Project Looking Glass has hit the magical 1.0 mark: "This release is the culmination of 3 years of work, starting with Hideya san who originally conceived of a bold, new type of window system, through the initial shake down of the proof-of-concept demo by an internal Sun community, followed by the open sourcing of the technology, which generated such enormous interest that it brought down the java.net servers several times. From that point on many people from around the globe have contributed to the project; contributing to the core, contributing applications, performing testing, writing and translating documentation, etc. The project owners (Hideya, Paul, Krishna and myself) are very grateful for all of the great contributions we have received from you, the LG community."
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Member since:2005-08-09
> And all the 3D desktops look useless to me
Probably they should not just transform, but apply depth-of-field and HDR lighting effects to make these windows even more harder to read.
Personally, I prefer maximized fullscreen applications.
I use overlapping windows mostly for drag'n'drop and visual data compare purposes.
Member since:2005-07-06
and i believe that is a usage pattern that is repeated all over the world.
its interesting to think that the first windowing system did not allow for overlapping windows as it was believed to confuse users.
just the other day i made some quick sketches of a ion-like windowing system, taking into account its inability to have overlapping windows for messaging and similar.
what i ended up with was a system that could use one or more tabbed group on screen based on how big the screen was. and any "popup" dialogs would be delegated to the bottom right corner of whatever group it was relevant for (ok so it flys in the face of some "laws" of gui design, so sue me).
when one of those gets fired of it will lock input for whatever program its relevant to but will not steal focus in any way.
i even want to use said dialogs for stuff like saving files by use of drag and drop. when a save is initiated said popup will contain a icon. this icon can then be dragged to wherever one wants to save the file. risc os anyone?
i included a top bar message area that would work as a ticker (i think thats the word for it) with a permanent clock in the top right. said clock would also work as a link to a programs list, and as a "tray" (as i suspect something like that will be needed).
the ticker will naturally scroll from right to left, unless the mouse is placed on the bar. if so then putting the mouse to the left edge will scroll messages from left to right and similar on the right side. if dragged close to the center, the ticker will stop.
if a message is clicked a dialog will drop down, or the program that sent it will be focused and highlighted.
i had to design a tab based IM program tho as the normaly expected im gui do not really work inside this kind of a windowing system.
thing is that i suspect this windowing system could (with minor modifications) work equally well on a pdaphone as on a pc. but it would be unlikely that more then one window group would be open at the same time on a small screen.
in fact, one of my dream devices is a pdafone that will turn into a pc when hooked up to a keyboard, mouse, screen and bigger power supply. optionally have a computing booster that is a cpu and ram that the pdafone can offload tasks to that it cant normally manage. the keyboard and screen could potentially be able to connect together so that it becomes a kind of laptop for transportation.
yep, im nuts 
Member since:2006-07-23
Personally, I prefer maximized fullscreen applications.
I use overlapping windows mostly for drag'n'drop and visual data compare purposes.
I don't think maximizing a window on a 1600x1024 screen and looking at all the empty spaces in the window is very visually appealing.
Member since:2005-06-29
3d desktops exist to take advantage of 3d hardware (which has been developing quickly for 10 years while 2d hardware has stalled completely). In order to sell them you add a few glitzy affects and tell the marketing department its "3d" so they can excite people over it.
It offers you:
1. An interface that eats fewer CPU cycles (if done correctly).
2. An interface that allows a better drawing paradigm for programmers (no double buffering necessary, if you're willing to ditch backward compatibility).
3. Affects such as expose which allow users to quickly view things that won't actually fit on their desktop without using icons and summary text.
4. Something for that 3d card you bought (you can't really get around it anymore) to do.
5. Better video playback capability (gl instead of one video on hardware and the rest not).
But I agree that a 3 dimensional interface makes no sense on a 2 dimensional screen, however, you don't need 3d hardware to make a 3d interface.
Member since:2005-07-24
"""
4. Something for that 3d card you bought (you can't really get around it anymore) to do.
"""
Oh, believe me. I *love* 3D. I'll never forget how stunned I was when I saw the original Quake for the first time. (I was a little late for Doom.)
In fact, I had just finished with a Quake4 level when I saw your response.
My views about 3D vs 2D are pretty much like my views about GUI vs character-based: Use the right tool for the job.
I can, and have, played Quake on a Wyse60 at 38400 baud with the ascii art lib. (It's a drop in replacement for svgalib.)
But I prefer it on my 22" flat panel at 1680x1050.
Conversely, I could administer my system with the Doom based admin tools that some of the more over-imaginative members of the community have conjured up.
But I prefer to use the console utilities, thank-you-very-much. ;-)
2D is 2D and 3D is 3D and never the twain shall meet.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2006-01-02
4. You should be able to hop over to Newegg and buy a motherboard with near as much graphics power as a Geforce 4, and with newer features, for under $60 with shipping. Everyone getting a new PC will have enough 3D horsepower for a nice desktop offloading work from the CPU.
Member since:2006-01-22
There are a lot of GFX cards. But we should have an option for soft 3D rendering in case we want to get rid of proprietary drivers.Even on WIN$$$ Transgaming has a decent soft 3d renderer. From what I've seen on the PLG site, only HW rendering is enabled. Am I wrong? Can you give me more hints? I have ordered a P4 531 which has HT. I want to take it to the maximum. Soft 3D rendering and PLG could be a good benchmark.
Member since:2005-12-31
But 2d/3d desktops are about the UI paradigm. What you describe is mostly the benefits of using 3d hardware, which can be used for 2d desktops too. In fact, I thought that's what XGL is about.
> But I agree that a 3 dimensional interface makes no
> sense on a 2 dimensional screen, however, you don't
> need 3d hardware to make a 3d interface.
You said it: A 3d interface makes little sense on a 2d screen (whether using 3d hardware or not). A 2d interface makes sense, and using 3d hardware for it even more so, since that allows a great deal of parallel computing on modern hardware.
Member since:
2005-07-24
"""Project Looking Glass, on the other hand, is a true 3D interface"""
Question: Why do we need a true 3D interface?
I've yet to see XGL/AIGLX/Looking Glass do anything that couldn't be done better in pure 2D.
Looking Glass demos look just like XGL demos. Except they are not quite as glitzy.
And all the 3D desktops look useless to me. (As in "no better than what we already have.") Essentially the UI equivalent of the dot.com bubble.
Just my opinion.