“Having heard a few rumors about Project Looking Glass, I was still unprepared for the difference of this desktop: a translucent 3D space that looked like it had come out of a virtual reality “playback” experience from Strange Days (Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Tom Sizemore, 1995), an amazing sci-fi thriller that both predates and smokes The Matrix.” Read the article here.
Through the Looking Glass
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Of course, being on java.net, it didn’t suprise me that the questions were very soft. One I would have liked to have seen asked and answered is “What advantages does a 3D interface have over a 2D one that makes it more significantly more useable, and not just a gimmik?”
I love the idea of new interface shifts and paradigms, but I have yet to see a 3D interface that did anything but look “cool” after use. In the end, they tend to “get in the way” because they user has to deal with an extra dimension and things become more difficult to find, not less.
I know that chemical modelling is one area where 3D interfaces really have helped, but can this really enchance the typical desktop experience beyond eye candy?
Personally I think we haven’t even progressed to the point where we have enough eye-candy in the operating system. I think many people underestimate the effect eye-candy has on the user experience. I noticed after playing with a new iMac that when switching users MacOs X uses 3D to literally “spin” the old user’s desktop away to show the new user’s desktop. This is the kind of thing we need more of – minimising the disjointedness of the desktop (i.e. when things just disappear and other things appear).
So don’t underestimate the power of looking “cool”. If its done well it can make the user infinitely more comfortable with their virtual environment (without beginning to worry about how to control manipulation in a 3D space).
I agree with you. One big difference between OS X and Linux is that Apple has control over the hardware. That means it’s a lot easier for them to put in features knowing what the graphics capabilities of the machine will be. The features you describe don’t show up unless you have 32MB of Video RAM which is now available on every single new macintosh you buy. But, on the x86 side, there are still plenty of machines shipping with less. Throw in the Intel Extreme 2 shared video memory and you’d be left with a bunch of slow rendering, choppy eye candy which in the end may do more harm than good. That being said, there are still some cool, low-overheaad, eye candy features that would be welcome.
… is really a great movie!
> What advantages does a 3D interface have over a
> 2D one that makes it more significantly more useable,
> and not just a gimmik?”
How do you know unless you try? Give someone a new technology and they will do amazing things that you never thought of before. If we had to predict all the cool stuff that could be done with something to justify its creation then nothing would get invented.
I have open a browser, an editor, a p2p client, a file manager, a command window, and a Java game client. When I want to access the OS I can left-click on the desktop to access menus or move my mouse to the bottom to pop-up the bar. I can move my mouse to the corner to pop-up the pager so that I can switch between aps.
I do not want to see the interface; I want to see my applications. There is little the 3d interface does for me that a good pager won’t, besides use up hundreds of megabytes of RAM and millions of cpu cyles.
Yes, I can the possibility of see some value in eye-candy for the new-user to see where windows don’t just pop and disappear. But how long are these people new to the OS? I can’t really recall anytime in training where these cues might have been useful.
I’ve played with the eye-candy; with samurize, and xdesktop, and the Mac X bar thingy. It looked good, all that brushed steel, and the backgrounds, and the different icons. You know, things like sunset backgrounds and Marvin the Martian speaking on bootup. But all that is hard to see when I’m playing a game or writing some code, or doing some drafting. And when it’s not hard to see it gets distracting.
Besides, don’t you ever notice that on Star Trek they rarely show the computer interface, but go straight to the application?
I use firefox in linux and went through the font issues on this debian box long ago. Installed the msfonts and some other font packs I can’t recall their names.
For the most part fonts are great everywhere. But the odd article uses an ugly non AA font I must have on my system such as this article. How can I determine which one it is and remove that font?
Is anyone working on Open Source & Free (Liberal (copyleft)) software that takes advantage of the new 3D Sharp displays coming onto the market. That would certainly be impressive.
http://sharp-world.com/products/device/about/technology/
http://www.sle.sharp.co.uk/research/3d/3dbackground.htm
I would like to see GNOME or KDE and other take advantage of this!
Why do I need to know what J. Random Java.Net Writer’s favourite sci-fi movie is? That’s just terrible journalism; ego is the enemy…
Sun should just stop with this Project Looking Glass crap, its seriously ugly. I think Aero Glass is way more sophisticated, inviting and interesting.
PLG is more like a standard Sun is trying to create to differentiate itself from Microsoft and hope its well received.
Seconed!
I remember it as an “interesting failure”
The first 10 minutes is radical,
but it drops into Hollywood conventionalism after that
Agree with earlier comment – Strange Days starts off cool but then becomes a unexceptional formula. This film is carried by the excellent actors – Fiennes and Bassett. Put lesser actors in the roles and this becomes a straight-to-video.
As for Looking Glass, interesting, but not interesting enough to merit a change at this point. The next interface breakthrough will not be on the desktop at all, this is a “done” market. Maybe true voice interfaces for cell phones, etc. In any case I don’t see anything in Looking Glass that I cannot accomplish with a 2D interface. And why do I want to write on the “back” of a window? What am I writing? Where does it go? Is it connected to the program or the file I am editing? Too many “whys”.
I have to agree with the skeptics on this thread. This is yet another “rotate 2d windows in 3d” project. It’s been done before. It doesn’t give anything to the user in terms of intuitive usability, and it doesn’t give anything to the developer in terms of expressive power.
I’m all about progressive UI. I don’t think nested, clickable rectangles are the best we can do. However, calling this the evolution of the desktop UI is laughable, if not sad and scary. If this is the best the software industry can do to evolve the desktop UI we are in trouble indeed. Project Looking Glass will soon be Project Hindsight Is 20/20 for its developers.
[quote]It doesn’t give anything to the user in terms of intuitive usability, and it doesn’t give anything to the developer in terms of expressive power.
[/quote]
I remember seeing tons of quotes like this one in old command line vs gui wars. Strangely, it appears that the gui seems to have catched on..
I use a very light window manager – fluxbox. In common with all WMs, it uses three dimensions – windows layered on top of each other. Like it or not, this is a third dimension. Extra desktops are a third dimension too, so even tiling WMs use 3D.
Looking Glass is GPL’ed anyway. Use it or not. Of course it runs on non-free Java platform, but anyway you have opinion to either use it or not. Like it or not. I find it pretty neat prototype of how 3D could be used in user interface. And hey, it’s not that bad, it’s actually pretty nice and working. Test it before you bash it! Doesn’t cost anything (expect your own time..).
If you haven’t even tested it, just shut up…
Agree with earlier comment – Strange Days starts off cool but then becomes a unexceptional formula. This film is carried by the excellent actors – Fiennes and Bassett. Put lesser actors in the roles and this becomes a straight-to-video.
Er, what did it have going at the start that it lost later on, unless you mean the gratuitous scenes of Juliet Lewis walking around naked (or as she calls it, “acting”). Lewis, some cheesy dialogue, and a couple of predictable twists are the low points of the film. That said, it’s still the closest thing to a decent cyberpunk film to come out of Hollywood (no, Johnny Mnemonic was not good, and no, The Matrix was not cyberpunk).