LiveCD Lets You Try Out Project Looking Glass

remember_beos writes "Sun created Project Looking Glass (LG3D) as a 'proof of concept' not long ago. It is an environment for Linux, like KDE or Gnome, but with some really great 3D functionality. More than just eye-candy, LG3D provides functional use of an extra spatial dimension on your desktop. Now there is a LiveCD for us all to try it out."

Comments

Worth it?

[Kimos]

To me this says all show and no productivity. I'll get a live CD and play with it, but I doubt it'll be worth using to actually get something accomplished.

Isn't it rough on the video card to have it 3D rendering at any point the the OS is loaded?

Re:Worth it?

[DavidLeblond]

I don't know, ask Apple. Their UI uses the GPU and it has for awhile now.

Re:Worth it?

[Kimos]

Maybe I'm remembering back in the day of my first "good" video card. I was running rendered screen savers (cause it was uber-cool at that point) and the card was having heat issues. Guess things have changed eh?

Re:Worth it?

[Kimos]

That's my point though is that not all cards can support a 12 hour gaming session. Not to mention that if you're talking OS, you need to be able to run for days/weeks/months, not just a mad Quake sesh...

Re:Worth it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well considering a modern "good" graphics card can render something like this at over 3 megapixels and 60 frames per second, I would certainly say they have!

Re:Worth it?

[Mark_MF-WN]

Especially given that a 3D windowing system will totally under-utilize even the cheapest of modern video cards. If my roommate's $30 bargain bin video card can run UT2004's million polygons per second for six hours with a smooth framerate, I think it can handle rendering five or six window polygons per second on behalf of the windowing system.

Re:Worth it?

[Mark_MF-WN]

You're making the totally unreasonable assumption that the video card would keep everything in its own memory, all the time. Video games don't do this and neither would a 3D windowing system.

UIs are fantastically simple compared to games. They rarely contain more than a few thousand screen elements, only a small fraction of which are active at any time.

Have you noticed that XWindows (as it stands now) can easily handle dozens of windows without depleting main memory? I have 18 maximized windows running right now at 1280x1024x32 resolution. Guess how much main memory X is using? 27MB -- rather than the 90MB your naive calculations would suggest. And I can activate any one of those windows so quickly that I don't perceive the time it takes to drag the windows contents up from the swap space.

You don't seem to really understand how graphics systems work. The only things that need to take up video card memory are the pixels visible on screen. ANYTHING else in video memory is there simply to speed things up a little and take the burden off of the system bus. UI elements rarely change, most of them aren't visible, most of them aren't animated, and most of them are so ridiculously simple that the video cards texture compression algorithms (available on EVERY video card manufactured since 1998) can squeeze them down to practically nothing. UIs can afford much higher latencies than the 60fps necessary to convincingly render a video game.

I could go on and on. The point is, UIs are painfully, appallingly simple from a 3D standpoint. That's why people want to windowing to the video card in the first place. Any video card that can handle Quake2 can eat the most complex GUI imaginable for breakfast.

I dunno....

[Psykus]

I tried something similar for Windows XP some time ago, I didn't really see any advantages over using a normal, 2D interface. Perhaps this 3D interface is different, but the whole thing seems pretty gimicky to me. Kind of like having a 3D interface, just to say you have a 3D interface, not because of any inherent benefits of using it.

Also, is this a window manager akin to Gnome or KDE, or does it run on top of either one? The window decorations and stuff look pretty fugly IMHO.

Re:I dunno....

[suckmysav]

" I just thought of a way this might be made useful. It depends on sensing the location of the user's head. It would work so that a user could tilt his head like he's trying to see 'around' to the other side of the spherical interface and the window manager would rotate in the windows/information from that side. So if you are looking at a text editor and need to check out a document momentarily you could crane your neck (I'm talking a slight gesture, not really craning, but the same motion) and the web browser that is pushed off to the side would slide back in. "

And the first thing a new user would do would be to get on the internet to find out how they can turn that goddamn crap off.

Sheesh. The last thing I want to do when using a PC is to have to ensure that I remain absolutely motionless lest my GUI start flipping windows all over the place.

I suggest you pitch that idea to the folks at Redmond ASAP. It might be just what we need to start turning people away from their Windows boxen in droves.

Longhorn

[Virtual Karma]

This is what Microsoft is trying to achieve in Longhorn. I'm sorry Bill, somebody just beat you at that...

Re:This is offtopic...

[gl4ss]

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=lg3d-live cd.dev.java.net

http://lg3d-livecd.dev.java.net was running Apache on Solaris 9 when last queried at 2-Mar-2005 21:56:28 GMT - refresh now Site Report
Try out the Netcraft Toolbar! FAQ
OS Server Last changed IP address Netblock Owner
Solaris 9 Apache/2.0.50 (Unix) mod_auth_svn/0.1 SVN/1.0.1-dev mod_jk/1.2.0 mod_auth_mda/2.0 DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.0.50 OpenSSL/0.9.7b 2-Mar-2005 64.125.133.206 COLLABNET

however.. i think there might be a problem with the bandwith given to the server with the .iso.

System Shock 3? A True Sequel to Thief?! NO!

[Alzheimers]

Oooh, shame on you! I had my hopes lifted for a moment, before being ripped to shreds by cruel reality.

Damn. RIP, Looking Glass Studios.

Re:Conflict of interest

[UWC]

Sun sells servers. Hosting a torrent would set an example which in the long run could lead to fewer servers sold.

And having their own servers Slashdotted sets a better example?

Re:why no torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, and you'd think SUN would actually be able to handle the load!

As for "Why no torrent?" You obviously do not know how Bit Torrent works. A single person or company cannot just plop something on torrent and expect it to propigate in a timly fasion unless there are THOUSANDS of people DLing it in a short period of time.

This usually requires that the USERS of torrent want it bad enough and in effect distribute it themselves.

Value not yet realized?

[Eric Savage]

I couldn't get the video, but from the screenshots and other stuff I've seen I don't see anyone making a compelling case for this. I admit it has promise, but I don't see any examples of actual utility that cannot also be found in just having two or three monitors. Right now it just seems like eye candy and an interesting concept the developers are waiting for someone else to capitalize on, not a viable alternative to the current 3D (e.g. stacked windows) desktop paradigm.

Honest /. recommendation

[miketang16]

After reading about 15 requests for a torrent, I got to thinking about the /. effect and bittorrent.

Wouldn't it be a decent idea to set up a torrents.slashdot.org and if possible, before releasing a story with a large 'attachment', set up a torrent for it?

Then again, I don't know how hard this would be logistically, considering that one must obtain a copy of the file ahead of time. However, IMHO I think it's worth a shot.

Re:Honest /. recommendation

[miketang16]

As for the faq question about creating a site cache, this would be quite different since it's not taking away from any adspace revenue based on the site because you would only be sharing a file that that site is distributing. People would still visit the site to read the information, but the bandwidth needs for a large file hosted on the site would be distributed.

An argument might be that if you give readers a direct link to the file, then they won't visit the site. However, /. already posts direct HTTP/FTP links in its stories. Also, people that only want the file are just going to read the replies anyway to look for a direct link or torrent.

Re:Honest /. recommendation

[Anonymous Custard]

People have proposed having slashdot itself host large files (or torrents) from stories or copies of the articles to stave off slashdotting, but there are always these arguments against it:

1. Slashdot cannot assume it has the right to distribute potentially copyrighted material

2. Slashdot must respect the target site's right to control their content - whether that means registering users, displaying ads before or alongside the content, or charging a fee to view content.

For example, if someone posts a review of a book, they are free to include excerpts - they post them right into the slashdot story. But they cannot assume that they can attach an E-Book version of the book to the slashdot story, even if that E-Book is free on the author's site.

The content would need a license that allows distribution, and much of the content we link to here does not authorize free distribution.

Getting approval from content owners would require tedious effort, and seeing as how the slashdot editors don't even bother to make sure they're not posting a dupe, there's no way they'd bother getting approval from content owners.

Humane Interface

[shrapnull]

Probably the strongest point in the development of Project Looking Glass is that it shows GUI developer's that we are far from achieving any sort of happy medium or standard in the graphical experience.

Coincidentally, with the passing of Jef Raskin recently, there is fear that the concepts of his Humane Interface will go largely ignored and unnoticed, despite there being a desperate need to simplify the user experience while being intuitive without being intrusive, and still allocating the option of low-level interaction demanded by hackers.

While drawing the connection between Raskin and Project Looking Glass may seem distant, it is surely a nice example to see such a major organization funding open revolts against the norm and doing so in a public arena.

Re:Slashdotted

[schon]

Sweet jebus, put up a torrent tracker and post the link!

Re:why no torrent

[jericho4.0]

You're talking nonsense. What's stopping the project from seeding a torrent? You think maybe it will not work if only 10 people are downloading it? If a torrent was up, we wouldn't have to wait for somwone to complete a download.

Managing the location and size of Windows

[Peaker]

is counter-productive.

Managing their rotation axis and depth is more waste of time.

Windows should either be auto-maximized or auto-tiled by the windowing system, with the user and application cooperating to define which parts in the visible output of the application are important to the user at every given moment so that those are automatically displayed to the user. Simple example: Newly created messages about errors or events should not be placed on top of some text I am reading, but on some of the all-gray or all-white area that the screen almost always contains. For this to happen, it must know that text is more important than "dead" areas that contain nothing.

This silliness of attributing physical traits to non-physical entities is counter-productive, even if it is very visually appealing.

Lets let go of the overlapping windows crap and solve the division of screen-space problem in a more intelligent way.

Will no one post a torrent?

[Trogre]

This is getting silly.

Seriously, if anyone here has downloaded the iso, torrent it pronto.

Re:Finally... the wait is over

[jericho4.0]

Seeing as there is a lot of interest in this thing, and you're the only one who's seen it, can you either post a torrent or expound on what was lacking ?

Looking Glass is nausea inducing

[NeedleSurfer]

this is not a flame but a real comment, all videos I watched of this gave me nausea, the idea that the background move when my mouse does is very disturbing and not a good idea to locate items on the screen since everything moves not just the foreground or background. Each graphical element is way too big and actually nulify the idea, if you wanted more space out of this realize you don't because every object on the screen is now bigger, turning them aside doesn't provide much more space than windowshading does (the ability on the mac to collapse a window into its title bar), actually it provide less space because of the drop shadow and extra thickness, plus, now, you have too read from up to down instead of left to right, basically it is less usefull and more clunky than windowshade, but since it is a feature of a software that runs on Linux people will go nuts over it and call it usefull 3D even if its nothing but glitz and wizzbang...

Actually, Looking glass is like when you give Windows a resolution the display can't handle, it just shows you part of your desktop and now you have to scroll the desktop to go to each corner, imagine this concept in 3D, you have Looking Glass...

Re:Now My Desktop can be like my apartment

[Sebastian Jansson]

Damn I'm annyed by those "3d-desktops" why doesn't people realize that:
1. Humans have 2-dimensional vision.
2. We already have "3D".
Windows can already be placed before another, that is as much 3D you get on a 2D screen.

None of the good features a "3D-desktop" gives you really need the 3D-part, you could implement it in any normal window-manager already.

Probably the biggest reason they aren't is that there's no demand, people don't really want the feature of making the windows distorted by "perspective" or the extra work it creates.

What exactly is the feature you miss in your current windowmanager? If it's a good one you probably can get them to implement it, maybe it already is?

Re: TORRENT ISO IS BROKEN - DONT WASTE YOUR TIME

[jgaynor]

The title pretty much says it all - even if the above link works you're going to spend the next 4 hours downloading a shiny new drink coaster.

Bad idea

[danila]

Despite coming from Sun, the project is almost completely useless and goes in the wrong direction.

What they claim is efficient way to organise the workspace in 3D is a big fat lie. It's just an ugly and useless hack that doesn't even have the "wow" factor.

There are proven GUI technologies that work. These are
1) Expose
2) Virtual desktops, which you can switch between
3) Smoothly scrollable desktop, preferably with a zoom feature.

If someone implemented these (rather simple) ideas in one window manager, that would be almost a perfect environment, without any need for 3D (other than to use the 3D card acceleration and for cool visual effects). It doesn't make sense to rotate windows or workspaces, when you can zoom and scroll.