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Project Looking Glass developer release is out

Wayland 49 Comments

Sun finally released a preview of Project Looking Glass. Sources are of course included, and it’s GPL-ed. Project Looking Glass is/should_be a revolutionary new aproach to the way we interact with the applications, the biggest change to GUI in 20 years. I wonder if 21″ is enough, cause having 20 windows folded like the ones in the screen-shots should be a bit troublesome at ‘only’ 1600×1200.

49 Comments

  1. 2004-06-29 7:32 pm
    Anonymous

    I’m not sure how ‘revolutionary’ it is when it requires a much bigger display than the one I have now.

  2. 2004-06-29 7:34 pm
    Anonymous

    Short question: did they ‘only’ release the source-code, or is there a binary release as well? I can’t really find an answer…

  3. 2004-06-29 7:37 pm
    Anonymous

    croquet has a 3d theme.

    And why are they open sourcing it ?

    Maybe because no one will use it if they don’t.

  4. 2004-06-29 7:40 pm
    Anonymous

    I’m sorry, but I have looked at all the demos, playing with my Mac OSX box, but I still fail to see how a ‘3D’ user interface is supposed to make me more productive with my PC than I am today. It sure looks nices, but rotating windows, and minimised windows that I can view side on doesn’t really seem all that fundamental to me.

    A fundamental shift in the way things were done was when Xero invented the GUI, and Apple productized it in the original Mac. THAT was a major change in how we interacted with our PC’s and definately made me more productive.

    But 3D windows? Blah. I just fail to see how that is going to make me more productive.

  5. 2004-06-29 7:41 pm
    Anonymous

    there’s nothing more distracting, irritating, exhausting for the human eye than your oh-so beloved wall-papers + this rotated unexcessable rotated stuff. I am close to getting epileptic convulsions when trying to extract usefull information from the grand canyon shot with rotated windows — thanks for putting unreadable names on the side.

    Ever wondered why graphics desktops should have a neutral grey or something similar (W2K, BeOS-standard-blue), any desktop, for that matter?! Read your Adobe screen setup/calibration for a change to get a first clue. This will entertain some unemployed 24/7 couch-potato-surfers for yet a few more hours, praise Sun for that one. Apart from that, it’s useless, to put it neutral. There’s no improvement in visual excessability, quite the opposite, tough luck.

  6. 2004-06-29 7:43 pm
    Anonymous

    People “Looking Glass” is a proof of concept product. This is just showing what Java 3D/Xdamage/Xcompo/ETC is capable of doing.

    Stop whining about productivity.

  7. 2004-06-29 7:44 pm
    Anonymous

    I realize that people have many different mental models (text vs. visual, etc.), but PLG doesn’t seem to be doing the visual model ‘right’ in any real sense. Its sheer ugliness will no doubt improve, but it seems disorganized, cramped, and unwieldy. Trying to click on narrow, -separated- stripes to select a minimized window seems like a disaster in the making, and rotated windows in general are hideous. We are a ways off from being able to do perspectively projected, hinted glyphs in real time, and stretching font-rich windows as bitmaps looks awful in any full-resolution screenshot. Sun, please take a few steps back and think of a better use for hardware acceleration. I like the idea of fully double-buffered everything myself.

  8. 2004-06-29 7:49 pm
    Anonymous

    Well instead of minamizing windows Which in Windows gives you a short title, in OS X gives an Icon, in KDE gives a short title(put can be seperated by Virtual desktop, and primary App) You switch your windows sideways like a book end. Advantages Well long descriptive names, a short visual allowing faster identifcation. A movie playing can stillbe playing , and you can even watch part of it(though sideways).

    A new interface for computers is coming, we just have to figure out how it’s gonna work. The first interfaces were command lines. Now they are GUI’s next 3D Gui’s on monitors that can support 3D? Holographic displays? Both? Keyboards only for major typing and not everyday use unless your a writer? The mouse got caught in a trap?

    Who knows just because it works today doesn’t mean it will be that way tomorrow.

  9. 2004-06-29 7:51 pm
    Anonymous

    Amen to that.

  10. 2004-06-29 7:51 pm
    Anonymous

    You’re employed, I assume?

    For someone who spells as poorly as you do (“excessability”), surely that’s “unpossible”.

    At any rate, I should point out that by ratio, very few people who are employed to use a computer for a living care about your precious Adobe screen calibration. I use a computer 16 hours a day and am employed to the point that my head hurts all the time… but I could care less if the reds on my screen are not exactly calibrated.

    Somehow I doubt this makes my needs any less relevant than yours…

    As for as Looking Glass goes… I expected nothing less from -somebody- at some point. Apple released the first commercial desktop that actually processed the screen representation in 3D (Quartz Extreme), Microsoft is jumping on board with Longhorn and it’s seemingly -way more- 3D interface, and now Looking Glass comes out with what appears to be 3D “for 3D’s sake”.

    It remains to be seen if this will actually be of any benefit to the users, but it surely doesn’t look like it will be.

  11. 2004-06-29 7:55 pm
    Anonymous

    looks nice. i hope whiners just stop whining – you dont have to use it. it’s open source, dudes – use what you want. pretty much all large distros ship already with 10~ desktops/wm’s to choose from.

    my opinion is that looking glass is great opensource competitor in customer market for longhorn’s effects. some may not like it, but there are people who do.

    at least i personally want my linux desktop to look something windows can’t do ;)

  12. 2004-06-29 7:57 pm
    Anonymous

    don’t you guys get it?, they’re simply showing off what a 3d desktop is capable of doing. since it’s open sourced you’re free to implement it as you like it to be. sun is just showing different examples of what you can do.

    maybe a 3d desktop might not seem useable to you, but what about a desktop which incorporated 3d’able feedback, among other things. project looking glass merely is a tool to extend the possibilities of the desktop, not redifine it.

  13. 2004-06-29 8:01 pm
    Anonymous

    My desktop runs 1280 X 1024 because my eyes no longer work at 1600 X 1200; however, the screen shots were legible to me using only 1/4th of my desktop to view them on.

    I’m thick I guess, but I fail to understand why one would need greater than 1600 x 1200 to successfully use Looking Glass. Anybody care to explain to an aging nerd the limitations of Looking Glass that would make such a resolution necessary?

  14. 2004-06-29 8:03 pm
    Anonymous

    OK im trying to install it but I cant download Java 3D SDK 1.3.2-build3. It just spits out this error:

    Found a cyclic link in

  • 2004-06-29 8:11 pm
    Anonymous

    For someone who spells as poorly as you do (“excessability”), surely that’s “unpossible”.

    Not really related to me, but I always get angry over posts like this. His spelling might be related to the fact that he’s from Germany. Simple whois might reveal you this fact. And believe it or not, English isn’t native language for DE.

    Sometimes I really wonder if some people think that English is the only language.

    The rest I agree.

  • 2004-06-29 8:17 pm
    Anonymous

    ‘People “Looking Glass” is a proof of concept product. This is just showing what Java 3D/Xdamage/Xcompo/ETC is capable of doing.

    ‘Stop whining about productivity.’

    Sure, except that the screenshots page (at least) is pushing it that way. Anyway, if my co-workers now don’t know well about windows on top of other windows (thus constantly having 9 or 10 identical e-mail browsers open because they don’t have time nor ambition to learn what that “minimize” they click actually does), how will floating windows solve this? And if it doesn’t, well, heads up for users complaining they can’t find a window because it’s been accidentally placed BEHIND them!

    Anyway, all the way-cool demo power to these guys, but I hope nobody ever installs this for someone else to use. I’m glad they’re stretching our minds a bit, though. I can see good UI ideas coming away from it…just not IN it. ;)

    Kev

  • 2004-06-29 8:19 pm
    Anonymous

    Well, my sympatico.ca-friend — whilst you can argue whether or not you can judge just how smart I am by a single mis-spell, there is a *no-no* that must never occur to you when pointing out BS like this for startes: You ought not spell poorly, at least not within the 3-4-5 lines you are trying to diss me with. Well, you are just about as bad as me to that end. Now, since this is outta the way, you may as well consider plain “typos”, foreigners, etc instead of spelling inabillity as well… OK. Will you please aknowledge that plain info will always be readable way more opposed to info underlayed by distracting pictures/colours, etc..? A rotated pic like in the shots can’t be recognized at first glanze — you really have to focus to detect a browser page, Real-Video or whatever in there — hence, this doesn’t do any good in visually picking up that info. Of course you do not need Adobe’s avdice on how not to distract the eye, this is a general undisputed rule. If you have real arguments for why this would be an improvement, I am more than happy to read it.

  • 2004-06-29 8:32 pm
    Anonymous

    Maybe you should go read the project description.

    Those screenshots are of the demo window manager, that’s a relatively small part of the project. The real project is putting a 3D API that integrates properly with the desktop onto Linux.

  • 2004-06-29 8:35 pm
    Anonymous

    Sure, except that the screenshots page (at least) is pushing it that way.

    How is it doing that? You have to understand that the fundamental technology/concepts behind 3D desktops and just plain UI design is UNBELIEVABLE boring, hell I dare you to read the Xorg mailing list :S. Then you’ll see! Id rather have this, then some diagrams on how to do transformations.

    …(thus constantly having 9 or 10 identical e-mail browsers open because they don’t have time nor ambition to learn what that “minimize” they click actually does), how will floating windows solve this?

    Minimzing isn’t helping your co-worker,so should we get rid of it? We should not be forced to limit the power of a UI just because people wont learn how to use them effectively.

  • 2004-06-29 8:43 pm
    Anonymous

    WellI agree that Looking Glass could be usability hell – especially when you look at some of the screenshots and think about how you’d have to interact with an implementation like that.

    But then again I think a fully OpenGL accelerated Desktop could bring quite some good to the table… the mere fact that the (still 2D-like) UI *is* 3D-Accelerated doesn’t make it any less usable, yet it allows for many possibilities that haven’t been there before.

    I only hope some decent coders get their hands on this and see if it could actually bring current(!) Desktop Environments into the 3D world without reinventing every application thath runs on top of this. A 3D accelerated KDE running on top of XOrg – still compatible with all the latest proprietary graphics drivers – would be _quite_ some achievement and would bring OSX-like effects to current Linux systems…

    Ah if only some guys with the same enthusiasm as the kNX team seems to have would start right now we’d have some results soon ;)

    Though I could be pretty far off here since I don’t know all that much about LG and it is most probably not even compatible with current X-Servers or Desktop Environments…

  • 2004-06-29 8:54 pm
    Anonymous

    I love how people get all bent out of shape when they encounter new ideas. Big deal if Project Looking Glass is a complete waste of time, and is never ever used. I’d rather have companies/groups innovating and TRYING something new. It’d be worse if they were just sitting there saying, “hmm, 3D desktop??? THAT’LL NEVER WORK!!!”.

    Calm down, relax. It’s a new idea, get over it. No one is forcing you to use it.

  • 2004-06-29 9:06 pm
    Anonymous

    ^^

    Amen to that. I almost LIKE Sun because of all the great things they have done for the community.

  • 2004-06-29 9:06 pm
    Anonymous

    My favorite part of this project is the arguments which are sparked by it. Over and over again on OS news there’s been complaint after complaint about lack of originality in window manager design on linux. So, something diffrent does make its way into the public eye and what happens – almost nothing but complaints. Is it any wonder if linux developers, many of whom do it just for fun, hesitate to try anything really different if the result is nothing but venom by people who havn’t even tried it?

    Even apart from that, where’s your sense of fun, of experimentation. Who cares if it increases your productivity? There’s a lot in the world that won’t, but is nonetheless enjoyable on an aesthetic level. Or, it might just be that not everything in the world has you as its specific target. If productivity is your main concen, almost no new technology is going to be relavant to you until it matures. Certainly nothing this new, ‘and’ in the experimental stages will. But some of us like to play around and experiment. Seeing what works and does not work is how progres is made. Some of us enjoy tinkering with ideas that intuitivly might seem like a bad idea. Some of us for the challenge, some just for the fun of coding, some in hopes of stumbling on something great, and others for the reason many climb mountans – the idea is there. I don’t understand why people here seem to horrified that some of us are having fun playing around with ideas like this. It’s not like anyone is being forced to use this. It’s not like this is even going to be included, let alone the default, on most distros due to the java dependancy.

  • 2004-06-29 9:11 pm
    Anonymous

    FIX YOUR LINKS SUN!!! Bleh I’ll try tommorrow

  • 2004-06-29 9:17 pm
    Anonymous

    When I was at the CeBIT I saw a demo of Looking Glas. Immidiately I had to think about the interface in Matrix at the docking station in Zion. The next step would be to connect a camera simliar to Sony’s iToy, so you can put the windows avay just by waiving your hands, there are a lot of gestures, with which you can minimize a window or push it aside. 3D desktop is much more usefull for such type of input as the current desktops paradigmas which are optimized for mouse usage. The next step would be to put your 3D glasses on, so you can see all your windows just by turning your head. The only problem with the 3D glasses I see, is the keyboard usage.

    Any ideas anyone?

    Regards,

    Anton

  • 2004-06-29 9:20 pm
    Anonymous

    Strip %3C/B%3E from the URL.

  • 2004-06-29 9:25 pm
    Anonymous

    1) I thank Sun for this new offering to the open source community

    2) We have this new toy and what we make of it is up to us.

    Now is the time to think and try to figure out how

    to improve our computing experience with it.

    3) I wish half the people that visit OSNews could be Half as Smart as they think they are and refrain from Zealoting/whining/complaining/badmouthing/be negative.

    4) Luckily, the other half is fine…

    (Too bad I complain, that makes me one of the bad OSNews visitors….Oh Well…..I never had luck Anyway….^_^)

  • 2004-06-29 9:47 pm
    Anonymous

    Most of you guys just want grey GUI’s or no GUI at all.

    Your all totally boring. If you don’t like it, help work to fix the things you don’t like.

    It’s that simple.

    GJ

  • 2004-06-29 10:16 pm
    Anonymous

    The concept of seeing your windows through 3d glasses isn’t a bad idea! Keyboard useability wouldn’t be a problem if you could see it through the glasses… The next step of course is to make your desktop project, holographic maybe? I have heard this tech already exists, its just a matter of making it work properly, perhaps in 5 – 10 years, we will no need screens anymore? Anyone for holographic quake????

  • 2004-06-29 11:00 pm
    Anonymous

    I’m using the Looking Glass “desktop” right now, and I have to say, it’s impressive. It’s buggy as hell, but it definitely has potential.

    Surely one could question wether the concept of a 3D desktop like this one will improve usability or productivity, but I think you should see this as a development platform. It can be used to try new ideas, and it definitely shows off the 3D potential Java has. Some concepts or ideas may prove to be useful, others may prove to be useless, but I guess that’s the way new technologies are discovered and perfected.

    I like it, and it’s a Sun product no less ;)

  • 2004-06-29 11:06 pm
    Anonymous

    Apple showed where they are going with their 3D desktop, Microsoft is going in the same direction, and you can bet that now they have a clearer idea of what they want to bring out (thanks to Tiger preview in Steve’s keynote).

    Sun just so happens to have been working on the same concept for some time now – and lo! They have released it! It’s actually something buildable! The requirements are reasonable! You’re not locked into Slowaris or JDS!

    Not one, but *TWO* key names have 3D desktop action live and in person. Microsoft is not one of them.

    Usability an issue? Stick to GNOME (ucch) or KDE (kerning, anyone?)

    I’d rather have a glimpse at what’s coming rather than bitch about a technology preview not being up to snuff. But that’s me.

    –itomato–

  • 2004-06-30 2:10 am
    Anonymous

    Opensourcing it was a good idea. My comp isn’t the best as aren’t many other’s comps so i’m sure people will develop a control panel that will, for example, allow you to turn off the eye candy that gets in the way.

  • 2004-06-30 3:46 am
    Anonymous

    Got it installed on my MDK10Official box and works like a charm. Both the dev (within an X11 session) and session versions work. Only problem is I cannot start up a terminal from it. Have posted a report on the forums and will see how it goes.

    Keep up the good work Sun!

  • 2004-06-30 4:03 am
    Anonymous

    It looks great, and I’m impressed that Sun is opening the source. But, lol, as many revolutionary products as that company has made they have horrible color taste…

    Keep up the good work guys, and please do keep thinkin about colors they are important..

  • 2004-06-30 4:45 am
    Anonymous

    this is an amazing peace of software. i’ve been playing with it for the better part of 2 hours now, it wont run as a full session (seems to be an ati problem) but, not only does it look amazing, its really easy to navigate through, as soon as some bugs are ironed out (need to look at some java code and work on this) i’ll be my default desktop.

  • 2004-06-30 5:26 am
    Anonymous

    I’m a little hazy on how this works – I figure it depends on Java and the newly GPL’ed Java3D APIs. If GCJ integrated the Java3D APIs, could it possibly compile this, therefore making Looking Glass truly free?

  • 2004-06-30 6:05 am
    Anonymous

    > and it’s GPL-ed

    According to a post on xorg@, it’s licensed under an MIT-style license: http://freedesktop.org/pipermail/xorg/2004-June/001218.html

  • 2004-06-30 7:33 am
    Anonymous

    Awesome, now we will use a 2x2GHz with 2GB RAM computer as desktop, just to run a 3D desktop environment! ;)

  • 2004-06-30 8:58 am
    Anonymous

    Sometimes I think all software companies that design GUI systems need is to hire a hollywood producer and an art director. Come on, we see all kinds of nifty interfaces in scifi movies, but why MUST the actual product of the 21 century look as if it had been designed in 1975??

  • 2004-06-30 9:19 am
    Anonymous

    According to a post on xorg@, it’s licensed under an MIT-style license:

    According to Sun & Looking Glass website itself it’s licensed under GPL. Shooting out thruts without even checking products’s website? Very impressive.

  • 2004-06-30 11:56 am
    Anonymous

    > According to Sun & Looking Glass website itself it’s licensed under GPL. Shooting out thruts without even checking products’s website? Very impressive.

    The same could be said of you. Did you even bother to read the _whole_ website, or maybe even the post I linked to?

    All additions to the X server are MIT-style licensed.

  • 2004-06-30 12:27 pm
    Anonymous

    Project Looking Glass is/should_be a revolutionary new aproach to the way we interact with the applications, the biggest change to GUI in 20 years. I wonder if 21″ is enough, cause having 20 windows folded like the ones in the screen-shots should be a bit troublesome at ‘only’ 1600×1200.

    It’s a bloody 3D window enviroment. Nothing revolutionary.

    At best its a quick hack (that’s how it started, and that’s how it remains. They only thing that changed is that in between it got some attention by eye-candy thristy geeks and so SUN pushed it to the spotlight).

    It has nothing to do with usability. And nothing that say Apple or MS couldn’t do better in a month, if and only if it had any meaning or benefits regarding human computer interaction.

    So, revolutionary? Pleeeeease!

  • 2004-06-30 5:04 pm
    Anonymous

    Various companies have been kicking around the 3D desktop idea for some years now and I still see no real use for when it comes to the average PC users needs.

    After one gets over the excitement of seeing windows float around in space etc, it get’s boring pretty fast.

    And once one realizes how resource hogging such effects are, one usually turns them off and goes back to default 2D desktop anyway.

    As someone was saying eariler, with a holographic display and motion gesturing, this tech might be useful. With a plain monitor and a keyboard, it’s just eye candy.

  • 2004-06-30 5:16 pm
    Anonymous

    runs fine on my 1.3 ghz centrino w/ 512 megs of ram and 32 meg radeon 7500 mobility.

  • 2004-06-30 5:25 pm
    Anonymous

    “With a plain monitor and a keyboard, it’s just eye candy.”

    Whats wrong with that. We got these computers with 2 and 3 gig CPUs we may as well use it. Instead you see guys with monster systems complaining about “wasted” system resources. You can’t waste system resources. As long as it can be made as useful as 2D I say go for it.

  • 2004-06-30 6:39 pm
    Anonymous

    Maybe the reason they’re open sourcing it is because it’s not useful, and they might as well make the code available for people to play around with. Is there any reason to get angry over it?

  • 2004-06-30 9:04 pm
    Anonymous

    I was running it earlier and I can see it has potential. As a java programmer I am intrigued. I hope others are too.

  • 2004-07-01 4:23 pm
    Anonymous

    >>Sure, except that the screenshots page (at least) is pushing it that way.

    >How is it doing that?

    With phrases like:

    “easier than ever”

    “most useful”

    “Users can better organize”

    >>…(thus constantly having 9 or 10 identical e-mail browsers open because they don’t have time nor ambition to learn what that “minimize” they click actually does), how will floating windows solve this?

    >Minimzing isn’t helping your co-worker,so should we get rid of it? We should not be forced to limit the power of a UI just because people wont learn how to use them effectively.

    That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying this isn’t easier to pick up. Also, I fail to see how it’s actually more _powerful_. That spinning CD thing is sure slower than a simple alphabetical list, at least at the first stage when you have all your options. Once you narrow in, maybe, thumbnail-style graphics (3D or not) help, but not initially–at that point they just add clutter and you have to browse sections at a time.

  • 2004-07-02 4:09 pm
    Anonymous

    Have you tried it, Kev?