Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Tue 11th Mar 2003 19:00 UTC, submitted by Mike Janger
Mike Janger writes: "What is Open Croquet? Alan Kay (one of the inventors of Smalltalk, one of the fathers of object oriented programming, conceiver of the laptop computer, inventor of much of the modern windowing GUI, etc.) is working on it. But what IS it? Have you guys looked into it?" I downloaded its 90 MB late last night. It's an 'academic' project featuring a futuristic OS 3D environment running through the Squeak environment on Windows or Mac. It requires a supported 3D accelerator (however, it didn't work with my Voodoo5 in hardware mode so it was painfully slow).
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I've spend some amazing time (about an hour) "navigating" OC. And, apart from the fact some images (pictures (and portals that I can't go into-through?) are a tad confusing, as well as the fact I can't figure out how to global quit (quit OC anywhere, in any portal/realm/whatever), I am amazed by the vastness of it all. Walking into another scene/area and that becomes your "world". Very Myst-like.
I especially like the underwater and temple "realms". The Mars realm is also neat.
User control is a bit difficult to get a grasp on, especially after stopping. If you see a window you want to go over to, you move the pointer and try to go there, but... forgetting the "proximity to the crosshairs" movement rule, you spin around real fast instead!
I think a two-handed approach would be best. Use the mouse to change your view (up, down, left, and right) and the arrow keys to actually move in the forward, reverse, left, and right directions.
However, I think it would be best if both sides of a portal showed the same image (eve if mirror-flipped). Seeing the white backside of a portal doesn't tell you what portal it is and having to walk around to the front of it is tedious at best.
This "OS concept" is like playing a 3D game! Quite fun, but I quickly found out that it only runs right in 640x480. Anything higher (like 1024x768) and the "full view" window takes up about only 1/4th of the screen!
I have Zone Alarm and "ZA" brings up a notice about OC wanting to connect to the Internet. Why? Is it really showing me other "user realms" or is it pulling view data off a server elsewhere? If I decline the request, OC won't run at all!
Open Croquet... the 3D GAME OS!