Metisse - New Looking Glass Alternative 299
Interested in a 3D desktop? zoso submitted news about about a project called Metisse, writing "There is working and freely available alternative to the (soon to be released under GPL) Sun Looking Glass 3D desktop ( Slashdot story here)
If you have spare CPU/GPU cycles just go download and compile the first publicly available version of this X Desktop. Everything looks nice (screenshots here), has OpenGL support, transparency and all other whistles...."
What I don't get (Score:3, Insightful)
can someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before starting any software project... (Score:4, Insightful)
Give the guy a break, at least people are trying to do something new. He took his own time to write the software, and give it away and all people here can do is bitch about it. If you don't like it, don't use it.
Re:I have to admit (Score:2, Insightful)
While 3D desktops "look cool" I still don't see how that makes them practical. I've found the ability to use multiple desktops much more useful. I make key shortcuts for all my desktops (CTRL+ALT+"desktop number" where "desktop number" is between 1 and 6) and I setup the useless windows key to press CTRL+ALT simultaneously so that I can switch between desktops with "windows key"+"desktop number". I find that to be much easier and more practical than organizing windows in three dimensions.
Input Device (Score:5, Insightful)
We need a 3d input device, perhaps like the ones used in Minority report? That's how I see 3d displays becoming useful.
Take it easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not supposed to make you more productive. The meaning of life, for some of us at least, is not to become more and more productive until we die. There is something about mankind, something inside of us, that wants to be entertained and amused, and this includes being in an asthetically pleasing environment (like a well decorated home, or in this case, a futuristic desktop that no one else on their block has).
Re:What I don't get (Score:4, Insightful)
I like it because it's new and shiny.
Now get back to work.
Re:Before starting any software project... (Score:4, Insightful)
The major problem with 3D desktops is that they're like trying to cram Beethoven's Fifth into a music box. I tried out the Sun 3D desktop once and got such a headache within five minutes that I was begging to go back to a command line.
Is anyone reminded of the whole way VRML on the web turned out to be such a massive dud? Why replicate the whole experience of browsing the aisles for a particular book when you can just type the name and find it a hundred times faster?
A few reasons this is actually kinda neat (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Skewed windows - Yeap, I can't read em' either. What is the point? It _may_ be easier to browse multiple windows and forefront the one you want using skewed/rotated effects (instead of an alt-tab ring or taskbar).
3. Window peeling - this is kinda nifty. Instead of minimizing, resizing or moving your current window to see what is underneath you 'peel back' part of the parent.
Earthshattering breakthrough in UI? Nope. A reliable and consistant cut-n-paste would be of more immediate value. But as an experiment into improving the GUI it is fun stuff.
Re:What I don't get (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:this is slown enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Excellent idea. When can you start?
Re:Before starting any software project... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm bored"
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
FOSS really needs a sense of aesthetics! (Score:5, Insightful)
This window system is cool. It's cool in the same way that Aero Glass will be cool and how the Java3D desktop is cool. But what really turns me off about those screen shots is that horrible window manager. It's like whoever designed it has absolutely no sense of aesthetics.
Here's the thing... if you want a minimalist system, then fvwm2 is great. It's not a really attractive look, but it's small and fast. But if you're going to require a lot of horsepower so that you can rotate windows in 3-space and all the other cool stuff, then it's not asking much to want a window manager with some textures and lighting and curves and some other stuff that looks halfway attractive.
</rant>
Re:What I don't get (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:this is slown enough (Score:5, Insightful)
I love it how ignorant people think that the same group of people are working on everything gui related, from browsers to video drivers.
Geezus man, this guy probably has NOTHING to do with KDE or the XFree86 project. If he wants to sit and watch pr0n all day or write a 3D window manager, it's his damn business.
It always amazes me how people can have such a gimmee mentality.
Because it's new. (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you checked out the video demo of using Looking Glass [sun.com]? It looks pretty slick, and while it's hard to say whether in its present form it would make a better desktop, it certainly shows that a 3D desktop could potentially be in many ways better than the modern 2D desktops.
The current projects like Looking Glass and Metisse aren't meant for large-scale use immediately. They are experiments in what a 3D desktop could offer, and whether it could provide a better user experience. In the future typical desktop computers will have more and more CPU/GPU power to spare, so speding it on the user interface is only beneficial.
After seeing the Looking Glass demo above, I'd say that anybody claiming straight out that a 3D desktop is of no use whatsoever is pretty short-sighted. Who knows, maybe Looking Glass will become the next killer desktop? Maybe a 3D desktop is a bad idea and counter-productive? These projects are made specifically to find that out.
Re:Before starting any software project... (Score:5, Insightful)
How about asking yourself the same question when it comes to the plethora of ways to prepare food?
The only problem that eating solves is nourishment, but yet people eat a variety of foods. Some foods taste better than others. Some people taste foods differently than other people, yet we only really need it for nourishment.
Any project started by a programmer or group of programmers is to fill some need, which may only be personal. Like food, we like variety and sometimes want something different or better or the combo of the two. If the creator (chef or programmer) like what they have done, they might want to share with the rest of the world.
The problem any software project sovles is self interest. It doesn't need to be anything more than that.
To belittle people for sharing is absurd.
Most Productive Post EVER (Score:3, Insightful)
This WM actually doesn't look too bad. Whenever I hear 3D desktop I assume garish arrangment of spinning browsers on cubes. This looks more akin to a *box with some neat ways of organising files on screen (the shrinking inactive files). Personally, I prefer my fluxbox tabbing, but I like the sensable 3D approach (not just some glitzy graphics demo).
Re:can someone (Score:5, Insightful)
Several people pointed out with the Looking Glass screenshots the other day that keeping a bunch of foreshortened (i.e. nearly perpendicular to the screen) windows open lets you actually see whats in them and visually manage multiple tasks better than you can with current overlapping 2D windows. Yes, you can do the same with a bunch of miniaturized 2D windows on the side of the screen, but it's still a good concept. The "peeling" feature demoed here with Metisse is also nice - I like the idea of bending a window aside to see what's behind it. The sphere-embedded windows uses a trick similar to the Looking Glass window foreshortening to create more available desktop space for multiple tasks by keeping a bunch of non-primary windows angled around the primary task window which faces the user directly, like a normal window, for optimal visibility.
Obviously, you generally want the primary focus of your attention to be as easily visible as possible. This is all about making multitasking more intuitive and easier to manage. I don't think anybody is going to run out and install any of this stuff on their mother's desktop at this point, but it's great that some of this stuff will at least be ready for experimentation soon. I know that the window soup that is usually my desktop would be nice to improve on, and I've never really found any of the existing funky alternative window management technologies (like the entirely keyboard driven X WMs with no overlapping - forget what this is called) to be very satisfactory for me.
Oh, and eye candy, combined with even very modest usability enhancements, sells stuff. Though those Matisse screenshots are about as ugly as sin thanks to the terrible window borders, color schemes and applications they chose to mix. The Looking Glass screenshots, on the other hand, were quite hot and sexy looking.
Re:can someone (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be +5 Insightful. The 3D desktop isn't a massive shift in thinking, it's about maximizing the WIMP metaphor. Tabbed browsing isn't a exactly a new paradigm in information retrieval, but it sure as hell is a nice evolutionary improvement to web browsing. When bits of 3D desktop experiments prove useful, they find their ways into "real" products like OS X.
Worthless, just like color displays (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take it easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
aesthetic is good, but it has to leave room to some productivity as well. I wouldn't live in an extremely beautiful and pleasant home if it didn't have any shelf to store my books for example.
Extremes are bad. It's all about balance. And the point of balance is different for everyone of us.
whoo, 3D is neat and all but... (Score:3, Insightful)
first let me get a program that operates in complete 3D (like a 3D website that needs a browser that can display in 3D) then once windows appear as 3D boxes instead of planes, i'll use a 3D window manager.
Re:This is OSS' greatest strenth (Score:2, Insightful)
Every project should have a reason why they exist, and routinely compare themselves to the next closest things. When two projects get close enough to share some or all of their code, developers should put that high on the priority list. I know for a fact my PC doesn't have to be working as hard as it does to run a mix of applications -- and that performance hit is what I'd worry about users shrinking away from the most.
We need to get more excited about projects that encapsulate lower level functionality in a way that provides a flexible enough API for developers to offload their redundant code areas, but I see no reason to bash on new WMs -- most of these problems are in the realm of toolkits.
compatibility with other wms? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to have some of these features, however I can't say I'm ready to just start using another wm cuz of some novelty.
Why not take some of the existing technology from this wm and incorporate it into other wms?
Just a thaught....
Re:Worthless, just like color displays (Score:5, Insightful)
Going 3D in most cases for text actually reduces readability, as most 2D fonts are carefully crafted to look good on the discrete pixels that make up a raster image. Anti-aliasing helps, but is not a panacea. I find that I do my own zooming operation manually with my head (moving it closer and farther away) as I look around my monitor at work. The idea of automatically shrinking non-focus windows 70% is kind of interesting (if the fonts still looked good at 70%), but doesn't require 3D.
I have a large projection screen monitor at home (8 foot wide) and can drive it a Quad-XGA (2048x1536), I find it great for 3D games and Movies, but not so good for most other applications. I was puzzled by this, but I think it is because you can't change your perspective quickly by leaning in and out or moving your head.
I suspect that 3D will one day be the norm, but only once we have monitors blasting out more pixels than we can easily differentiate across a field of view of more than 90 degrees. I'm not going to do the math, but I suspect that would be something like 6000x30000 or 18 mega pixels. Once we cross that boundary, then 3D starts to make a lot of sense, as the scaling and rotation do not unduly degrade text information even on small fonts, and starts to add information and ease organization. This assumes that moving the apps and text around is intuitive and easier, similar in ease to the way I move my head around when staring at my monitor at work today.
Re:FOSS really needs a sense of aesthetics! (Score:2, Insightful)
When working with developemental software you want to keep everything as minimal as possible, so you work with a minimal sort of window manager. That way if something goes wrong it's easier to figure out. Plus the load on the machine isn't that hard to handle.
Get it to work is #1 priority, next comes making it work fast, and then will come making it work with other windows managers that already incorporate the modern little gizmos that most people seem to need. Like a desktop file manager, applets, multiple virtual desktops, and all that.
Then after that gets going then people can start building and modifing apps to work with the 3d metaphore.
That way you can get creative with UI design and start doing some stuff that nobody thought of before.
But it all starts off in steps, Rome wasn't built in a day.
From all the negative comments here you'd think that most people here never have actually created anything new or unique. Not you, but I get the feeling that people continiously critcise and nitpick in an effort to make themselves feel smarter.
Like here they are stuck at work or bored at home doing nothing and they see something creative, and maybe not all that usefull yet, but it makes them feel bad because they are incapable of even doing anything remotely creative or new. So they put down people that can.
like "Hey I may not be doing much of anything, but at least if I did I wouldn't do something that stupid!!!"
Re:What I don't get (Score:3, Insightful)
Where are my mod points when I need them? I agree with that
Maybe you shouldn't have mod points, eh? Do you mod down posts you don't agree with?
Re:Your sig (Score:1, Insightful)
Shit, if violating UN resolutions is all it takes then we'd better get the tanks rolling into Israel sharpish, because they've violated a fucking metric shitload of UN resolutions. That's not even taking into account all the resolutions their buddy the United States of America vetoed. Or even questioning the sense of a nuclear weapons program in an area as unstable as the middle east.
You can't have it both ways.