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.

Nice

[bb84]

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

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

[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

[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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

[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.

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).

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'.

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.

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?

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.

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: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.

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