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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 saw a demo, and kept thinking when is the linux port. So by open sourcing it maybe it can come to linux sooner!
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.
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?
From a pure UI point of view, it is better than multiple desktops and multiple tabs, since they are both examples of modes (which are bad). This is conditional, however, on it being easy for the user to control. If you had a 3D haptic input device, then I would say it is a superior model for human interaction. With a mouse, I remain to be convinced.
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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.
Exactly. Sun has been talking about a 3-D environment for years now. I don't recall what it was called before, but needless to say on their overpriced 3-D cards in the Ultra creator 3-D, etc it worked terribly. Now gaming has upped the ante with 3-D hardware rendering in PCs and they want to capitolize on it to make the environment prettier.
I personally would rather see a much better, more integrated environment with time spent on really tackling the M$ near-monopoly's "features" in the current Java Desktop than release yet another interface for developers to complain about.
BTW - if they use things like OpenGL, etc - it should be less of a burden on the CPU and moreso on the GPU.
Give us out of the box functionality and applications that do all of, and more of, what M$ does and will do and then go play with the UI.
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
BTW, on a slightly more serious note, there is a spiffy freeware 3D Mac OS X file browser called, appropriately, 3DOSX (screenshots page).
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
Very few applications are purely CPU based. Most applications wait for the user to decide what he/she wants to do.
The speed of interactive applications is mainly limited by the user operating it. So, the application should aid the user in the process of making descisions.
Part of this aid is making the application less suprising. Should a sidebar pop up at the left side of a window as quickly as possible, or should it 'slide' in in a few tens of a second? The slide does grab the user's attention, which could lead to an overall speedup in the work actually done by the user.
This Sun desktop may also aid the user. The user is working more efficiently at the expense of CPU cycles. But hey, isn't that exacly what computing is about?
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
I find Sun's choice of pretty background pictures very distracting when attempting to evaluate the merits of this desktop system, and I'm sure this was intended as a marketing trick. I would have preferred shots with a plain background to really see the features of the desktop.
In fact, this shot is nothing more than the background! (and the 3d version of a standard 2d taskbar) They say, "Just imagine what is possible if it were live video." -- It's more like, "Imagine a pratical use for this '3D' desktop".
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...
I don't believe that Sun is pushing this as the next standard desktop. What it does though is show that they are thinking about new ways to approach using a system. Looking Glass probably won't be the next desktop but other projects benefit from some of the concepts either by using parts or analyzing and creating new ideas.
how is spinning a window around to look at properties better than opening up a separate properties dialog???
This seems like they are trying to model the desktop after real world objects. If you have a document sitting on your desk and need to make a comment about it, you likely add a PostIt note with your comments, write in the margins, or write on the back of it. As for comparing it to the "properties' dialog, I'm sure this will be a matter of preference to users (how many users actually populate any of the optional metadata fields?).
reading vertical text on side of windows is uncomfortable.
I agree completely with you on this. Anyone taking a basic Perception and Sensation psychology class would probably have a better approach to presenting the information.
java?
And what language would you expect Sun to develop in?
i would be suprised if human factors has been involved in project to this point.
This seems more like a concept project more than a working environment. Think back to the virtual reality days when all interfaces would be VR. This makes a cool demo, but may not be useful in a real world environment. Example: The CD Jukebox is a cool presentation, but with hundreds of CD's, this is not a practical interface into the repository.
Here are some of the problems I see with this environment. Much like any other advanced technology, this may be a little too early to actually debut to the so-called "unwashed". The main reason being that there aren't any applications (other than their neat little CD player/db thingie and that's really a stretch since it could be pulled off in 2D) that will take advantage of a real 3D desktop. Until those applications are out there and do things that you CAN'T do on a 2D desktop, this is just going to be a neato-cool factor kind of thing. But the hubbub will die down quickly.
The other problem is that input devices aren't there yet. Using a mouse and kb for a 3D desktop is going to be a pain in the ass. How often do you do things in real life that you could do with a 2D controller? Think about how much of a pain in the ass it would be to pick up a glass of water if your only interface was a 2D mouse and a kb. The 3D desktop is going to need a new kind of interface.
Back in the 80s I was working on the design of a personal project that was meant to take advantage of 3D space for clay modeling. The basic idea was to have a table with an LCD embedded in it's surface for display. This was to be a 3D display that could display paralax images to the viewer at a range of about 1-3 feet. Under the table there would be three planes that form half of a gapped cube (vertices of each plane don't meet) and would contain grids of lasers in a 256x256 matrix. (these days lser LEDs are cheap) Directly opposite of each of those laser grid planes would be three more 256x256 receiver planes also spaced so that there is a pretty good gap between each plane. This would have been the 3D controller for the virtual clay modeling environment. Finally, within in the software, tools could be created virtually that would take away any need for any other controller. The only think missing in the system was tactile feedback.
Once input devices, displays and applications come to parity with this kind of environment, then and only then will you see a mass shift to 3D desktops. For now, it's still a fun toy that adds only a little extra functionality (and probably a lot more confusion) to the desktop. It's a good thing it's released under the GPL because anyone worth their salt will take the code and begin figuring out how to start designing these new input devices. As I've said in the past to my followers (hehehe), never forget the input devices when designing a new desktop environment otherwise you will have a non-starter.
Un-news
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
Exactly. None of the examples show what happens to all of these "sideways" applications when I want the application I am currently using to fill the whole screen. I don't see how Looking Glass is any better than minimizing, and I definitely don't see how it is better than minimizing plus virtual desktops.
Besides which, what happens to sticky notes on the back of an application when the application gets closed (or crashes)? And what happens to their nifty CD Spinner GUI when you are browsing through hundreds of CDs?
I might be in a minority but how many people don't maximize the application that they're working in?
It has an interface much like Mac OS X (except a little more 3Dish). Under OS X, you get used to not maximizing windows. Maximizing does unpredictable things, or just gets in the way when it doesn't.
the application that they're working in? Also, I avoid my mouse as much as possible and LG looks pretty mouse intensive.
That's very difficult to determine without trying it. OS X is pretty mouse intensive, but has hotkeys for most stuff. Granted, many of the OS X ones are rather masochistic combinations of "Apple" and "Option" keys, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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?
I'm sure people said the same thing for color displays way back when. Color really doesn't do anything for usability. If you have to differentiate things with color then your interface is broken.
Or, perhaps as with color, people will eventually take these ideas and find a better way to present information. Now that the 2D barriers aren't there anymore, this will serve as inspiration for the uses which truly *do* affect usability. Calling this impractical because it's a technology demo is shortsighted.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
> On the subject of GPL, I'm not sure I understand why Sun would Open Source this
My guess is that it all ties together with the open-sourcing of the Java 3D libraries in the last couple of weeks.
From what I've heard the Looking Glass 3D code is based upon the Java 3D libraries.
Thus, it's sort of a cool project to release along-side the J3D code.
> The only thing I can see is that they don't have the resources to develop this fast enough and want to leverage the Open Source community
Probably true to some extent. The Java 3D development effort always seemed to drag on forever. I gave up on it personally.
But, on the other hand, depending on how it is implemented it really may not require much development at all.
The J3D libraries are pretty mature, but nothing incredibly bleeding edge is my guess. They are fairly well thought out in that they conform to what a lot of other folks do in the 3D graphics world.
They are plenty fast with the right sort of programming. You gotta know what you're doing to really extract good performance out of any 3d library.
From viewing the snapshots provided it appears they are simply capturing the rendered output from windows (images if you like) and then binding those images and their associated listeners (button listeners, keystroke listeners, etc.) to the appropriate hotspots on a 3D window. Possibly similar to a mapping of hotspots on an image imbedded in an html document.
That's certainly all speculation on my part, but if I had to guess how they did it that's what I would guess.
They certainly don't have time to recreate an entire windowing system (ala SWING, AWT, etc.) in J3D.
The 3D window itself is just floating around in the scenegraph. Nothing huge there.
Just some observations.
From the snapshots, to me it's all just eye-candy.
Sorta looks like something you might see on CSI while they are using that miraculous finger-print matching software that seems to need to render every fingerprint in the database to make a match. SO LAME, but hey my mom thinks it's real.
Some may get all hot and bothered over Looking Glass but I'm just fine with the plain vanilla windowing systems we have today.
Caution: Contents under pressure
"check out and read entire books via the internet"
Searches for Anne McCafferey, R.A. Salvatore and Ray Bradbury all resulted in No results. This is not what AT&T promised, nor would it be classified as "soon".
"make video phone calls"
Nice site with a clearly written disclaimer at the top that as of June 4th, 2004, these phones were still months away. Further reading into the text shows that the site highlited these phones because they could "record more than a few seconds of video". That is not a video phone. I just moved from Japan where phone technology is where it should be and they STILL do not have the video phones AT&T promised in their commercials.
"perform remote heart surgery"
Thanks for the article about the kidney surgury. Also if you actually read it you will see that the surgury WAS NOT done remotely, there was just a doctor on the other end of the line talking someone else through the proceedure. AT&T's commercials showed a doctor wearing computerized gloves guiding the motions of robotic hands holding the scalpal.
The real kicker of it all is that I got modded Troll for making a legitimate comment on failed promises and you got modded Insightful for linking to three articles that did not actually demonstrate anything other than I was right.
gotta love the slashdot mods
ray bradbury
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
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
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!!