Oblong's g-speak Brings "Minority Report" Interface To Life

tracheopterix writes "Oblong Industries, a startup based in LA has unveiled g-speak, an operational version of the notable interface from Minority Report. One of Oblong's founders served as science and technology adviser for the film; the interface was an extension of his doctoral work at the MIT Media Lab. Oblong calls g-speak a 'spatial operating environment' and adds that 'the SOE's combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984.'" The video shown on Oblong's front page is an impressive demo.

Comments

gorilla arm

[Anonymous Coward]

Gorilla arm.

That is all I've got to say.

Check the jargon file if you don't understand this.

Re:gorilla arm

[SanityInAnarchy]

Well said... I thought this comic illustrated it well, also.

Re:gorilla arm

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is. Yours.

Re:gorilla arm

[Monkey-some]

That's exactly what I had in mind reading and then looking at those interfaces.

They may look as being cool but what we see at the long haul is a technology completely dissociated from the inner working of the human body who "optimized" himself for accomplishing tasks using the less energy possible.

Moreover on the videos I saw from this kind of technology you have to accomplish disproportionated movements to grab, move an release a file. This may look fun in a 10 minutes session but now wonder if you could do that for well 5 hours a day ? This wouldn't be "IT" working or some data analysis but a complete workout.

And as a last pointer I wonder if what makes this technology so appealing aren't the massive screens in fact.

Re:gorilla arm

[ca111a]

That could easily be fixed by turning the whole setup 90 degrees and suspending the user above the screen. Something like this cucumber harvesting combine.

Re:gorilla arm

[Zwicky]

Very true, but its most enduring feature for me is its strong entertainment vibe. Just watching the guys in the video was like watching the master at work. I approve.

Re:gorilla arm

[Anonymous Coward]

...but in fifty years, our bodies could be modified to the point where our arms don't get tired during the course of an average day. We might start thinking a little more about what is the highest bandwidth form of gestural expression, and stop worrying about conserving motion!

For those who believe that the *real* future is "mental interfaces", the fact is that any mental interface will have the confirmation problem. A passing thought of "I wonder if I should really be sending this email?" shouldn't suddenly trigger the send action. Our bodies have evolved with the ability to separate thought from action, and in a sense *that is a mental interface*...so I think my ideal mental interface would be the control of a body that doesn't get tired. In which case, their work would be perfect.

From a research standpoint, there are a lot of questions to be answered. For instance, how much force/pressure/tolerance does a gesture need to actually trigger...and how much visual feedback to give during the gesture. Or how to create a set of gestures that don't overlap and get mistaken for one another!

Then consider analogies to double-clicking a mouse. Double-clicks are kind of a cool thing and we've gotten used to it. But you realize that any action tied to double click has to be a complement to the single click action. (A single click can't delete a file, and then a double open it!) Someone has to go through the trial and error of solving the 3D counterparts of these problems. Why not these Oblong people?

All that said, I wouldn't invest my money in this particular work at this particular time. But the questions will be relevant for as long as we choose to model ourselves using the bodies of bipedal primates (which we'll probably do for nostalgia even in the posthuman era).

Re:gorilla arm

[SanityInAnarchy]

We might start thinking a little more about what is the highest bandwidth form of gestural expression, and stop worrying about conserving motion!

Well, let's look at one of the higher-bandwidth forms of expression -- typing. How would you type -- even assuming you were limited to a single language -- with a gestural interface? The only way I can think of is speaking, which at least feels like it uses less motion than typing!

The reason we conserve motion is that it's faster -- and for some interfaces, speed is everything. Not all, certainly, or the mouse would never have been invented -- but the mouse didn't replace the keyboard, and I doubt this will, either -- it might not even replace the mouse.

Not that we shouldn't pursue it, but it needs to have some real benefits, probably in specific applications.

I think my ideal mental interface would be the control of a body that doesn't get tired.

Right -- which would probably be an entirely artificial or virtual body.

So, take your neural interface, imagine every passing thought thrown into some sort of sandbox. Then, when it's reasonably close to done, use a more "physical" means to freeze it, verify it, and do whatever else with it.

So, stream-of-consciousness (literally) email composing, but a physical action required to send. Best of both worlds.

Or, failing the virtual body, stream-of-consciousness followed by any interface we have today. Keyboard input to an email limited to the text field in question, suspended when any meta-keys (ctrl, alt, etc) are pressed, and an actual keyboard/mouse action required to send.

how much force/pressure/tolerance does a gesture need to actually trigger...and how much visual feedback to give during the gesture.

Well, that's a bit like the confirmation "passing thought" problem all over again.

Again, a virtual body solves this problem -- rather than waving your hands in the air, you're dealing with what looks and feels like some sort of physical interface. That means simple depth perception, probably some tactile feedback -- a certain amount of pressure required to actually press the button.

Or, again, a physcial interface to compliment it.

Double-clicks are kind of a cool thing and we've gotten used to it.

I think right-clicking is far more useful than double-clicking.

More relevantly -- consider the most common use: Icons in a folder, probably on a desktop. Single-click selects one, double-click opens it. When was the last time you needed to select exactly one file to perform an action on it? Especially one which couldn't be performed by click+drag or right-click?

And if you're selecting multiple items, click+dragging a box around them is a much more convenient interface.

The only thing double-clicking is useful for is people who don't know about the above -- but those people would never have a reason to select a file without opening it. Worse, it trains these people that some things need to be double-clicked on -- many apply that paradigm to other things, like hyperlinks and buttons, because hey, if they click twice, at least they know it got the message. Worse are the people who single-click everything, then, if it doesn't work, double-click it to be sure -- same with opening something from the desktop.

Of all the GUI paradigms we've grown to love and hate, that's probably the one that annoys me the most.

But, your point is well taken:

Someone has to go through the trial and error of solving the 3D counterparts of these problems.

The only question is, again, whether or not this 3D interface is the best one.

Re:gorilla arm

[motorhead]

finger wiggle vs arm waving

Nice

[bb84]

...but until it shows me the future I won't be *too* impressed.

Re:Nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet.. let me make some comment here about how unimpressed I am to make everyone else think I'm too cool to care.. when in reality I want one of those so bad I'd kill for it... OHSNAP

How about that

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like Engadget, three days later.

g-speak?

[gmuslera]

Ok, lets register gchat, so people will get totally lost between gchat, g-speak and google talk.

Re:g-speak?

[adamofgreyskull]

Just be glad it's not i-speak.

Not impressive at all

[avalys]

Actually, I call that an extremely unimpressive demo. It is a lot of technology with little purpose. In that entire video, what are they doing? Just spinning a bunch of pictures around.

Without a compelling application that requires that interface, it's a just a big, expensive toy.

Re:Not impressive at all

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Indeed, controlled with a Power Glove no less.

Re:Not impressive at all

[houstonbofh]

The entire time I was thinking "This is cool!" But I can't come up with any way it would make what I do day to day easier than the UI I have now. Typing looks to be a real bitch!

Re:Not impressive at all

[Iamthecheese]

Medicine, 3-D rescue mission/fire control mission planning, biology, CAD, art, anything with complex data sets, physics, movie editing, and 3-D movie creation come to mind. The intuitive 3-D control will allow whole new interfaces.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

"Killer Apps" for business are what bring people to new systems of doing things. Things like Visicalc or Lotus 1-2-3. The critical parts to note are that until the corporate world really adopts something as viable it will not find its way into the mainstream, it will simply exist as a research entity or a hobbyists toy

Re:Not impressive at all

[Louis Savain]

Are you kidding me? This is the future interface of parallel programming, among other things. Rotate'm, push'm, pull'm, drag'm and drop'm. This technology will allow us to walk inside or fly through our programs and quickly create and/or modify them through trial-and-error. Kinda like the way an interior decorator might rearrange the furniture and colors on the walls. This is the beginning of the end of keyboards and mice and typing. Add a voice recognition interface and this shit is going to kick ass. It will turn users, gamers and developpers into magicians.

Re:Not impressive at all

[TheModelEskimo]

Agreed. These people are demonstrating something almost completely useless while I use a very traditional method - text entry via keyboard - to learn programming in a console. And I'm a 3D illustrator.

People keep harping about 3D visualization being the next big thing, but while these awkward, hammer-seeks-nail inventions come and go, simple things like the classic terminal are *increasing* in popularity, if anything. New Linux users and experienced Mac users are saying things like, "actually, I just use the terminal to do such-and-such a task; it's faster that way."

Re:Not impressive at all

[vipw]

Yeah. Like Nintendo.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm Air traffic control will never be the same if this gets interface gets implemented...

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

I love the Power Glove. It's so bad!

Re:Not impressive at all

[Khenke]

Just like a full body sensory feedback system it will be the game and porn industry that will start using it and show the rest of the world the way. Because we really need our hands free for all our porn watching...

Re:Not impressive at all

[Hertne]

New Linux users and experienced Mac users are saying things like, "actually, I just use the terminal to do such-and-such a task; it's faster that way."

I can see why. Most people that are experienced enough to know what a terminal is, much less how to use one, have seen graphic demos such as this at one time or another.

People know that computers can do things and make those things getting done look fancy. The thing is, now a lot of those bells and whistles have lost their "new" value. Now people are more interested in getting things done quickly, and more often than not using a terminal does get things done quicker.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

It does look cool though, specially the collaboration part.

Don't write them off just yet. Maybe what we are looking at turn out to be next generation of User Interfaces.

With time applications come and get attached to basic platforms. Internet was also a DARPA curiosity used and managed by squints.

Re:Not impressive at all

[wfWebber]

Exactly my thought. Just because it looks cool, doesn't mean it's practical.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Gesture recognition and fancy displays reminds me of the VR craze that died a silent and uninteresting death a decade ago...

Unfortunately sometimes what looks cool may not translate into whats useful or wanted by enough people to matter. With millions of WOW addicts and the steady march of technology there is certainly room for a reserrection spell for VRish technologies in our future.

This demo is certainly lame and underwhelming.. not being able to display a useful purpose for your main product demo without resorting to hollywood nonsense (Queue hackers gibson CGI) should raise some red flags regarding viability.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Xiph]

I claim that this will be great for gaming, i already want to make games for things like this, seeing this video does nothing to remove that.

I also think this expensive toy will be great for things that requires complex data to be handled fast.
That's what gestures are good for, complex objects, needing complex handling, instead of going into a menu->submenu->item, click.
They're nice in the same way as keyboard shortcuts, they reduce strain, but can't be used for everything.

Gestures are great for somethings and really poor for other things.
This system is partly a system for gestures,
partly a system of semantics of the various gestures,
and partly a system for using these things over an arbitrary amount of screens(dig about a bit on the website).

I think that for some uses this will be awesome, for others it won't work. Don't do programming or other text-centric things on this system.
I have no illusion that talking will ever replace typing.
Just like I don't think the Wii will replace me going outside to play soccer with my friends, Or that an OMNIMAX will stop me going to beautiful places.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Smivs]

And while your 'free' hand is busy, what the hell is the image going to be doing?

Re:Not impressive at all

[rusl]

Well, I do think there are some interesting possibilities in that thing where they interact with the topography using the cut out shapes.

However, I too was thinking about my love of the command line. Basically, as they claim, 2D interface came along in 1984. It basically still has a lot to be worked out to make it useful. I do prefer point and click for many things there the command line options are just too complicating. It's easier to cut and paste 5 random files from one place to another than to find some common search thread between them all or to type it all out... Basically only simple things work well this way.

So the irony is that - it takes a long time to make a GUI useful, it will take longer to make a 3DGUI useful, and we've really only been able to work out the simpler applications (moving files, grouping non-text similar things) so it's like this technology will be only useful for very simple tasks for a long while yet... All the new and advanced stuff is likely to stay only really efficiently done via text commands. So the new fancy GUI will serve up old simple solutions. Probably the making of the complicated fancy GUI will be all accomplished using command line text =)

Re:Not impressive at all

[Haeleth]

simple things like the classic terminal are *increasing* in popularity, if anything. New Linux users and experienced Mac users are saying things like, "actually, I just use the terminal to do such-and-such a task; it's faster that way."

And it's not even just Unix and Unix-like systems where the terminal's popular. Even Microsoft recognise its importance -- that's why they introduced PowerShell as an alternative to Windows' traditionally rubbish CLI.

Re:Not impressive at all

[hairyfeet]

In most if not all of those you mentioned having a 3d view would barely get you halfway there. The problem is you need to be able to TOUCH, I mean really touch, to truly interact. And that is where we really suck right now. Because all of the sensory feedback devices I have seen so far including the really high dollar still in the testing phase ones, really only give you soft/hard. They can't give you warm or slippery or squishy or cold or kinda bumpy or.....you get the idea. We humans pick up so much by touch that we simply don't realize, and when you cut us off from those sensations we can still work but not nearly as well.

That is why IMHO this stuff will never be more than kind of an "ooh cool" kind of expensive toy or for really really tiny niche roles until we can interface the brain directly. Because trying to simulate all the things we can gleam from simple touch would be just to insanely expensive to ever be practical. But if we can figure out a way to send the data to the brain directly, either by some sort of implant or perhaps through sensors on the scalp, then we don't HAVE to come up with a physical way to fake all this data, we can send it to the brain directly. It would also get rid of the "gorilla arm" problem as you wouldn't have to wave your arms like a maniac trying to work since you could simply manipulate the data with your thoughts, or even basic eye tracking.

Call me crazy, but I think that an interface controlled by the mind could really give us a great leap forward. Even typing this post think of how much faster it would be if my thoughts simply appeared on the page? I guess it is because all these oversized 3d interfaces just seem like overkill, like a holodeck. I know the Star Trek fans will kill me, but let us be honest: holodecks are dumb. You are wasting all that space and energy to give ONE person a little fantasy land to play in. That is really really dumb. When I saw the Voyager episode "Equinox" I thought THAT was what a holodeck would really be like. Instead of wasting all this energy trying to create a physical simulation to interact with just send the signals directly to the brain where they can be experienced with minimal power required.

Maybe it is just me, but I think this thing too is going overboard with trying to give physical interaction, when it is mental interaction that we should be striving for. But it does look like it would be fun to play with for a half an hour or so, or until your arms feel like falling off, whichever came first.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you talk about anything but: parallel programming while being ridiculous at the same time?

Re:Not impressive at all

[- r]

not that i post that much here, but - this is the coolest thing iv/e seen in ages. *not that it applies to us as programmers*, but it does to our users. yes, i use terminal on my imac for programming, but not for seeing the result. i think someone out geeked the geeks here...

Re:Not impressive at all

[baggins2001]

Yeah but who would have thought that people would by teleconference rooms. I think it's a nice impressive toy, but someone with a lot of money (company money) is going to decide they need it to impress customers. I can already see someone swapping around Impress documents during a meeting. It'll happen, it'll make no sense, but it will happen.

Re:Not impressive at all

[baggins2001]

Oh shit, I just thought of a real world application. Training. Where you want people to interact with something in a 3-d way. Say you want to show someone how to change a tire. Without them actually changing a tire. ( well something more expensive and complicated). Someones building widgets. They could interact with the screen without touching it and attach a database id to it.
Crap I hated this thing.

Re:Not impressive at all

[sonamchauhan]

The terminal and 3D interfaces are complementary, not antagonistic. We should welcome 3D interfaces. Indeed, we should welcome almost anything that increases the level of communication between the user and the computer.

Think about surfing Google Earth using a CLI. Not good, is it?

Now imagine you surfing Google Earth with a multi-touch 3D interface (eg: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/01/super_touch_screen_f.html ). Then, once you're where you want to be, being able to call up a CLI window with commands contextualized by the location you are at.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Blimey85]

I imagine most of the time you'd type as you do now, just like you seldom if ever type with a mouse. Think of this as a replacement for the mouse, or maybe even an additional tool. I guess in that respect it's more like a tablet. You still use your keyboard and mouse but when you need to draw, you bust out the tablet. Maybe you'd use this a lot in Photoshop and not so much in Word.

Then again, there was a time when the mouse didn't yet exist and when people first saw it, I'm sure they thought it was cute but maybe not so practical. We might look back on this thing in 10 years and think "how did we ever get along without it?" which is how I feel about the mouse. I use my mouse all the time. Sure I use it less than most non-geeks because I'm fly with a keyboard using the shortcuts and hotkeys and all that, but my mouse still gets used a lot. I'm thinking this thing could cut my mousing time way down, especially when manipulating media.

Lots of other applications for this as well. Gaming comes to mind. I think the Wii has conclusively shown that people really do like that sort of gaming. I also think future iterations will have a reduction in size of what you wear on your hands and I think technology will at some point advance enough that you no longer have to wear anything on your hands. Maybe by using infrared to detect the heat from your hands, although I wonder how accurate that would be. I'm not questioning the accuracy of the infrared tech but more the issue of your hands being cold or something along those lines. If you've just come in from a blizzard, would it still work? For any advancement in that area to be successful, it needs to work 100% of the time. Going to something the size of a ring would work all the time, and that's what will be needed if we are going to be able to use our mouse and keyboard and tablet and joystick and whatever else still. A couple rings on each hand might work just fine. More so than a glove anyway.

Re:Not impressive at all

[marcosdumay]

We are great verbal communicators, but not so good plastic artists. Anyway, one of the worst realms for us is 3D, most people simply can't deal with it*, some can understand what is going on 3D, but surely not as fast as 2D. That, combined with the fact that we can read and type faster and easier than we can talk and listen leads us directly to the console.

Now, of course as some applications do benefit from graphical output, and a few benefit even from 2D input (way less than what MS want people to belive), there are applications that benefit from 3D graphics and 3D input, but don't expect something like this to be on everybody's desktop, ever.

* Natural selection and cars are working very intensely to fix that. If cars stay around for a few more generations, maybe we can revise that rule.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Blimey85]

This isn't something that will just come and go. They've been working on this tech since the early 90's and it's been advancing rather well. Considering how well people have embraced touch screen tech the past couple years, something that had been around since when, the 60's? I think this will do quite well, but I also think it will be many years before we see it in heavy use.

Re:Not impressive at all

[bobaferret]

I agree with you mostly, But the one thing that I think we all need to remember in the fight between neural interface and large 3D toys, is that once we have those neural interfaces, we will need a 3d world to work in. I've always viewed all of these toys as getting closer to that. You can't just model the world around you and call it an interface. It's extremely inefficient. All of these technologies from 3D gestures to voice control to whatever become extremely useful when trying to deal with vastly dimensional data sets, as opposed to trying to write a term paper. Once you have more than about 4 or 5 variables that your trying to deal with you HAVE to go 3D. You can add some haptic feed back and maybe get a since of how something is behaving, but you have to focus directly on it. Touch is too narrow to be used for correlating distinct variables. It would be like being Hellen Keller. Touch is for dealing with one specific thing at a time. Sight and Sound are more wide band on the other hand. Things can get you attention from a distance without you initially being focused on them. A knocking in the engine, or a flash or bit of movement out of the corner of your eye. You can then evaluate by looking or listening to the sound directly, and then in the end decide whether or not it's worth touching, to get the more subtle details out of it.

</ramble>
 

Re:Not impressive at all

[master_p]

Imagine the system applied to interactive pr0n though...

Re:Not impressive at all

[4D6963]

BS. 50 years from now the world of programmers will divide in two categories. Those who use vi, and those who have emacs make them coffee and rub their back while auto-piloting their flying car.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Dusthead Jr.]

Not to sound all nitpicky and geeky, but the holodecks aren't just for one person at a time. Several people can interact inside. In fact they had a whole village of real people thinking that they were in a real place. How exactly a holodeck really works I have no idea.

Re:Not impressive at all

[iieugenio]

Games would be enough justification for this sort of interface.

Re:Not impressive at all

[RulerOf]

Without a compelling application that requires that interface, it's a just a big, expensive toy.

Dude, EXACTLY.

Games, man. GAMES.

I mean, seriously, imagine with that kind of interaction how incredible something like World of Warcraft would be? The more interactive the games become, the closer we crawl to something as spiffy as Star Trek's holodeck, and aside from the obvious boon to the porn industry, it'll let you actually gather and throw the freakin fireball.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

If by "walk or fly through our programs" you actually mean "walk or fly through level designs", you're getting closer to what this kind of tech might eventually give you. If you mean actually programming by arranging generic programming modules together, you're way off base. I've used one of the state-of-the-art modular, graphical-design packages for software, and my ultimate evaluation of the technology IF it were implemented properly is, "significant aid to maintainability at the cost of additional up-front development cost IF it is used as the implementation method for an extremely large project"

I'll never understand why people think that adding 3D!!!OMG!!! to a technology that doesn't really work in 2D is going to suddenly make it the perfect solution for everything.

Then again I also am pretty skeptical when someone thinks ANYTHING is or is going to be the perfect solution for everything.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Anonymous Coward]

.... They can't give you warm or slippery or squishy or cold or kinda bumpy or.....you get the idea. We humans pick up so much by touch...

Your touch sensors can only process pressure and temperature. All of the fancy adjectives we use to describe the feel of things are there because we supplement this basic information with visuals and mental model comparisons.

Re:Not impressive at all

[rudeboy1]

I think this technology will eventually end up paired with some of the speech recognition technology, (like what Ford and Microsoft have put out recently), and this will do away with the keyboard (although I'd still keep a spare sitting in a drawer, just like I do now for my headless servers).
I think sound and video editing will be a good application for this, but honestly, I think it will be a while before I walk in to a local midwestern TV station and see them using this tech.
On the other hand, I could definitely see this taking off with the rich gadget crowd. I have kind of an embarrassing lust for high end tech (I just built an 8-core, 32GB RAM 4TB HD workstation for use as my home office computer ((I do a little sound editing on the side))), and I just sat here for 5 minutes trying to envision how I would paint the walls of my home office with that projection-friendly paint, and throw up a bunch of projectors. If the price point were right, and the projector market saw this as a natural pairing, thereby offering combo deals to get this concept into the main stream, I definitely think this application has a place in the home. I think for general browsing and OS desktop manipulation, this application fits. Again, only if the price is within reason after taking into consideration that you have to completely rethink the way a home office or home theater is set up.
Imagine, though, sitting in a comfy chair in the middle of an empty room, with projected interfaces on 3 of the 4 walls, and a medium size (~35-45") LCD touch panel sitting before you. All your text entry is done via voice recognition. Basic commands are spoken, and then the media that is brought up through applications and web browsers is manipulated by the Oblong application. I could see it working. It is the further evolution of the geek paradise.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Brad Eleven]

See also the SNL parody of CNN's election map touchscreen.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Knara]

The holodecks, generally, work using a combination of repulsor/artificial gravity, transporter (replicator) technology, and projection technology (like, when people are seperated in the virtual environment).

It'd be tough to do, but its 300 years in the future, so I'll give it some leeway. Chances are for people that you're not trying to "trick" into thinking they're in a real environment, neural-based total immersion VR systems would be better.

Re:Not impressive at all

[Zwicky]

It is a lot of technology with little purpose. In that entire video, what are they doing? Just spinning a bunch of pictures around.

Without a compelling application that requires that interface, it's a just a big, expensive toy.

I agree with the general point here in that for real computer use it is likely to lose its novelty rather quickly.

Having said this I can see it being lapped up by folks who own media center PCs and the kind of people who like to show off at a party. "Oh I don't like this song, hold on while I change it "... *swish swoosh*

Maybe it would be useful in other areas such as military war rooms, and with World of Warcraft gamers etc. I mean the Wii has been pretty popular and if they could scale it down a bit (most gamers won't want to build an extension on their house to make room for this kit) it could be seen as a natural extension to that.

Basically it's mostly the entertainment market that I would be aiming this thing at if I was the one in charge.

Re:Not impressive at all

[benthurston27]

i would like a window with icons but with a terminal box at the bottom that i could type ls *.bin for instance and the window would show those icons best of both worlds.

Re:Not impressive at all

[TheModelEskimo]

You've got a few choices. Konqueror does that. Hotwire is sort of meant to explore a similar idea. http://hotwire-shell.org/ I'm sure there are others, too.

Nice impact.

[Ostracus]

You and Torvalds will be hit by a bus...speeding...downhill...through the snow...both ways.

Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interface

[syousef]

I really don't want an interface where I have to gesticulate at a computer, while repeating words so the speech recognition engine picks them up correctly and moving cursors around with my eyeballs. Hell I don't even want 3D desktops and transparent windows - take all the damn effects away, and leave me with the folder metaphor, current UI for editing text and pictures, and a command line. These interfaces don't give me any new capabilities, and anything that requires more effort and doesn't empower the user is a waste of time. They aren't revolutionary - they're not even good sci-fi. They don't belong to the future, because the future will be built on interfaces that are MORE not less convenient and do actually give new capabilities. Good sci fi are things like the star trek communicator (not so different to today's mobile phone, or a walkie talkie of old, and were used to enable the characters).

cheapscates

[robi2106]

you mean to say, a startup centering around hi tech advances in visual interfaces.... can't afford to host their own demo? They have to go to the upscale HD version for YouTube to host the content?

Common. Get a real hosting account and a guy that knows how to embed JW to play your flash video.

Can you say.... gimmick?

[Ecuador]

Yawn... Another one of these. Why do I feel I read a /. article about "Minority Report interfaces" every week? And it would be interesting if we were talking about pre-cognitive interfaced etc. instead of the useless "do your best traffic officer impression" to move some videos around.
Yeah, IWTFV (didn't actually RTFA that came with it) and I guess it would be kind of cool for people who are not Real Geeks (TM). I especially enjoyed their "intuitive high bandwidth access to information" where they navigate this seemingly enormous 3D grid of what looks like boxes containing... the same japanese character! Yay, what a way to navigate through 2 bytes of info! Ok, maybe it is 1kb if the boxes were not identical, but there is no way to tell at a glance, as people who have tried to use lame 3D file managers would now. That scene also brought back fond cinematic memories... It's a Unix system! I know this!

Untill I can...

[awrz]

...connect directly to the computer through my brain.

I just won't care.

I don't want to work or stand to get things done on a computer. I want to THINK it to make it happen.

Re:Untill I can...

[CarpetShark]

Krell. Fabbers.

That's all I've got to say. Check wikipedia if you don't understand this.

Re:Untill I can...

[Anonymous Coward]

They will screw that up too. Instead of thinking "I want to write my parent's neghbors and thank them for the christmas gifts they gave to the kids" and having the computer automatically create a document, you will have to think, mouse left, click, open word, letter to parent's neghbors, input Thank's- backup, thanks, not tanks, backup, T-h-a-n-k-s. or something fucked like that.

Re:Untill I can...

[awrz]

Just imagine what a spinning hourglass will feel like in your head.

Re:Untill I can...

[Atrox666]

It'll be even better when they implement DRM on that platform.
ZAP..not allowed to think that anymore.

If I've learned anythign from games...

[josteos]

...once SOE gets involved this thing is fucked.

Real Applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so other than being purchased by CNN to go along with their magic wall and non-hologram gimmicks, can anyone think of real applications for this?

The one really obvious use I can think of is with human operated control systems- like the control tower at an airport on on an aircraft carrier. This is a place where logical 3D real-time representation of data with collaboration sounds like a pretty important thing. Of course, they would have to train the system to detect and ignore sneezes. I mean cold season leading to sneezing flight controllers leading to mis-directed personnel and aircraft sounds hilarious only so long as I know I'm not going to be there for it.

Being serious again, this does seem to have potential where one or more people have to direct a system like an airport's runways. I imagine it would also make for one killer RTS controller too. Throw in world-domination-command-center while you're at it. I'm being serious about that one, I'm sure our military will buy one of these and fall in love. Whether they'll get past playing around with Google Earth on it is another matter entirely.

The mouse is still better.

[wild_quinine]

Oblong calls g-speak a 'spatial operating environment' and adds that 'the SOE's combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984.

I'm tired of hearing about all these things that will replace the mouse. The mouse will be replaced one day, but not until something comes out which is better, not merely cooler.

This minority report interface will tire your arms out in less than five minutes. I'm embarrased to admit it, but I use a computer for upwards of eight hours a day. Sometimes upwards of twelve.

The mouse is ideal in that your fingers have precision, the feel of pointing is natural, and crucially your hand, wrist, arm, are all more or less at rest throughout the process. Sure, you move them. But you don't hold them anywhere. It's a fundamentally different type of task from minority reporting, or wii-ing, or other stupid-but-cool flailing systems.

So no, I don't know what will replace the mouse. Something, eventually. If I knew what it was, I'd make a bloody fortune. But improving on the mouse will take a damn shot more work than making me say 'Wow', let alone 'meh'.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[NfoCipher]

That's the old fart talking. We've been using a mouse most of our lives, so sure it's better for us. Take a look at the wii, it took me a while to adjust killing zombies by pointing at the screen instead of using my thumb.

If kids growing up use this interface, not only will it be natural to them, they'll be in much better shape.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Anonymous Coward]

A good replacement to the now-a-days mouse, would be a ball or airplane-shaft shaped wireless device, which is touch sensitive through most (or all) of its surface. Such a device would allow the user to use it with his/her hand in any position he/she feels comfortable (hanging by the side, on the desk as is today, rested on his/her lap etc), plus it takes advantage of all five fingers.
Now...if a similar replacement to the keyboard, could be done, a lot of IT workers and other heavy-users, would be free of a lot hand aches , related to the current position the arms need to be in order to use a PC

Re:The mouse is still better.

[wild_quinine]

That's the old fart talking. We've been using a mouse most of our lives, so sure it's better for us. Take a look at the wii, it took me a while to adjust killing zombies by pointing at the screen instead of using my thumb. If kids growing up use this interface, not only will it be natural to them, they'll be in much better shape.

The wii's controller is unreservedly terrible. The only thing it's good for is amusement. If kids grow up using that interface, I'll be surprised if they can open 'My Documents' by the age of thirteen.

I'm sorry, but waving your arms around and working an office job are just mutually incompatible unless you're a manager.

I look forwards to something bettering the mouse, just as I look forwards to each new technological advance. I don't buy into stuff because it's cool, which is where the kids go wrong. I buy in when something is better.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forwards to something bettering the mouse, just as I look forwards to each new technological advance. I don't buy into stuff because it's cool, which is where the kids go wrong. I buy in when something is better.

Well, you gotta admit, SimAirportGroundController is gonna be awesome on this thing.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Unimaginative lackey fails to see utility of research interface technology to bland desk job, big picture. Film at 11.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Anonymous Coward]

The wii's controller is unreservedly terrible. The only thing it's good for is amusement. If kids grow up using that interface, I'll be surprised if they can open 'My Documents' by the age of thirteen.

Congratulations on illustrating to the world that you have little to no fine motor control. Not to mention you're talking out your ass. Let's make a guess: You prefer text only browsing, right?

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Zironic]

Interestingly enough I use the wiimote the same way as I use the mouse, that is I let my arm rest somewhere and only use small wrist movements.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[wild_quinine]

Congratulations on illustrating to the world that you have little to no fine motor control. Not to mention you're talking out your ass. Let's make a guess: You prefer text only browsing, right?

I use Windows, and Firefox. I'm not actually that old. I draw the line at Flash, but only because it's not W3 spec, and it's almost never used well. If you honestly believe that the Wii's remote was not a disappointment, your opinion is as valueless as sand in the Sahara. It's fun. Some of the games are fun too. It has the precision of a sawn off shotgun.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[wild_quinine]

Wow. Unimaginative lackey fails to see utility of research interface technology to bland desk job, big picture. Film at 11.

What do you work for these guys or something? Call me when your shitty company goes bust, and we'll see if I've a job for you.

This invention neither replaces nor improves upon the mouse. Any suggestions to the contrary are unfounded.

As punishment for your fanboy embrace of this tech, you should be made to use it for 12 hours straight. No doubt you'd still be talking about how cool, imaginitive, and edgy you are, even through the tears.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Keill]

Exactly - it's all about efficiency...

A keyboard is simply the most efficient way we've found of inputting text into a computer, and I really don't see that changing at all for a very long time.

Mice/joysticks/gamepads/tablets are all about the same - it's all about creating the most efficient way of interacting with the computer, whilst taking into account human behaviour...

By human behaviour, I mean that not every gesture we make will want to involve the computer, be it consciously, or subconsciously, and being able to therefore a) have full control over exactly when and how we are, and are NOT, interacting with the computer, and b) multi-task, (such as talking to someone else whilst typing), are two prerequisites for any human-computer interface that wishes to sell to the 'mass-market'.

NOTE: I know about the Wii's interface, and it could be said that it's a mass-market product, but the reason it's succeeded is because it's able to get away with it, since it's not a system that's designed to be used for long periods...

Any interface that does not take these two into account will only ever sell to small niche market, unless they find they can get away with a specific implementation, like the Wii. (I'm sure that someone somewhere will find a use for almost anything - even the system demo'd here).

Re:The mouse is still better.

[thepotoo]

Anyone else think the mouse will be replaced by a neural interface?

We keep the keyboard for quick and accurate input, and allow the brain to control where the pointer is on the screen. If I want to close a window, I concentrate to move the mouse to the corner of the screen, and think "click", the window closes.

Maintains backwards compatibility with legacy apps, makes for an amazing RTS game, and uses existing (currently primitive) tech. Also requires a special hat.

Re:The mouse is still better.

[Knara]

I think interfaces will first be replaced by MS Surface-like situations (i.e. your desk at work will eventually just be a touch surface where you can manipulate documents, etc).

But yes, eventually everything will be done neurally and hopefully in a total-immersion fashion.

This will coincide with sex droids.

Hopefully.

Wow! I want one

[Prikolist]

I want one! I will disagree with everyone here saying that it's useless. I'd trade the mouse, and pen tablet, and the joystick, and all the rest of those for this. Looks way more convinient - not to mention instinctive - to use. It's like a touchscreen but you don't have to leave greasy fingerprints all over. With this I could even actually draw on computer, while so far any attempts with mouse just ended up with wrist pain and frustration. And just moving the cursor, moving windows, anything... Oh, and games, this will send Wii to an antique museum.

Re:Wow! I want one

[plantman-the-womb-st]

It's like a touchscreen but you don't have to leave greasy fingerprints all over.

So you want a Light Pen?

Re:Wow! I want one

[rusl]

As an artist myself I've often wanted to draw on the computer too. I've never suceeded. However, I've seen a very skilled person draw on the computer. The way to do it is this: use your right hand to carefully draw with the mouse - keep your left hand on Ctrl+Z. It's a computer so no matter how many times you erase you won't rub through the paper. he was really good with it, albeit his drawing style was somewhat limited - slightly gestural if you know what that means. He would make lots and lots of marks and CtrlZ most of them. But he had a good flow back and forth and the constant motion allowed him to stop being tentative and really express the line through the mouse motions. Also you have to have a good mouse that doesn't stick or act up... obviously. I've never seen anyone with those digipens draw right into the computer like this guy did using CtrlZ.

This is his website. But I' have no idea what medium he used for any of his drawings there... Suffice it to say I wouldn't be surprised if it was drawn via the mouse. He was that good with it.

Re:Wow! I want one

[baggins2001]

It is a Wii for executives. Once the doors close they'll be bowling.

Re:Wow! I want one

[catalina]

Hmmm - the "g-speak"... Let's call the cursor the "g-spot"; I can visualize some interesting apps developing around that.....

Re:Wow! I want one

[srmalloy]

As an artist myself I've often wanted to draw on the computer too. I've never suceeded.

It sounds as if something like Wacom's Cintiq display tablets would be more useful to you, since you would be using the stylus to draw directly on the display and have the stroke appear to be coming from the point of the stylus.

gorilla arm

[Nomen Publicus]

http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html Sometimes the movies don't consider the ergonomic problems of "clever" interfaces.

Anyone remember that OCZ mind controller thing?

[w0mprat]

I see this having huge potential in CAD & design applications. Spatial controllers for CAD I've found to leave much to be desired. Gestures and natural motion are a huge improvement. This paradigm of interface will all hinge on a killer app, sure the engineering has been done and from what I can tell it works, effectively, but there are so many brilliantly engineered ideas that are simply nothing more than that.
Implementing a Good(tm) product, and getting a market for it is a whole different story. I would expect to see this kind of thing first coming to market as a expensive niche product for CAD/VR visualation set ups, or perhaps being bundled with a game that supports it. Many of these new things never get off the ground, not at least until the price/performance ratio reaches a point it becomes compelling.

Anyone remember that direct mind controller thing from OCZ? No? This'll be forgotten too...

Re:Anyone remember that OCZ mind controller thing?

[marcosdumay]

Ok, I know several AutoCAD users, some of them are civil engineers, others are architects. Guess what interface all of them use most of the time? The command line one.

Maybe, when designing very complex 3D objects, this thing will be usefull. Just don't equate that with CAD, what is a way broader market, including things that don't even need graphical presentation, like circuit optimization.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[beakerMeep]

Not everyone thought the mouse was a good input at first. This type of UI may have speed advantages as well as visualization advantages we may not completely see yet. CAD comes to mind here. But I suppose ASCII art CAD is enough for some people :)

Modern UI, I'm all for it

[deodiaus2]

Besides, I am still having hard time operating this mouse foot petal. It is so damn hard to get the selection of a word with my toes! Next thing you know, they'll design away my CD-RW coffee cup holder! I still miss my D parallel printer, what am I going to do with all the cheap cables I got at the discount bin at BestBuy!

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[syousef]

Not everyone thought the mouse was a good input at first. This type of UI may have speed advantages as well as visualization advantages we may not completely see yet. CAD comes to mind here. But I suppose ASCII art CAD is enough for some people :)

Show me speed advantages (without significant disadvantages in other areas) and I'll be pleased to accept change. In the meantime my office is enough of a nightmare without people gesticulating and yelling at their computers like Italian villagers.

I think speed advantages in CAD are more likely to come from more intuitive tools in the software. Right now doing anything in a CAD/CAM package or 3D Modeller requires specialized training. Whereas I could teach someone to edit (ie. touch up) a photo, or teach them to to use a word processor for something basic.in minutes.

I have used it, and it is impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not just a gimmick - they have worked on the gestural language as well as translation software, and it works well. The glove is a bit of a bummer, but it is just a passive glove with spots the system can read. They already have clients, yes big data sets of SHARED computing environments, something that is being overlooked. But it will be quite some time before we have it on our laptops, probably on our TVs before that. And, yes, it will be a better UI than the mouse or accelerometers or voice for many things. But the future is a mixed environment not one single solutions.

Re:I have used it, and it is impressive

[crossmr]

The gloves are a first step. Later we could implant something blue-tooth like into the hands or find another method of reading the hands. Remember technology evolves..the solution we present today isn't the solution we're going to be using for 1000 years.

A replacement can't come alone

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever replaces the mouse, it won't come by itself. The mouse became the standard because it simultaneously introduced the gui. Without a gui, the mouse is useless. Without a mouse or some pointing device, the gui is useless.

Re:A replacement can't come alone

[Jane_Dozey]

I'm not even sure the mouse will get replaced. I'm thinking it'll evolve into something else. I'd love to see hand gestures, mouse and keyboard all present in a system so I can use the mouse for pointing and clicking (saves my arms getting tired!), the keyboard for typing words and hand gestures for manipulating data or images in a much more versatile way than a mouse can ever hope for.

The number of times I've been trying to do something on a computer and wished I could just reach out and sort something on the screen out manually!

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[GFree678]

Hell I don't even want 3D desktops and transparent windows - take all the damn effects away, and leave me with the folder metaphor, current UI for editing text and pictures, and a command line.

Keep in mind, you're unusual. You WANT a command line for example. Oh, and when I say unusual I mean when compared to those outside of the Slashdot crowd, so no offense. :)

I would suggest that since humans are a very visual-thinking species, there's still a lot that can be improved in the visiual representation of information and the way in which it can be manipulated. The "minority report" interface might be a little impractical perhaps, but it's just one idea out of a group of other ideas for the future of UI. I don't think we should stagnate by keeping current GUIs because they "just work". If they did, people wouldn't keep clicking OK or Close on error messages while not actually paying attention to them for example.

Good demo

[haggais]

I particularly liked the way the video demonstrates g-speak's usefulness for those typical home and "office productivity" tasks I so often find myself getting slowed down by:

- Moving letters around on the screen (especially once they start wiggling and shifting away from you, and let's face it: everyone hates it when that starts)
- Rotating squiggles and letter-circles around 3 axes
- Navigating through a 3D array of thousands of identical Chinese characters, housed in little boxes (to be fair, though, this sounds a little like the first task)

Re:Good demo

[YttriumOxide]

Moving letters around on the screen (especially once they start wiggling and shifting away from you, and let's face it: everyone hates it when that starts)

Dear god yes... it tends to mean someone slipped acid in to my coffee cup at work again. (actually, not kidding on the "again" part - it has happened to me before!)

Misread Title

[elthicko]

Am I the only one that misread the title as oblong g-spot? I thought I'd finally know what to look for. I guess being able to interface with a computer in 3d with my hands would be cool too... for when that day comes when that g-spot article gets posted on slashdot, I'll be able to move it and slide it around in ways I never could with just a mouse.

Not a programmer, are you?

[Namarrgon]

I can't imagine a less efficient way to get any actual work done :-(

Apart from the arm strain, I think that saying, "if open-parenthesis p-underscore-temp-var-x-y-z-b-b-q close-parenthesis newline open-curly-brace newline temp-var-x-y-z-b-b-q equals asterisk p-underscore-temp-var-x-y-z-b-b-q semicolon newline close-curly-brace newline", more than, say, once, would engender homicidal rage.

Re:Not a programmer, are you?

[theheadlessrabbit]

I can't imagine a less efficient way to get any actual work done

tried Vista?

Re:Not a programmer, are you?

[L4t3r4lu5]

"Select Open parent this is p under score temp bar sex why z be be queue close apparent cheeses!"

Re:Not a programmer, are you?

[Bwian_of_Nazareth]

Oh, come on, how is this insightful? Since when is "actual work" equivalent to typing code? Just because something is not useful for one purpose does not make it useless. I don't think anyone even suggested that this is cool for coding or that all input devides should be replaced with this one. Sorry, but your comment is so narrow-minded that I would consider it "troll" rather than "insightful".

Re:Not a programmer, are you?

[plantman-the-womb-st]

Since when is "actual work" equivalent to typing code?

Since the original parent was discussing programing specifically?

Re:Not a programmer, are you?

[Namarrgon]

Oh, I agree it would certainly have its uses. I just don't think it's appropriate for programming.

I don't think anyone even suggested that this is cool for coding or that all input devides should be replaced with this one.

Actually, yes, that's pretty much exactly what the OP suggested:

This is the future interface of parallel programming

This is the beginning of the end of keyboards and mice and typing.

Re:Not a programmer, are you?

[Bwian_of_Nazareth]

Ooops, you're right, I have not seen the OP, was probably hidden by slashdot or I was just blind. Sorry, in this context your comment makes perfect sense, my bad.

Obama's G-string?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who had to take a second look because the title appeared a little like Obama's G-string makes minorities feel alive?

Re:Obama's G-string?

[Anonymous Coward]

Words cannot convey just how retarded you actually are. You've got the world's drool market cornered, my xenophobic little friend.

Re:Obama's G-string?

[Anonymous Coward]

Life must be good when an AC has to critique another AC. However, I fail to find how xenophobic fits in to the op's statement. Perhaps you can enlighten us about what it was, I'm curious, would it be the g-string, Obama, or minorities? Or do you not know what xenophobic means and are just repeating it because big words make you sound intelligent?

Uh huh

[bm_luethke]

OK, maybe this is the wave of the future. I will not say it isn't - but that promo didn't sell it. It looked like what they claim to be - based on a Hollywood custom script. I want to see how I would use this in the real world - I'm not going to be standing around and moving those text blocks around, nor did I really see why having that matrix of Asian language characters (I don't know which language - I can't read any of them) in that grid would help someone deal with the massive amount of letters anyway. It seems to me since most of them are based on pen strokes that that the arrangement is - hmm - only made to be visual appealing to westerners (which I am one of).

I had used an SGI CAVE a few years back for a few different things (well, others in the group I worked with wrote the stuff - I played with it simply because it was neat) and I see many similarities. Given that products history I do not see that as a Good Thing for them. In fact they seem to be a good 5-10 years behind the curve - the last time I used one was five years ago and they were already doing all this nice stuff from what I can see.

It was really good for things that were meant to be visual. For instance they had this really neat data set of a human (some convict that donated their body to science) and you could interact with a 3-dimensional representation of them. Their body "displayed" (or rather appeared too) in the center of the CAVE and then you could select (using a wand that the system kept tract of it's position in the room) a "window" and move/drag it around and see just that slice of the body in a high amount of detail. You could lock that and have as many 2-d slices going through the body as you want.

They also had a car wreck that you could do a similar thing - but you watched the "slice" as the wreck happened in real time. They actually crashed a car to get the data.

There were also quite a number of specialized tasks that benefited from it and I still run into some today.

But, other than that we pretty much played quake on it. Why? Well most data doesn't really need that type of visual representation. Our current screens work quite well and you are simply adding overhead for the heck of it. Even for those that the system worked well for they still did OK on a normal screen. A large monitor costs a few thousand, these systems cost a few hundred thousand. Well, you should get the picture there (and knowing that I worked in a govt research lab at the time should tell you why no one cared that it was a few hundred thousand more).

This system has the 3-d input but not the nice 3-d output that the SGI systems had so I can't see it working any better - it is just as specialized hardware intensive and I bet just as expensive. Even if it isn't - is the increased productivity for those specialized application going to be worth the cost? I also bet not.

You will note that even a group that has quite a bit of experience making true Hollywood scenes couldn't come up with better. Perfect for massive data - uh huh - and what did that wonderful things you show of arcs moving around *really* give you? You mean where you put a circle over one of the other circles and it turned yellow?

Is there *any* reason whatsoever that the majority of that could not be accomplished with a mouse and a large LCD? Nope - so why purchase this? At least the pretty much failed SGI stuff had the whole 3-d output to go with it - and trust me, there is no experience in the world like playing quake in a fully 3-d environment that you are freaking standing in the middle of and the virtual gun actually is being held by your hand. But then - how many are going to pay 250k for that?

This type of thing is so 1990's and dot com - ten years ago these guys would have been flush with cash from countless venture capitalist. Heck, their video even screams late 90's and early 00's. As is they better really be able to back up the claims they make to even have a shot at it, let alone be truly successful. I didn't particularly see anyt

Re:Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese character is æ 'shou', means hand. Somewhat apt for a gesture driven interface.

Re:Uh huh

[Anonymous Coward]

Bugger, Slashdot doesn't support Chinese characters? Suppose that's one way to slow the Chinese invasion of the internet down...

Re:Uh huh

[zwei2stein]

The g-speak platform is in use today at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies and universities. Application areas include:

        * Financial services
        * Telepresence
        * Network operations centers
        * Logistics and supply chain management
        * Military and intelligence
        * Automotive
        * Natural resource exploration
        * Data mining and analytics
        * Medical imaging
        * High-touch retail
        * Trade shows and theatrical presentations
        * Consumer electronics interfaces

Oblong delivers room-sized and single-user g-speak environments as turnkey products.

A software development kit that runs on both Linux and Mac OS X is available. Applications are source-compatible across both operating systems and can run on ordinary desktop and laptop computers in addition to gesturally-equipped g-speak machines and clusters.

You were saying?

Re:Uh huh

[QuantumG]

Please.

People manage to sell plenty of CAVE systems too.

Re:Uh huh

[dr_canak]

Well,

I can't speak for the parent poster, as maybe he didn't see this list. I did. And I still feel the same as the parent poster (and what many other posters have pointed out). Instead of showing a flashy video with a remarkably high "gee whiz" factor for the PHB's of the world, why not show some actual real world applications? Why not show how this thing is currently being used by some of these fortune 50 companies? At the least, present a case study or two that demonstrates the advantages of this system over a 2D environment in a much more precise manner.

For my money, there is no question it's a cool video, and certainly engenders a "I wish I had one" kind of feeling. Even though I don't have the vaguest idea what I would do with it :-). I also agree with the previous poster who pointed out that, in the late 90's, venture capitalists would have piled on to the technology simply because of the high "gee whiz" factor. PHB's fall for it time and time again and this interface certainly has it.

just my .02,
jeff

Re:Uh huh

[zwei2stein]

Chances are that they have signed NDAs and can't show real world applications. I don't see fortune 50 company being comfortable with video of their internal applications being all over internet.

And I would not expect them to sink funds just to create "showoff" applications loaded with ideas and then let it loose on net (for not reason).

Re:Uh huh

[OpenMind(tm)]

Well, the phrasing stops just short of saying that Fortune 50 companies are actually using the platform in all these application areas. I'm curious whether these companies are using g-speak for critical work or just trying it out in pilot/research deployments.

I think that we're not giving these guys an entirely fair hearing, in that most posters seem to be tying all their claims to the interface, when the platform that they are hyping has networking and interop components. I'm hoping that their "large datasets" claim is pointed in this direction, as the zoomable spacial visualizations that they show in the demo are 1) pretty easy replicated in a traditional desktop environment and 2) not really efficient ways to interact with complex datasets.

I think that the user interface is, as many have said, of limited use. For most tasks, including most spatial tasks like CAD work, freespace manipulation seems very slow compared to current methods, not to mention more demanding of precision motor control. Looking closely at the demo, it appears that not much actual freespace manipulation is going on anyway. The tasks displayed mostly composed of pointing (albeit multi-surface pointing) and a gestural command language.

I think it would probably be most effective for collaborative use, which is one area where today's dominant metaphors are least effective. I also think that without some kind of haptic feedback, it will never be transformative, even for the tasks that it is suited for.

Some if their key premises, such as "Gestural input is measurably more efficient at performing complex navigation, sorting and selection tasks." seem untested. I'm interested to see what the empirical human computer interaction community thinks about this system.

Re:Uh huh

[bm_luethke]

To a large extent I didn't need to see it - it's the same list SGI trotted out for their immersive systems. As someone else above me pointed out - SGI sold a number of them too, and where are they now?

The interface has been done a number of times, even in full 3-d immersive environments. It's just not a useful interface outside of a few niche applications. It's not new.

For those applications, yes it is great. So, how many millions was spent developing this for what - 20-30 sales? Can you charge them enough to recoupe your cost and have your company stay in the black?

SGI, along with a few others (none as had near the product SGI had) say no - you can not. While the interface is *really* nice are you going to spend 500-750k on a system for a project that's annual budget is 400k? Nope. And that's being generous - OK, this thing is great for CAD (as was the CAVE, and amongst the things it was pushed for) - now justify why I need to spend that amount of money when a 5000 dollar program does 90% as good.

At some point in the future it will become viable for certain applications. Heck, as I said, there was nothing like playing a video game using a CAVE (even true on the ImmersaDesk with 3-d rendering turned off). Before I graduated college I did enough CAD work to know how beneficial this would be for that system. And, of course, as one of the industries listed it is tailor made for the defense industry.

And yet - are they going to pay that much for the system? Defense - maybe, SGI surely counted on it and it didn't quite happen. But then, at some point it will - maybe these guys have the timing needed and will be the first. I know I would still love one of the older SGI ImmersaDesks in my house.

Little Roma -- Noisy office

[zooblethorpe]

In the meantime my office is enough of a nightmare without people gesticulating and yelling at their computers like Italian villagers.

+1 Funny. I'm only lucky I wasn't drinking anything at the time I read this.

Cheers,

Mechanical Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that requires more mechanical/muscle power than that required for simple keystrokes or mouse movements will never take off.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[supernova_hq]

I don't forsee this technology being used on personal home computers in the near future.

Where I do anticipate (and look forward to) seeing it is for interactive public displays. It would be a very cool interface to have for a 3d map and directory in a mall or an informative display at a museum or aquarium.

As for home use, it could be used for family gatherings and birthday/wedding parties. Set it up with your DJ software and photos, then let your guests check out photos, pick out music to play, etc.

Most wedding parties, etc have a slideshow going on, why not let your guests upload photos as they take them, add them to the slideshow, maybe browse through them manually, change the background music, etc. It could make for a very entertaining and rewarding device to have for such occasions, even if you just rented them out.

Minority Report? REALLY???

[ExtraT]

Why would anybody take seriously an interface put forth by a stupid movie like Minority Report? The people that designed that "cool" interface for the film couldn't even grasp the notion of data sharing between terminals 2 meters away: the data is copied between them using a PHYSICAL STORAGE DEVICE.

In short: unimaginative pretentious crap.

what the hell for?

[CarpetShark]

Why would a small startup want to host its own videos when youtube will happily take the strain? The only reasons to do it yourself are a) high-availability, if you can really afford to set that up and really need it b) ego. Since most people don't actually care whether they get a video on youtube or direct from your site, b is mostly irrelevant here.

p.s.: I don't think "common" means what you think it means ;)

Re:what the hell for?

[tepples]

Why would a small startup want to host its own videos when youtube will happily take the strain? The only reasons to do it yourself are a) high-availability, if you can really afford to set that up and really need it b) ego.

And c) being able to post your video to online forums that have a policy against linking to YouTube or other video sharing sites that allow swearing in user comments.

Re:what the hell for?

[Knara]

If you're a start-up and putting this into a news release, you're not worried about the random website that has people caring about whether you link to Youtube or not. Especially since news sites and increasingly embedding Youtube instead of sending you to the site.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[patro]

I really don't want an interface where I have to gesticulate at a computer

Could be a great workout, though. Imagine coding with this interface, Lot's of exercise. No more Mr. Fat Geek.

You have it exactly backwards

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

You should have RTFA. The interface in Minority Report is based on Oblong's G-speak, not vice versa. In fact, G-speak has been in development for more than a decade, and the creator of G-speak was the science advisor on the film. so if anybody is "unimaginative" it's the makers of the film, not the makers of this interface.

Re:You have it exactly backwards

[ExtraT]

LOL, what you just wrote only reinforces what I said earlier. The interface shown in the film represents the ideal g-speak is seeking to attain - and this ideal is not impressive.

Re:You have it exactly backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. +1 informative

Not from Minority Report

[Animats]

Actually, that idea first appeared in film in Johnny Mnemonic.

Autodesk put considerable effort into virtual reality in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The hope was that it would make it easier to design 3D objects. It didn't. The fundamental problem is that positioning your hands precisely in free space by eye, not touch, is slow and inaccurate. It looks really cool, but it's like trying to do precision work wearing mittens. Humans are much more precise when they have a surface to work against.

It's not a technology problem.

Re:Not from Minority Report

[thbb]

There is a fundamental distinction between the minority report UI and the Johnny Mnemonic one: the first is "augmented reality": the user is not cut from the real world ; the real and virtual realities blend in to empower each-other.
In Johnny Mnemonic's version, this is pure "virtual reality", with clumsy interaction techniques at best.

Still, the idea is far form perfect:
--
The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years, radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then, as the technology became more sophisticated, the controls were made touch sensitive ... now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant you had to stay infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme. D. Adams, The hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, Chap. 2. 1979.

Re:Not from Minority Report

[Animats]

now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope.

Control by hand-waving was a popular idea in science fiction from the 1930s or so. It probably first appeared in Wells' "Things to Come". The concept came from the early "electric eye" systems (just photocells) and the theremin. A theremin really is played by waving your hands around; one hand controls pitch, and the other hand controls volume. Anybody can make screeching noises with one, but it's very difficult to play one well.

Comic is on topic

[TheLink]

How's the comic offtopic?

Back in my school days, one form of _punishment_ was being made to hold your hands up or out for many minutes. Imagine if you had to keep your arms extended for so long - talk about asking for a new set of RSI problems.

The full 3-D gesture stuff is overrated.

What would help me a lot more is the ability to quickly switch to a particular window in mind:

http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121349

Even if you don't have all your windows maximized, it would save a fair bit of time. Alt-Tab only works well if you are switching between two windows.

You can kind of do this on the Linux/BSD console but it's more limited. I'm looking for something like the text console but for the GUI and where you get to pick your "working set" of 9 or so windows from as many windows you have open.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

"The full 3-D gesture stuff is overrated."

Personally it simply hasn't been well done yet, and 3D stuff does not equaqlly do well in all types of applications. Use the Right interface for the job(tm). So for some applications 3D stuff most likely is going to have some serious bonus's.

Personally I'd love to use my eyes instead in addition to a mouse to track when doing daily work, instead of having to push buttons one can just blink or overlap where the mouse is pointed with ones eye.

Re:Comic is on topic

[mr_matticus]

You can kind of do this on the Linux/BSD console but it's more limited. I'm looking for something like the text console but for the GUI and where you get to pick your "working set" of 9 or so windows from as many windows you have open.

Sounds like a combination of Spaces and Exposé fits that bill exactly. KDE already has the multiple virtual desktops, and I'm sure there's some Exposé clone for Linux out there somewhere.

Re:Comic is on topic

[dreamchaser]

You would be surprised at how hard it is to keep your eyes steady. Unless there were an easy way to turn it on and off, you'd find your cursor jumping around quite a bit.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

check out the window manager "awsome" it has the exact functionality you desire

Re:Comic is on topic

[teslar]

What would help me a lot more is the ability to quickly switch to a particular window in mind: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121349 [kde.org] Even if you don't have all your windows maximized, it would save a fair bit of time. Alt-Tab only works well if you are switching between two windows.

Another semi-solution I guess, but KDE has the option to "show Window list". I've mapped that to Window+W. It doesn't get you a subset of windows, it gets you all windows grouped by desktop, but if all the windows you need are on one desktop, then that kinda does the trick. And if not, it's still an easy-to-read list

Re:Comic is on topic

[RulerOf]

What would help me a lot more is the ability to quickly switch to a particular window in mind:

With Vista or OS X, if you're using either Alt-Tab, Flip3D, or Expose, you can click on the window or the Icon that represents it to do your switch.

As far as how the qualities of each feature enable this, Vista's alt-tab/Flip3D and OS X's Expose are the best of them since they give a live preview of the window, which does help a lot when switching between a very large number of applications. Also, you can use the mousewheel to quickly scroll through all of them to make your choice.

I've been extremely impressed with Compiz before, though I've never used Linux long enough to get the finer details, but aren't these live previews and mouse/mousewheel interaction supported in it? ...Or am I totally off base in assuming Compiz works with KDE? :P

Re:Comic is on topic

[empaler]

Try nigh-impossible.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several window manager for linux that are closer to what you are asking for than KDE or Gnome. Enlightenment, Fluxbox, and ion3 just to name a few. ion3 is my personal favorite, keyboard-oriented navigation, tiling window model instead of floating windows, and additional virtual desktops are lightweight enough so that you generally just make enough so that every app has it's own desktop, unless you have a reason to look at two apps at the same time. The others I mentioned share the lightweight virtual desktop model, but aren't quite as lightweight as ion3.

There are also several others I've looked at that have different approaches to what you are asking for, but I can't recall the names offhand. Look around, you'd be surprised at the functionality you can find.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

wmii, dwm, etc.

-yb

Re:Comic is on topic

[jebrew]

I seem to remember a camera or two having the feature of auto-focusing where your were looking. Seemed to work fine.

Does anyone remember this? I pretty sure my dad had a camera that did this. A Nikon if I remember correctly...which I usually don't.

Re:Comic is on topic

[jebrew]

Ah, found it in Canon EOS

Re:Comic is on topic

[TheLink]

But I want to directly go to a particular _window_ with a key combo NOT go to a desktop or "space".

Going to a desktop/space or popping up a list of windows for selection is a _waste_ of time if I already know exactly which window I want.

I suggest that most people are able to remember more than 2 windows AND also often work with more than 2 windows at a time. Alt-tab only works quickly for working with 2 windows - it is clumsy for more.

Multiple desktops are useful for keeping the windows organized, but once you know which windows you want to work with in a particular context, it would be faster my way.

I do not want to have to lift my hand from the keyboard and use the mouse to pick windows - because that would be much slower.

It would be good to be able to quickly set:

winkey+1 = editor #1
winkey+2 = editor #2
winkey+3 = shell
winkey+4 = log of messages
winkey+5 = Documentation page
winkey+6 = RFC
winkey+7 = Browser window #1
winkey+8 = Browser window #2

What you do is just click on all the windows you want then press the "renumber stack" key (perhaps there should be a "reverse renumber stack" key to allow people to choose between clicking on the windows in order and in reverse order. Maybe winkey+0 and winkey+"-".

Re:Comic is on topic

[mr_matticus]

So do it. Keyboard shortcuts are pretty flexible with the right tools.

Personally, I don't see the problem with using either the mouse or the arrow keys. There are Mac utilities to do it, and it's pretty damn easy for Windows users: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/keyboard-ninja/keyboard-ninja-assign-a-hotkey-to-any-window/. KDE provides a pretty decent keyboard shortcuts configuration tool, khotkey.

Re:Comic is on topic

[ThatGuyJon]

Try xmonad. It's a tiling window manager, so it's a little different from what you'll be used to, but it seems to fit your description. It's worth playing around with, and I believe it is possible to integrate it into gnome and KDE.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Anonymous Coward]

How is that different to a combination of exposé and spaces for Mac OS X? I just want my windows to go away when I don't need them, but be there at the flick of a mouse when I do.

Re:Comic is on topic

[SanityInAnarchy]

This doesn't help address the point at hand -- which is a valid point -- but KDE4 does have an Expose clone built-in.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Eighty7]

Well I started something at the compiz forums. You might have something at the end of thanksgiving break if you're very lucky.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Eighty7]

Oh you don't want to use the mouse. I missed that first time around. Too bad, I don't want to use the keyboard :p

Re:Comic is on topic

[TheLink]

If there's a better way than using a keyboard to get text from my mind to a computer, I'll be happy to use it. But the mouse sure isn't it. For "pointing" the mouse is far far better than the keyboard, but much "office" work will be faster if you can reduce the need to use the mouse.

Brain-computer interfaces still have some way to go.

Re:Comic is on topic

[Eighty7]

If you don't already have it working, my advice is to post on that thread. It won't be any harder for me to add keyboard stuff along with what I'm doing for the mouse.

Re:Comic is on topic

[TheLink]

Sorry... Too lazy to create yet another account :).

Anyway the thing is most GUIs already keep track of (all?) the past windows in order of last clicked (removing dupes). This is for the alt tab feature - when you hold down alt and keep pressing and releasing tab, you move backwards in that list, once you release alt you end up with the selected window.

What I'm suggesting for GUIs to do is: when the user presses alt+0 (or winkey+0), just look at that list/stack of past windows, and then assign the most recent 9 to alt+1 to alt+9 (or winkey+1 to winkey+9 or whatever works). The windows stay assigned to those keys until alt+0 is pressed again.

An additional thing: perhaps alt+ "=" (equals sign) followed by alt+number would have the current foreground window replace the corresponding numbered window in the list, so that you can replace windows without doing an alt+0 style renumber (which might be undesirable - once you have stuff nicely remembered :) ).

I don't know how easy that is to implement. But I hope at least a fair number of people would find it useful.

I sort of agree

[thermian]

Yes, in real world applications this would likely be frustrating, but in games it would prod serious buttock.

After all, games are designed to entertain, not maximise your productivity.

I've been a programmer for five years now, in physics/graphics/biosciences/allkindsofstuff, and I can't think of a single application beyond display of datasets at conferences where this might be useful.

As a replacement to the traditional PowerPoint/PDF conference presentation, it would likely prove entertaining, or at least make your presentation stand out.
Also possibly for demonstrating concepts in lectures *maybe*. For day to day use in a commercial environment, forget it.

Of course the emacs people will all claim they had this decades ago, good old 'C-m C-x spatial' or somesuch.

Re:I sort of agree

[TheLink]

Actually from games like starcraft, you can see that sustained and peak "actions per second" can be quite important. An interface that can let you increase that will be great.

Thing is, maybe just a keyboard and _two_ mice (each with a fair number of mouse buttons) and some optional foot pedals would do far more in increasing the sustained actions per second than fancy gorilla arm stuff.

For example for an FPS you could have movement control with one mouse and one screen/window. And weapon control with another mouse and window at the same time.

For RTS games one mouse could be used for maintainance and building and the other for attacking.

Two mice + keyboard is a cheap setup. You could easily leave out the foot pedals to cut the cost (they don't add as much bang for buck).

Re:I sort of agree

[maxume]

Presentations shouldn't really involve much of an interface. They should be somewhat canned (so, for this thing, triggering preplanned animations/flythroughs and so forth). Maybe a discussion would involve interfacing with the data.

This is one of the things that really irritated me about all the election coverage technology non-sense; instead of using the nice tools to present more information more clearly (which should be their objective), they spent a huge amount of time talking about the damn tools and how freaking gee-whiz they were.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[ion.simon.c]

Hell I don't even want 3D desktops and transparent windows

Translucent windows are a godsend for me. I <3 being able to pack 2->3x more information in the same screen space. I'm rather unimpressed by 3D desktops and effects like the Comipz cube.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[rusl]

*IF* it can be flexible enough to not give you repetitive strain injuries. Almost all of these "human" UI will give you that because they have to only accept a very limited range of motion in order to be useful. For 15 minutes, no problem but for days and weeks it has to be really flexible and not just packaged as human compatable.

Good for quite some application realms

[DollyTheSheep]

While I agree with some posters, that these MR inspired interfaces will not replace the mouse/keyboard interfaces we now have, I'm a bit surprised at the level of unimaginativeness here.

These interfaces are definitely interesting for several application realms: CAD/CAM, drug research (remember Jurassic Park?), x-ray crystallography, image manipulation.

From all the Minority Report "based" interfaces seen so far, this is one of the best one, it seems.

Re:Good for quite some application realms

[ExtraT]

OK, let's talk about CAD.

CAD are tools for engineers. As such they have some requirements that might be hard to understand to people that think in terms of pure 3D design:

1. Precision - the drawing must be geometrically precise. And I mean REALLY precise
2. The design must conform to certain manufacturing principles. For example, the ways that materials can be machined are limited and as such, not every single form is attaineable in the manufacturing process.
3. the software must, without violating the first two principles, allow for maximum freedom of design.

Unfortunately, fancy interfaces of like this g-speak have NOTHING to do with these three principles. Such interfaces are nice for fancy presentation - essentially showing off.

In short, CAD is a highly specialized tool for highly trained professionals, not a trinket for presentations and customer bullshitting.

You are all out of your minds.

[w3bd4wg]

WTF? You guys are all way off base. Use your imagination. Hell even standing while doing computer work would be nice. This isn't here to replace the mouse. Its here to supplement a new interface to a computer. If any of you had any imagination at all you would understand that this opens doors for a lot of different ideas, user interfaces, and general user work. This would make life interactive instead of me sitting on my ass all day and staring into my LCD monitors. It seems to me that it will make complex things simple to people who could never have the will to do it or learn it.

Touchpad better still

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of hearing about all these things that will replace the mouse. The mouse will be replaced one day, but not until something comes out which is better, not merely cooler.

For me, the mouse has already been replaced by the touchpad on my laptop.

It's way more efficient to use that to constantly move my hand and arm to/from the keyboard.

So touchpad is best, that is, until I master vimperator - and then total domination of the universe will swiftly follow...

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[Haeleth]

I would suggest that since humans are a very visual-thinking species...

But even that, right there, can be disputed. There's a reason we abstracted our written records into modern alphabets, syllabaries, and logographs, instead of sticking with the original "visual" pictograms. Text has fought pictures -- and it was text that won.

People have been trying to introduce visual representations of things for decades now. But for example "visual" programming (in the flowchart sense, not the interface design sense) never caught on, except in the niche case of UML, which is only used as support for traditional pages of text. And for all the Jurassic Park-style attempts to give our operating systems "visual" interfaces, it's pretty much still all text -- menus are lists of text, file browsers are lists of text, spreadsheets and databases are grids of text, word processors are pages of text... you know, we seem to be coming back to that T-word over and over again.

Even in cases where pictures are used (pretty much limited to icons on toolbars), a heck of a lot of people find the pictures completely unintuitive, and are totally unable to guess what they mean without being taught; faced with a new toolbar, people resort to hovering over the buttons, waiting for the text to appear; they then learn the picture as a symbol, a modern-day pictograph if you will, and most people are subsequently confused if they ever encounter a different picture, even if it's a different picture of exactly the same concept.

Are we really as visual as all that?

Minority Report

[jandersen]

I don't quite understand why it is that people seem to roll out "Minority Report" as the ultimate in cool and useful computer interfaces.

First the coolness: the book may or may not be good; I haven't read it, but it is story from 1956, and thus likely to be a long way off the mark anyway. Entertaining? Probably, knowing Philip K. Dick. But, having seen that smarmy git, Tom Cruise, in the movie, totally and utterly turned me off; there are very few actors in the world less convincing. Coolness simply doesn't come anywhere near to it. For coolness give me a direct brain link or something a bit clunky and charming like the voice interface in Star Trek.

Then the usefulness of it; how can it be considered useful that your data is spread out over what seems to be a holographic curtain from floor to ceiling? Where you have to gingerly touch something mysterious and cryptic flickering away in mid-air? Apart from the gorilla arm aspect of it, that is just about as far from useful as you can get; the size and amount of detail (as shown in the movie) makes it impossible to take in and aving to interact by waving your fingers around in thin air requires keen eyesight and good hand-eye coordination, and the lack of tactile feed-back means that you will have to rely on your eyes only, which slows you down. It would be more efficient to use clay-tablets and an abacus.

So please stop rolling out "Minority Report" to describe every innovation in the area of holography; it simply detracts from the significance of the news.

Here we go again

[Waccoon]

I am so sick of these demos. Next people will be showing off a new keyboard interface that lets you play music by wiggling your fingers in thin air... or write a letter by waving a virtual pencil in thin air... or drive your car by pointing in the direction you want to go and yell "vroom!"

People need tactile input and feedback to do anything meaningful. What is so wrong with having to touch a surface? Why not make a small, wireless glove with pressure sensors on the fingers that allows any surface to act like a trackpad? You won't need to lug around a tablet PC around your own home anymore or set up a camera and have all these damn IR lights all over your body (and be sure to stay away from the Christmas tree or even an open window). You could even use the glove interface by rubbing the palm of your other hand.

The only non-mouse, non-trackpad surface that would be useful is some kind of trackball that could be used independently of the pointing device that allows you to rotate 3D objects, as with CAD work. Stop making visual demos of people flailing their arms in front of cameras, and work on more drivers to use the interfaces we already have in more meaningful ways. Why can't I zoom and pan around my Photoshop images by manipulating a joystick mounted to the left of my tablet? Why am I still restricted to all these idiotic Alt-Something key combinations, rather than letting me use some custom analog controls?

The interface of the future is one that I can configure myself.

Re:Here we go again

[marcosdumay]

"The only non-mouse, non-trackpad surface that would be useful is some kind of trackball that could be used independently of the pointing device that allows you to rotate 3D objects"

Hey, that would be nice. I've seen some trackballs that let you move on 3D (what ordinary mouse does quite well, thank you) but never something that lets me rotate with any precision. That could also be quite cheap... Hey, maybe I have a business plan to make, good bye :)

Re:Here we go again

[Waccoon]

I do recall seeing such a device for use on a Mentor Graphics workstation over 15 years ago. It had 6 knobs, 3 for rotating on the object axis, and 3 for rotating relative to the camera's point of view.

I always wondered why I never saw anything like that since all the workstations were replaced by PCs and Macs. Surely there has to be some market demand for such devices.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for more laptop manufacturers to offer trackballs as an option. I appreciate people trying new things, but we already have a large number of practical input devices. People just won't support them!

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[Anonymous Coward]

The mouse was suppose to be used with a 5 key chord keyboard. That allowed you to use the mouse and type without having to move your hands away from the mouse.

I've used the same idea for cad work, and its a big boost to productivity. I use a programmable xkeys keypad with one hand, and mouse with the other. The keypad lets me input numbers and my most used commands. Only needing to use the keyboard to type text, which I really only do once the drawing is complete, and notes need to be added.

I wouldn't want to be holding my hands up all day, that would be silly. I'd rather go back to a drafting board if that was the case.

There are other tools for moving around in 3d space, such as the space ball, if that is what is required.

Not again....

[1u3hr]

Search " minority"

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Obscura Digital Demos "Minority Report"-Like Display
On August 6th, 2008 with 124 comments
Barence and other readers sent along word of a demonstration by Obscura Digital of a new technology it's dubbed a multi-touch hologram reminiscent of...

Touch Screen Tech Comes of Age
On February 3rd, 2008 with 78 comments
pottercw writes "Good summary of today's touch-screen technologies on Computerworld the obvious Apple iPhone and Microsoft Surface, plus projected...

"Interface-Free" Touch Screen at TED
On October 30th, 2006 with 194 comments
Down8 writes, "Jeff Han, an NYU researcher, has recently shown off his 'interface free' touch screen technology at the TEDTalks in Monterey. Some sweet...

Correct me, but are all these breathless announcements still vapourware?

I'm getting a bit tired of this bullshit. It was just a stunt, it looked cool but completely impractical. And it's not like "Minority Report" (2002) actually invented the idea, even in the movies. Off the top of my head, same concept was used in "Johnny Mnemonic" (1995), Disclosure (1994), "Hitchhiker's Guide" (1978 (radio version)).

Re:Not again....

[fixitman86]

I've had the chance to play with this thing. It is indeed, very cool. Also the API is very good. I know I have several projects going on right now that will benefit from it. They have less to do with video and more to do with audio. Combining this with a WFS or ambisonic array of speakers could be absolutely amazing because audio can be truly 3-dimensional where video at that resolution is currently limited to screens or 3d via glasses.

I want a touch sensitive "mouse pad"

[clickety6]

one that I can use without the mouse but with my fingers instead.

one finger tap, left click
two finger tap, right click
one finger drag, move pointer
two finger drag, scroll
three finger tap, zoom in/out pad./screen mapping for more accurate work...

Re:I want a touch sensitive "mouse pad"

[Anonymous Coward]

That's called a touch pad.

And it already exists.

www.newegg.com

Not much progress since 1993...

[thbb]

Using datagloves, I did quite a bit of work in 1993 to see how the sort of UIs that we see in the Minority Report could work.

It turns out that there are 2 issues to overcome:
- Fatigue: the gesture vocabulary had to consist only of short sequences.
- "immersion syndrome": whatever I do can be interpreted against my will.

By designing the gesture vocabulary so that it would require alternating tense postures and relaxed aiming gestures, it was possible to overcome those issues in a pretty satisfactory way. Tension is particularly important, as it conveys intention: if you stress "Go There", people (and machines) can detect the fact that you want something to happen, as compared to using a monocord voice.

see Charade: Remote Control Of Objects Using Free-Hand Gestures published in Communications of the ACM in 1994 for more details.

--
The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years, radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then, as the technology became more sophisticated, the controls were made touch sensitive ... now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant you had to stay infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme. D. Adams, The hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, Chap. 2. 1979.

Spaceballs!

[Explodicle]

At work (I'm a design engineer) I use a spaceball for 3D navigation and a mouse for the 2D stuff. I don't need to put on some silly glove, it's cheap, and it all fits on a normal desk. I assure you, I could have done all of the operations they just performed in the video, but faster and more comfortably.

Re:Spaceballs!

[dave420]

No. The video shows all kinds of stuff that the spaceball can't do. The spaceball is just a 3d mouse - the website even says that. The gesture interface is something completely different.

Re:Spaceballs!

[Explodicle]

Good point, bong420! Your armchair engineer understanding of a device you just read about totally trumps my years of hands-on experience. What he's got there is a 6DOF input device (the position of his hand) and a few bytes he can express with his fingers. You get the exact same functionality with a spaceball, but without waving your arms all over the place.

Re:Spaceballs!

[dave420]

Oh so it magically gives you gesture and position recognition for both hands? Brilliant! I guess I missed that bit on the website. I don't doubt you've been using it for years, I do doubt you understanding what was in the video.

What are the power requirements?

[oDDmON oUT]

Given that the new paradigm is "Reduce, reuse, recycle", how does a multiscreen, multi-projector, multi-everything system reduce my carbon footprint?

No, really, I'm curious.

Zen

[mfh]

The problem is you need to be able to TOUCH, I mean really touch, to truly interact.

Zen masters agree that we are all not really here and therefore we can never truly touch anything. The ability to affect a change using a robust 3d environment is the only avenue left for UI. After that we'll be looking towards the 4th dementia. This project will be essential for piloting deep space at high speeds above anything we have conceived. Having a working model ready so early only assists in the other projects.

Amazing

[fairymuff]

It's unreal what they can do with this system. The video on the Oblong site was pretty cool, especially generating flight paths, and the video splicing. Imagine the new ways we could learn to interact with data. Looks like we are starting to catch up to science fiction for once.

Re:Comic is on topic Sphere OS

[cdpage]

2 or 3 years ago i saw a little video for an OS i thought was called SphereOS....but i can't seem to find it now. It was similar to expose now. this might be what you are looking for... but i would expect it would have some heavy memory requirements.

CNN must be giddy with excitement!

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! Now CNN will spend even more time showing the best political team in front of the even more magical screen. Can't wait to see Anderson Cooper waving his hands around.

Re:Comic is on topic Sphere OS

[cdpage]

SphereXP http://video.google.ca/videosearch?hl=en&q=spherexp&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

WTB Mouse control of cursor

[Cowmonaut]

Actually I wouldn't mind (hah) having control of my cursor via my eye movements. I just would want a way to toggle it on and off and for different devices on the fly.

I typically have 3 machines going at once in front of me and would *love* to be able to use only one input device and it would be so much faster if I could just look at where i need the cursor to be...

Probably when I'm dead they'll have it to the level I wish they had it at now, but I know *my* productivity would go up dramatically. The only thing I'd worry about is latency when I open a remote session.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[hesiod]

There are other tools for moving around in 3d space, such as the space ball/quote.

Or a Winnebago with wings.

Re:Comic is on topic Sphere OS

[Tastecicles]

SphereXP is a nice toy, but you do need some serious hardware for it. I had it to the point of just about usable by clustering two machines: one had an Athlon64 3200+ and 2GB of RAM and rendered via an NVidia GeForce 6200V+ 256MB GDDR, the backend box was a P4 2.8 and handled everything else (eight virtual machines sharing 3GB) - I had the virtual desktops rendered on the Sphere interface. No one of these machines could handle everything on its own. And while fun to tweak, there was no practical use or a pseudo-3D environment on a two dimensional screen so that didn't last long. A better immersive interface, to my mind, would be involving stereoscopic glasses with an image overlap. Or, go with what I've done in my garage: two projectors set at right angles and using a homemade Dragonfly* cursor device to move around...

*this is a device that looks like an insect; the sensors on the probes determine the spatial coordinates, in realtime, of the device which is held in the hand and uses the thumb to operate two buttons and a trackball. Takes some getting used to unless you've used a Logitech Explorer trackball which is the base of the unit I built. I'm aware of no commercial version of this device, the first time I came across it was while doing some work with a researcher on the Coven project, where it was constructed in-house and named for what it looked like.

  For those who want to try this out but can't stretch to two projectors, use two flat panels, preferably large ones, set at right angles to each other. You'll get some idea of immersion with your eyes in the line between the two outer edges of the panel bezels. Either way, you'll find yourself going through a lot less hardware due to burnout if you use two laptops to drive the displays (nothing special, that's all they'll be doing) and a third, more powerful one as the user interface.

There was a modification written for UT 2003 where you could use the display setup as described without having to write your own interface(!), but I don't know what happened to that. Oh, yes, that was fun.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[Gulthek]

In other words:

"I learned all this once, stop all further development here please."

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[hesiod]

I understand what you mean, but I disagree with your reasoning. I don't think text wins out because it was less visual, but because it is more standard and simple. It is easier for an individual to express a higher degree of detail without artistic talent.

For instance, if we were using pictograms, and I wanted to write a story about a crow, a raven, and a blackbird, I would need decent painting skill and you would need to be an ornithologist to make any sense of it. With text, however, it is easy to simply and quickly convey these ideas since "raven", "crow", and "blackbird" are more easily distinguishable when written than when seen as a crudely drawn image. That does not mean we are less visually oriented though, because the three are pretty easily distinguishable from each other when seen in real life.

Even in cases where pictures are used (pretty much limited to icons on toolbars), a heck of a lot of people find the pictures completely unintuitive

I would say that's probably more the fault of the icon designer, the people who name their programs, and the image size limitation. Seriously, even if you just had the words the image represents, most of them wouldn't be close to intuitive either. If you didn't know FireFox was a web browser, the word would mean nothing as well. Who would think "Vegas Pro" was a video studio? Sounds like poker training software. "Safari"? Must be an African vacation simulator.

It also doesn't help that most things referred-to on a computer are abstract concepts, like the Internet. There is no direct visual representation of the Internet because you would have to draw a billion tiny computers connected together to do so effectively (in order to distinguish from just "a network").

Even so, some icons ARE intuitive when they have real-world counterparts. For instance, how many EMail programs do you know of that have an icon that includes an envelope? Quite a few, and if I saw an icon with an envelope I would assume it had to do with mail, even if I was not aware of the EMail concept. An icon with a printer? Assuming I knew what one was, I'd assume it was a way to control or set up a printer, or a way to print documents. Same goes for a scanner. A speaker icon? Related to sound somehow.

Icons are not always as bad as you seem to think, if there is a way to make it intuitive, and the designer puts some thought into it.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[maxume]

Error messages aren't a problem with current GUIs, they are a problem with current software systems.

Ideally, there would not be any error messages (and it would be trivially to undo almost any operation, but trivial to bypass that undo if the user wanted to destroy information).

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[Spudds]

All the things you mentioned could be done with a simple touch screen interface that we have now. All you need is an intuitive interface.
In fact, adding gestures and gloves and what-not would be a hindrance mainly because all the guests would have to figure out what gestures did what. On the other hand, everybody knows how to point and click, even if it's just with their fingers.

Gorilla arm is right.

[RulerOf]

These interfaces pose great potential for some things, but what we really need is a 3D control system that will enable people with the option to either control it in full 3D with crazy arm waving effects, or control it while sitting on our asses eating lunch and browsing slashdot.

Someone'll get it some day.

Since 1984?

[bodhisattva]

Do you mean since the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984?

Doctors will be thankful

[DrYak]

As a medical doctor, let me say that I am very thankful for Oblong securing my job's future by providing a whole new crop of repeated stress injuries~

---

More seriously :
Well, at least the display is at eye level requiring no neck strain (unlike microsoft's active table) and at a certain distance (with the general population getting older, Presbyopia is an important factor to take into account).
But still, this for 8 hours a day ?!?

It's about the 'real-world pixels'...

[TechnicolourSquirrel]

Ignore the dorky gestures and focus on the 'real-world pixels' -- pixels that are aware of not only their coordinates on a digital surface, but also their coordinates in the room at large. This is the big leap forward here, not all the arm-waving. Try to see the whole, bud.

That character...

[querist]

Just for reference, that character is pronounced "shou3" in Mandarin Chinese and "te" in Japanese, and it means "hand".

maybe

[BlackSnake112]

I see graphical artists loving this. Same with the video editing crowd. They actually did combine two video clips (the big yellow truck and the person with the snake) in the video.

This looks almost too specialized. for everyday tasks, reading and typing this looks like it will be too much. Then again with all those movements no one will have flabby arms.

Would it have the same effect on smaller screens? If all those screens were regular 19 flat screens would it work the same? Does one need a big screen to allow that much range of motion for the commands to work?

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

...can you play Defcon on it?

Programmable matter

[ovu]

It's coming...
That and computer-mind interfaces are the revolution we're all waiting for.

Will make my life easier...

[Anonymous Coward]

This new interface will save me a hell of a lot of time in my work, which coincidentally involves sorting free-floating Kanji characters.

That's still slow

[TheLink]

It does NOT do the trick at all, since I cannot go straight to the window I want with a single key combo.

Why waste time reading and selecting from an easy-to-read list, when you already know which window you want?

Worse if I still have to lift my hand and move it to the mouse, or press a few more keys - that is slow and inefficient.

Multiple desktops are fine for keeping windows/tasks organized. But I'm talking about speeding up access to the windows you want once you already know which windows you want.

It is more efficient to "alt+1" edit code, "alt+2" edit config", "alt+3" run it, "alt+4" look at the logs, "alt+5" "google", "alt+6" read email message with the bug report.

At any point of time you can go straight to the "edit code" window by pressing alt+1.

Once you are done with that particular Task, you can click on another set of windows and press alt+0 or alt+"-" to create a new stack/list of windows that are referred to by alt+1 to alt+9.

e.g.
alt+F1 = photo/picture editor
alt+F2 = photo editor doc #1
alt+F3 = photo editor doc #2
alt+F4 = File manager listing a bunch of textures you are working on.
alt+F5 = 3D scene renderer (where you test the textures out to see how it looks in "virtual life" :) ).

If you have seen expert starcraft players play, you will know that some humans are capable of sustaining a very high rate of "actions per second.

The current popular GUI interfaces are rather inefficient.

The "g-speak" stuff may be good for some niches, but something like my proposal can speed things up in most cases.

It is good to have an interface that "noobs" can learn easily but it should also allow expert users to work much faster.

keeping your syntax straight

[deodiaus2]

I don't know if all the subttle 3D gestures are unique. Who knows what sort of actions will be associated with them. I tried to design a 2D UI in MS-Windows, and ran into all sorts of action association problems which sank X-Windows. I can't even keep my MUSIC ( McGill University's System for Interactive Computing on IBM mainframes), UNIX & VAX syntax straight on a silly 1 D interface. On MUSIC, I remember when you typed "fuck" at the command prompt. The system would say "In Progress" and handle the next person's request. Some sys admin had to program that into the OS system commands.
Speaking of which, why is "fuck" beeped out on TV, but "frak" is used in "Battlestar Galactic", "frell" in Farscape, and "shagged" in Austin Powers. Yes, frack is a contrived word, but the implied meaning is understood.
What about internationalization issues. I grew up in the US, but lived in Montreal (a city with a large gay population). Most French swear words have a religious connotation. Saying "Fuck You" in NYC might be offensive, but in Montreal's St. Dennis Street, yelling it out loud will get you approached by a half dozen old perverts thinking you are offering your services for the night.
The same with the old US middle finger salute. In the 70's it use to have all sorts of different meanings where ever you traveled.
Now suppose you are surfing http://us.3d-youporn-space.com/ . All sorts of weird and unexpected result could come up. Is someone going to program the UI to pick up your gestures and say, "STOP that or you will go BLIND!" How will it treat your reply, "Shucks, can't I go on until I need glasses?"
-----
Why do we say "A penny for your thoughts", but here is "My 2 cents worth?"

The problem is it's SLOW to use and setup

[TheLink]

The problem is it's _SLOW_.

Moving from keyboard to mouse and back again = slow
Having to press the same key multiple times (e.g. left arrow, left arrow or tab tab tab) = slow.

I prefer to waste time on stuff of my choice than waste time fiddling with the GUI.

The utilities do NOT do what I'm talking about. What they do is very _static_ and SLOW to set up and _change_.

I want it so that if I select windows A, B, C, D, then press alt+0, the four different windows will automatically be assigned:
alt+1 = D
alt+2 = C
alt+3 = B
alt+4 = A ...

Then once I'm done with A-D, if I then select windows P, Q, R, S, T, U, V and press alt+0, the keys are reassigned to the corresponding windows:

alt+1 = V
alt+2 = U
alt+3 = T
alt+4 = S
alt+5 = R
alt+6 = Q
alt+7 = P

Duplicate window selections overwrite the older selection - e.g. if I select P, then Q, then P, then R, then P then S, it's S, P, R, Q = 1, 2, 3, 4. No multiple mappings for P.

A nongeek might even be able to be taught how to use that.

Lastly having it be a standard part of the GUI is a significant advantage to having it be a custom config (worse if it involves 3rd party software).

If it is as standard as alt-tab, fewer apps would clash with the hotkeys - which means it can be used with more apps - which is the whole point of the feature anyway - being able to do more and faster.

Others may not want to be able to do more stuff and do it faster, but I do, and so that is why I find the lack of this feature a _problem_.

Re:The problem is it's SLOW to use and setup

[mr_matticus]

Lose the Usenet underscores. They're obnoxious.

If this is a feature you want badly, then just do it. Such a bizarre and utterly inconsistent keyboard shortcut system will likely never be a standard feature. You'd have to launch some sort of program to select and remember sequential multiple windows, and then remember the dynamic assignments. People don't do that.

How you can think that selecting a window through available means, which takes less than one second, is slow, is some sort of geek neurosis. Setting up the "static" assignments also takes less than ten seconds, and if the windows you work with really change that often, then how could you possibly remember which is which with any sort of reliability?

Re:The problem is it's SLOW to use and setup

[TheLink]

"You'd have to launch some sort of program to select and remember sequential multiple windows"

That program is normally called a GUI.

Go to a machine with windows, hold down the Alt key, then press and release the Tab key while keeping the Alt key held down. You will see a list of tasks/windows.

Observe the order they are arranged.

Yes, bizarre indeed.

As for "less than one second" = geek neurosis.

Try this:
Get someone to time how long it takes for you to switch amongst a set of three or four windows (e.g. A->B->C->A->D->B ). How many milliseconds per window switch?

In that time, how many times can you press alt-tab? How many milliseconds per window switch?

Now look at a skilled nongeek worker use a terminal. They can really learn to do stuff fast. Shortcut keys/hotkeys etc.

The problem is with current popular GUIs switching from one window to another is slow compared to what these people can achieve. And that means millions of humans are not being as augmented as much as they could.

For many computer games an extra lag of 300 milliseconds is considered poor. I don't see why we should have such low standards for GUIs that millions will have to use (or endure).

"If this is a feature you want badly, then just do it"

I've already submitted the bug report.

When I go to a restaurant and if I think they can do something better, I tell them. I don't go home, figure out how to cook the same dish better and present the new recipe back to them.

After all:
1) I'm unlikely to be as good as the chef in his area of expertise.
2) If they don't like my suggestion, there's no point for me wasting all that time only for them to reject my recipe. Even if the new recipe benefits me, it won't benefit the restaurant or other diners.
3) I have other things to do.

"if the windows you work with really change that often, then how could you possibly remember which is which with any sort of reliability?"

Why not? Go look at that slashdot poll. So many people have 20+ tabs open. And most people can keep about four to seven items in their short term mem (if they need to remember more they tend to group multiple items into one item). When they start working with a particular subset, they'll remember them. Then when they switch to a different subset, they'll remember that too. Having to repeatedly search for an item amongst 20+ items is a waste of time.

"Lose the Usenet underscores. They're obnoxious."

And you're the one mentioning "neurosis" and "obnoxious". Ironic.

Re:The problem is it's SLOW to use and setup

[mr_matticus]

As for "less than one second" = geek neurosis...

QED.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[syousef]

In other words: "I learned all this once, stop all further development here please."

No, in other words "If I'm going to spend time learning something, make it worth my while or don't waste my time".

But please don't let me stop you trolling.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[syousef]

Where I do anticipate (and look forward to) seeing it is for interactive public displays. It would be a very cool interface to have for a 3d map and directory in a mall or an informative display at a museum or aquarium.

Ain't going to happen for some decades. Too many people have enough trouble with public touch screen interfaces. Adding another dimension, and guestures people need to learn in advance, will only serve to confuse and put people off. Speech recognition that works without training just isn't going to happen soon.

I fear for the children of the worlds safety...

[leadghost]

if Michael Jackson is allowed to operate this thing! Beware the power glove!

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as your time is the only time that counts, your attitude will be something other than shitty. Until that time, welcome to the list.

Try fencing.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say to all the people who are instantly nay-saying this and complaining about how tired their arms will get: Go out and exercise.

I used to do fencing, and had an instructor who would have us hold our arms level at shoulder height while holding a 2.5lb, 49.25in carbon-steel rapier ( http://www.casiberia.com/product_details.asp?id=SH1098 ) for 15 to 30 minutes at a time... This device may tire you out for a little while, but within a few weeks of using it, you will be used to it...

This has to be the coolest thing that I have seen in a while, and have been waiting to see an interface like this since the day I saw Minority Report.

Re:Call me a luddite but I'll stick with 2D interf

[syousef]

As soon as your time is the only time that counts, your attitude will be something other than shitty. Until that time, welcome to the list.

What the FUCK are you rambling about? Am I really suppose to be looking forward to technology that slows me down and wastes my time?

Idiot.

Presentations

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this interface would be useful for powerpoint presentations. Sometimes I need to scrool, rotate objects etc and it's cumbersome and doesn't look good when I have to go over to the computer to do stuff while I hold a presentation or lecture. This could make the presentation of some types of data and figures much easier.

Say you are standing in front a group of people holding a presentation of a new product and you only have a 3D model of the product yet. With this interface you can easily talk about the product while at the same time zooming in at the product and rotating it to show the different details.

New? Ha.

[Anonymous Coward]

Acorn supported alike stuff years ago.

While we're talking interfaces

[Master of Transhuman]

can somebody at Slashdot get on Google's ass?

Every time I switch a page here I have to wait 2-5 seconds for fucking "google-analytics" fucking server to respond. This wasn't happening a while back - what changed?

It's driving me fucking crazy. It makes Slashdot one of the slowest Web site I deal with daily (not counting the Sarah Connor Society Web site which has such a huge front page it takes a minute to fully load and some of it never stops loading).

Not to mention that when coming in to the front page, the fucking Slashdot "image" server takes forever to show...what? How many fucking IMAGES are on the front page that I have to wait for that POS?

Using the Internet these days is like living in the 1970's with fucking green screen monitors and mainframes that take a minute to respond. The only difference is we have color and multimedia. The waiting is incredibly tedious. Every single Web site does not have a) enough server power, and b) enough bandwidth to handle their loads. ALL of them. It's pathetic.