not just turn off) the effects of the GUI to make a completely minimialistic system? Can you replace the windowing system of XP to something that would run well on a Pentium 90? Linux has the ability to work with the most mimimalist setup you can think of, yet it also has the ability to do some pretty useless and cpu-sucking eye-candy effects. The whole point of linux is choice (and choice is both linux's best friend and worst enemy). Sure, windows has some choice, but windows can hardly be modified and customized compared to linux.
I almost joined the ranks of people criticizing this project as a waste of time. Putting 2-D windows into a 3-D environment doesn't give you any advantages, especially if you just project it back onto a 2-D viewing screen.
But let's have some imagination. The idea is obviously to eventually make this environment immersive. This would allow you to place windows all around yourself. And instead of separate virtual (2-D) desktops, you would have separate virtual "rooms." Our current input device (mouse) is also 2-D, and we would need to move to something more practical in a 3-D environment.
Of course, it goes further. Windows are currently 2-D because the viewing screen is 2-D. If you have a 3-D viewing system, then your windows can be 3-D, too. Applications don't have to fit into rectangles; they could be cones, spheres, or dodecahedrons. They could even be irregularly shaped and have qualities like malleability and ductability.
Also, our widget sets are limited by the fact they're displayed on 2-D screens now. What kind of control widgets could we create when things can be moved in three dimensions? It opens up lots of possibilities.
It's just unfortunate that the screenshots they are showing don't actually take advantage of the fact that there are three dimensions. But this is only because application writers haven't caught up to the new "windowing system." It's not because the idea doesn't have merit.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Sorry, but Java is SLOW. Waiting for a Java program to start up is like listening to paint dry in a thunderstorm.
Going from 2d to 3d is like saying everyone should draw on cubes for their ideas. It might help in some situations but not most. Want real watershed new interface paradigms? Read The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin. You can take a sneak peak by downloading THI/THE from the Jef Raskin website.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
It goes a lot further in the 3d direction than OS X. I kind of wish Apple would make the next logical step and really take advantage of the 3d hardware in modern video cards and use real 3d instead of fake 3d, with raycast shadows instead of gradient patterns around windows, and making Exposé "full time" so more distant windows gradually slide to the side and fade into the background and finally turn into dock-style icons wherever they hit the edge.
The dock itself would do the same thing... it would just be part of the community of icons on the edge, and you'd minimize windows just by dragging them off any side...
That's my fantasy, anyway. I think it would be more useful than scribbling on the back of windows...
I'm billing Sun for my lunch that just came up, out and onto the floor.
Seems like a good idea, but these new screenshots look nasty. Maybe with insanely high resolutions their tricks might look decent. With Openlook, NeWS and CDE, sun has a history of putting craptastic UI's on their user's desks. My guess is Sun realized they were going nowhere with this one too and decided to foist it on the public. Nice try, Sun. Shortly after the hype dies down this monster will be relegated to the annals of the failed UI's museum.
I'm at JavaOne now. They Open Sourced Java 3D, but they announced that they're not quite ready yet to release Project Looking Glass. They said to expect it soon.
If you think that's sweet, wait till you see when Mead's Project Looking Paper gets unveiled.
Yes, the renowed stationary maker MeadWestwaco Coorporation currently is in the skunk work phases of development of a new line of 3-dimesional paper products, including note books and memo pads.
Utlizing advanced nanotechnology (mostly bucky-tube fibers), they are able to make paper expand in width so the paper user can rotate a sheet of paper on its side, expand it and write an extra memo on its side! Yes we've all be annoyed by the limitations of two dimensional paper where we're given only a front and back to scribble on - but be annoyed no more - in the future, thanks to research at Mead, we'll be able to write on an additional four sides - top, bottom, left, and right!!!
I work for a paper mill in N.C. and was fortunate enough to get an advanced peek at this amazing new technology MeadWestwaco Coorp. dmonstratied in a select-suppliers meeting last month. This demonstration blew me away - absolutely mind boggling. Other stationary makers have tried to harness the new technology, but so far haven't gotten past experimental prototypes - wooden blocks that require felt tip pens to write on.
Geez, and people are so worked up about Sun's 3D desktop... I'm telling you, if you buy stocks, don't count out Mead folks.
-sloptaco
So, it's not slow, it just appears slow? That's a great defense.
Take gaming out of it, Java apps are still slow, especially ones that use GUIs. Server-side web apps in Java tend to be slow, or at least not noticeable *faster* than other languages. That's, at best, a dead heat, but it's pain to develop in relative to those other languages. And on the GUI app side, people using 2ghz+ computers are still having to defend (rightfully so) that 'Java is just as fast as other stuff' (when it's noticeably not). The fact that you can tell a Java app by how slow the menus redraw in an app even in 2004 is sad.
For anyone that bothers to defend Java in this respect with "well, it's the coders' fault! just use API XYZ123!", why on earth does Sun make a language that is SO EASY to make slow stuff in? Why isn't the default way of making Java stuff FAST? MS VB basically defaults to apps that run (and APPEAR to run) quickly. You can work at messing up a VB app to make it run slow, but it's not easy to do.
creation science book
I'm not sure if I have the spare CPU cycles to power such an environment, but it's sure nice to drool over.
The whole point of looking glass is that the 3d environment rendering is offloaded onto the GPU, leaving your CPU to handle tasks that it was originally designed for, rather than drawing all the windows and other stuff it was not designed for.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I'm not sure if I have the spare CPU cycles to power such an environment, but it's sure nice to drool over.
Isn't that what your GPU is for?
Much easier to use than the unrealistic "desktops" of yopre, wher I can only make a huge mess of things on two axes!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
raaaaghhhht... before you could just make screenshots to explain someone how to use an app, now we need full motion video. vive le progres!
there's no place like ~
I'm sure people said the same thing for color displays way back when.
Actually no, they didn't.
1D: Left Right
+ 1D: Up Down
+ 1D: In Out (using scroll wheel)
====
3D
You must be new here
Yeah, of course it's lame. So are all the silly animations that the Mac OS does by default. But silly rotating things is by and large the direction things are going to be heading. Afterall, Microsoft isn't the only one who realises that the average user only needs a word processor, web browser, media player and possibly a messenger program. So why would they get a newer computer if they can run all those features more then adequatly on an old computer with a large hard drive. Because it wouldn't be 3D accelerated.
The problem with computers is, for the average user, they are more or less fast enough to do everything a person who isn't a gamer, or graphic artist needs. So now people need to make them unnessecarly obsolete. It's all part of the big bad (intentional) bloat.
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
this, http://lg3d.dev.java.net/ seems to be the project page at java.net.
I can't access the project pages, it tells me i don't have the right permissions. Anyone?
For all the well-deserved skepticism, Project Looking Glass breaks the vaporware mold. It's the real thing. I saw it running on Peder Ulander's laptop at Linux world in January and on Curtis Sasaki's in May 27th in Dallas. It's real and it adds startling capabilities to the X11 platform. I expect it to propel the Linux desktop. It may also have developers working on Java instead of dot net. Here's the thing. Until it's out and everybody sees it, you'll live in your concepts of reality and not reality itself. So, stay there if you must.
Looking Glass runs on Java 3D (also open sourced today) which basically goes straight to the wire on Linux, Windows and Solaris. This may come as a suprise to folks out here in Slashdot land, but actually Java is pretty damned fast when implemented well.
Looking Glass will run on a decent (1.8 Ghz+) laptop with a decent laptop graphics card.
Looks fantastic, its also great to use and the funniest bit is all of the Windows and Mac people looking at a GUI which looks cooler than the best efforts of MS and Apple.
So you don't need to upgrade to a top of the line machine with a top of the line GPU. You need a decent machine with a decent card.
Java... its faster than you think.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why does everything from Sun look so Über-ugly? Take Java for instance. Did you see the JMF demos? The whole setup was so dull. No wonder nobody noticed it. Same with the Java Desktop which is even crappier than some really haphazard themes I've seen on freshmeat.
And now this. This looky extremely crappy by even the most modest standards in design and aestetics.
It also work the other way, of course: How come everything from Macromedia looks cool, but has the operatability of some cheapo shareware app?
Weird.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The two projects you mentioned are actually toys. They are nowhere near the magnitude of what Looking Glass offers, namely an infrastructure for building 3D desktop enviroments. The 3D window manager is not the important parts, it's the actual technology that enables it;
What most folks seem to overlook is that this Looking Glass is actually built on top of Keith Packards Composite and Damage X extensions. Coupled with something like Cairo you actually have a pretty kick-ass infrastructure which is able to compete with the big boys.
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
Its only adding a 3D component to the *current* state of the desktop metaphor. ( it looks more cluttered/noisy from the screenshots )
I dont see it as being really revolutionary for the user.. same old stuff in new clothes..
Not that i have the answer to the desktop problem, but i personally dont see more window-dressings as it.. ( though perhaps something more like the newton interface is what is needed.. it was designed 'function-centric', not 'computer-centric')
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Please, you're on Slashdot. You're supposed to be whining about how bad we are of not praising Microsoft.
I don't know about you guys, but my desk at work is a mess, with papers, books, cds, and stuff all over the place.
Based on some of the screenshots, it looks like I can finally emulate my own physical desktop with my virtual desktop... and with it all the benefits of "security through obscurity". For example, I leave my paycheck stubs all over my desk but I'll be damned if someone would bother to put the effort to try to find it!!
"Need more thickness in your Windows?"
Therefore, I assume you mean...
When will Sun GPL their Java _implementation_, i.e. their Java Virtual Machine?
I agree that would be nice, because it would give the Open Source community a de facto standard implementation which they could support, and to which they could contribute. It might also increase the popularity of Java.
That is also what Eric Raymond was suggesting a few months ago when he called on Sun to Open Source their JVM.
However, though it would be nice, it's not a necessity.
While Sun's JVM may be proprietary, there are plenty of competing JVM's out there, including some Open Source implementations (e.g. Kaffe, JBoss).
Also, while GPLing Sun's JVM might increase Java's popularity, it must be noted that Java is already the most popular language used in business, as shown by the number of job listings. Dice.com currently shows 7599 job listings for Java, and 7094 for "C OR C++".
Finally, as I said, while Sun's JVM may be proprietary, Java itself is open. Its license allows anyone to use the Java spec to create their own Java implementation. You can even modify or extend Java (as Kaffe did, or as HP did with their embedded Java known as Chai), but then you're not allowed to call the resulting product Java -- Sun does keep tight control over the _word_ Java, such that it can only be applied to certified compatible implementations.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard.html
Of course this isn't a general part of the user interface, it's got potential security concerns if it's using Javascriptthrough Webcore, and it's competing with Konfabulator... but you do flip these little widgets over to configure them.
nothing to see move along...
It's hardly more than 3ddesktop.
.... um .... the .... well .... the .... Oh, I've forgotten the names ).
I run it all the time as a desktop switcher for Gnome.
The difference with 3ddesktop is that it doesn't use all your CPU just sitting there, and it doesn't look like a sad attempt at making the whole desktop 'experience' 3-dimensional. Some things are better in 2D. Desktops are one of them. There's nothing to be gained from having a window slant into the background. It certainly doesn't aid in getting work done. Yeah maybe it looks cool. So does 3ddesktop, and it's actually functional.
Personally, I'm waiting for Enlightenment to fulfill my need for eye candy. And yes I realise I'll be waiting a while. At least it have the word 'Java' smacked at the front of it in some sad, desperate attempt at building mindshare for their slow-arse POS flagship product. Jesus - imagine if this thing were actually written in Java ( put up your hands everyone who likes playing those First Person Shooters that are written in Java, you know the ones, the
Plus Sun sux. Their attitude towards Microsoft is displayed in a new light next to their attitude towards Linux ( specifically RedHat ).
remove the binary perhaps? worked for me on nautilus.
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
You can see a working demonstration here.
Note: You might want to tie a scarf around your head to keep your jaw from smacking your keyboard.
Also: In the future, you might want to consider shoving a roll of mints up your butt so that when your foot comes out your mouth your breath won't reek of so much ass.
Looking Glass is an extremely old windowing system pushed by Sun in the 1980s; how soon we forget. This is old recycled crap, which is why it looks so bad.
With the exception of rotating things, which is about as cool as having a flash ad on my workspace.
Having many windows open with explicit focus?
Panning work spaces?
Verticle icons blocking my pretty wallpaper? I keep mine hidden in the root window, I can call them with a right mouse button.
I fall into the "one big window, cause I only have one focus group". I have function keys to change windows/navigate work spaces, thought path.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Ok, as other people have touched on, the demos so far don't actually add anything in terms of actually useful functionality. There is no paradigm shift here... it's just empty glitz. Once people get tired of the clunky, inefficient use of desktop space, they'll just dump it.
The problem is, the data we manipulate on computers is all fundamentally 2D in nature. Furthermore the screen is 2D. What in the world do they think they are going to add in terms of human factors benefit by faking 3D elements on a 2D screen to represent 2D data??
I mean, as far as I can tell, the 3D crap is just a clunky layer of indirection between the data and the display that actually impedes access and cognition efficiency.
2D page -> 3D lookingglass -> 2D monitor -> eyeball
Hyperlinking is one means of adding a kind of "depth" dimension to data navigation... The pages are 2D and the pages underlying each link represent a sort of z-axis of 2D data "slices". Hyperlinking is a nice way to enhance data organization so that access to related pieces is smoothed.
But why bother with graphical 3D when handling 2D data? There has got to be some rational reason to mess with this extra layer of complexity if you want your project to be adopted! The feature has got to buy you something real... not just "wow-whee". The wow-whee factor just doesn't last much longer than 30 seconds in the real world. From what I've seen of the demos, the looking glass stuff introduces no new fundamental efficiencies in terms of the access or cognition of data.
However, there is one kind of 3D mechanism I can think of that might actually improve computer interfaces... Have you guys seen the GUI interfaces in the movies Minority Report and Matrix Reloaded? The interfaces envisioned there used the space around the user as a kind of giant screen. THAT kind of 3D desktop would actually buy you something useful. Simply, the wide area enables better organization of windows! You can use your 3D spatial situation awareness to keep different kinds of data windows in different places around you. In essence, the extra "screen" real-estate with the added 3rd dimension enables you to organize your windows so that you can have more information right at hand at all times.
Of course, we don't have holographic displays yet, but we do have VR glasses.
If the quality of VR glasses were to improve dramatically, it might actually be feasible to implement something like a holographic desktop GUI.
Of course, the RSI issues here would become very serious. The neck and shoulder area is some of the most complicated and strain-vulnerable musculature on the human body. A lot of work would have to go into adapting a good chair and a minimum-motion 3D pointing device so that people could manipulate a holographic GUI for long hours in a day, many days in a week without repetative strain problems. And who knows what kind of headaches, eye strain, or motion sickness people might get from using VR glasses for so many hours in a day?
bif
wag more
bark less
From what I've gathered, the looking glass project will probably be not able to function under the "normal" xserver which was until recently xfree86 and now is x.org. I think that the engineers at Sun are utilising the damage and the composite extensions which are available in the new xserver which by the way is based on kdrive which was primarily developed by Keith Packard. It is possible though that eventualy these extensions will be reimplemented for the x.org server.
Stinky stinky slow.
Matt
So..PLG is GPL?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
... and consider this GUI with the hardware that will be available then. Technology for head mounted displays is being refined as well as alternate input devices. Once the price and usability of these interfaces has improved we will really see a need for a 3D GUI such as this. Now is the time to be refining the technology to deliver it too. Sun is positioning themselves well, I think.
Imagine this in an enhanced reality context. The background is what you see around you. Instead of using a mouse you use your hands and fingers. This type of 3D GUI definitely figures into the future.
-Dan
That is awesome; see i was taken aback .. Shortly after Sun announced this Microsoft and Sun got in-bed together. I thought perhaps naively that Microsoft wanted the looking glass technology and this was their way of getting it. Now this has happened I can be little else but pleased!
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
The sun work looks impressive.
But then, so is the work being done on the Croquet project.
I was a little worried recently when Sun made up with Microsoft and signed a cross-licensing agreement. I said at the time that if Sun wasn't just rolling over and giving up then the thing for them to do would be to open source much of their technology. After all, if your enemy now has access to everything you've got, shouldn't your enemy's competitors also? My faith in Sun's management is somewhat restored. I still think they have a difficult road to travel but at least they are trodding it with their eyes open and brains engaged.
Looks awfully familiar... Almost a ripoff. I used this for awhile: http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~seahorse/
It really bugs me. I think the real problem with fvwm (apart from the default theme) is it's name. Try saying 'Looking Glass, Looking Glass, Looking Glass' a few times. Now try saying 'fvwm2, fvwm2, fvwm2'. See what I mean? Is this a name to grab market share? I think not.
I guess the bottom line is - a few of us know about fvwm, most of us don't. Oooooh... 3D windows.
even if the mesh is vector, the textures arent, so when you enlarge the mesh the textures get the same crappified enlargment as a regular ol jpeg.
Personally I found the AC's arguments convincing.
Every year Java guys say Java apps are just as fast as C/C++ GUI apps. Personally I believed them in '99. Found out they hard way they were wrong in '00. And were disgusted by their bald faced lies in '01.
I know it's been said that if you keep on repeating a lie, loud enough and long enough people will eventually believe it. But they said that before the internet made it easier to expose pretenders such as your self.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but the ability to rotate windows to make them illegible is usefull how?
The problem is not the environment, but the primary human interface to the environment, which is the mouse. Having virtual 3D on a computer is completely intuitive to a human being; it's how we organize everything in real life.
Well ... yeah, but I use the computer to do some tasks better than I can do them in real life. The computer is way better at organizing and retrieving information than my paper, er, "system" (that's not the word my wife uses). I don't think duplicating a 3D pile of papers would improve this; it is actually the constraints of the filesystem and the 2D interface to it that make it simpler to use.
to make a *FOUR* dimensional desktop. Who's with me?
Think you should reconsider all the caffiene, Kaffiene:
My post was an attempt at humor; while, arguably, I failed, your (over)reaction is a bit more than was warranted.
Chill out, man -
Would you really want some guy 2,000 miles away doing your surgery?
can you imagine if it ends up that Real writes the transmission protocols for this technology?
THAT would be scary...