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...."
I have to admit (Score:2, Interesting)
3D! (Score:2, Interesting)
Would mouse pointer movement include depth perception with this setup?
Re:I have to admit (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:can someone (Score:5, Interesting)
Concepts that seems useless from Looking Glass are making their way to real products with very innovative approaches.
Because it's technically cool? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there are other assumptions that need to be challenged prior to this sort of thing being built. Namely, that "applications" are the best way to segment functionality within an OS. This sort of system really seems to address the problem of moving between windows to access and work with different information from different applications. I think the problem of having to move between applications ought to be addressed first.
Finally, is anybody aware of any studies of this type of interface that prove me dead wrong? That prove that people are fantastically more efficient using a mechanism like this?
Re:still a 2D Desktop for me.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
this is slown enough (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean I think what they're doing is cool in terms of "hey let's try this" but I don't see this as where window managers are headed. People still want fast and colorful icons and a nice file browser that's well integrated with apps. If you're unsure what I meant, compare the "save as" dialogs in mozilla and kedit.
Sorry for the rant, I was just a little annoyed I had to reboot after having an uptime of only 8 days.
My thesis work (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Input Device (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I don't get (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically, a way to be able to see changes on a window without the window taking up as much space as it normally does.
Re:What I don't get (Score:1, Interesting)
What I would really like to see, are windows that minimize into "screenshot icons".
Imagine firing up Moz to see a slow webpage (let's say it's a slashdotted one), and since this takes too long, you iconify the window and do somethgin else while watching the icon to see when it's browseable. Or let's say you're compiling something, you can easily see when the activity in the icon has stopped.
Come on! Give me a wm with this feature, and you're guaranteed at least ONE user!
3d desktops and performance. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does rendering into pixmaps possibly increase performance?
If you're rendering into a pixmap, having something occlude it onscreen (i.e. in the framebuffer) will -not- be a destructive operation, and you won't have to repaint..
In otherwords, sliding windows across the screen, animating some huge mouse cursor (larger than HW mouse accel would allow, for some strange and uncouth reason), or otherwise putting stuff up in front of windows would not cause them to redraw because their pixels would not be damaged by the operation.
This is good.
There is a negative-- You use more memory on your graphics card/AGP memory, but even this can be alleviated by switching what windows/buffers you render into offscreen pixmaps.
One could, for instance, render all but one window into the framebuffer, save the colorbuffer and depth buffer, then render things in the 'active' window into an offscreen pixmap, and render that into the scene. This would require less memory than a full-off every-window-gets-its-own-pixmap approach, and would still likely perform better than our window managers today (only one repaint of windows is needed when you switch contexts, as opposed to one every frame with the current method)
Partly nice, begging for the Compose extension (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, some parts of this are nice. I have reservations about the actual 3D parts, but window scaling would come in handy.
Having another X server to mediate this stuff isn't very clean though; I understand that they went that way for early development, since there isn't really anything finished that would be better, and they apparently wanted to get to the effects stuff. On the long run, however, it seems that this stuff should be done by a Compositing Manager. Of course, this also requires that the X Composite Extension [freedesktop.org] be implemented in mainstream X servers (read: X.org [x.org]).
too much perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
X, Aqua, Windows: they're all sufficiently 3D, with stacked windows. If anything, they could use less dimensionality, and simplify the inherent complexity: window groups, accessible process data/logic/presentation tiering with pluggable dataflow, pattern copy/paste, OS-level replication and triggers, omnimedia messaging by reference, flowchart programming.
Making a 3D "desktop" is worse than just bogging down in a 20th Century soulkilling paradigm. It's distracting us from using the 3D parallel processors to separate presentation from logic and data, to obtain all those other features which reflect the way modern people intercommunicate at work, play and everything in between. Hopefully the open source of these new arrivals will allow the best functions to be salvaged and dragged into a new paradigm created by a visionary person or group. Then these machines might start becoming less of their own problems to solve, and begin to disappear in the magic of a real solution.
Has everybody really forgotten about VR? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think we all agree that VR interaction as presented in the early 90s was a complete crock. It is not more efficient to have to "walk" into a "room" to find stuff on your computer. And the necessary hardware at that stage was rudimentary, slow and bulky.
Forget all that other crap. Put on your VR goggles and run a system like Metisse. Run all your existing applications in windows as normal, only now you can put them anywhere in 3D space around your workstation. Have dozens of windows open at once, all easily accessible, without desktop switching.
Long webpages could be opened to full height, sticking up through the ceiling and down through the floor. Instead of scrolling, move the whole window so the area of interest is closest. Pick out interesting sections (images or whatever) in the distance before you've "scrolled" there.
I can think of endless ways a 3D window manager could be used in conjunction with VR technology, even without any specialised applications. If I could seriously set one up now, I would. I'd probably still use my CRT as a second display device (after all, I might need to show something to other people).
Realistically speaking, this isn't practical without true see-through displays. (I want to be able to see the rest of my environment behind the windows -- such as the keyboard -- and the current displays of this type, to my knowledge, use camera passthroughs which are probably a bit laggy and nauseating to use.) But I want one, as soon as the tech catches up -- assuming it hasn't already...
Now we need 3D apps! (Score:2, Interesting)
This would be really neat with those 3D stereo page-flip glasses (yes, I have a pair) which give true stereoscopic 3D from a regular CRT monitor.
This actually looks nifty (Score:3, Interesting)
Metisse seems to take a slightly different approach. The features outlined in the screenshots actually look like they make an effort to help users manage windows. I do agree somewhat with Steve Jobs' position that users shouldn't have to be janitors; a system that makes some useful decisions for the user seems worthwhile.
It looks like Metisee preserves window locations when using the 'shaped' screen and scales contents down, allowing users to utilize spatial relationships and visual cues to find data.
I also like the idea of folding over window corners to see the lower windows. Seems more useful then Alt-Tabbing. This feature is implemented from a research paper. I've seen several posts here that lament open source's propensity to copy rather than innovate. Here is a concrete counter-example of an open source project trying something new and leveraging academic research. Even if the project is a complete failure, it should be applauded for taking a risk and implementing something different.
As an aside, I remember some comments on the original Looking Glass article that critized flipping widgets over to change settings and view properties. The new Tiger Dashboard in Mac OS X is now doing the same thing. The reviews seem positive on that score. I can't really decide what I make of that. Property sheets sometimes obscure their apps, so I guess flipping is a wash, but I think I would prefer to see the application and its properties.
Better than Expose and the Task Bar (Score:3, Interesting)
The second screen shot [insitu.lri.fr] about the "Auto Scale mode" looks like a feature that works better than Expose on OS X. The thing I don't like about Expose is having to work with function keys or desktop hot corners in order to activate it. The Auto Scale mode looks like a version of Expose that runs while you are working, without having to resort to function keys or hot spots.
It looks like a feature in which the shrunken windows are visible around the normal size active window, without any overlapping. I presume switching between windows requires you to simply click on a shrunken window, which would resize it to normal and shrink the previously acitve one, kind of similar to Expose.
This also eliminates the need for a Task Bar, and would also have the advantage of actively showing the windows contents, rather than just representing a window with a Task Bar button. OS X can display a minimised window's contents in the dock, but this Auto Scale mode can display minimised window contents in a larger fashion, depending upon the space available on the screen.
I also presumed that Expose was OS X's answer to the Task Bar, because their dock didn't allow you to switch windows as efficiently as the Task Bar. This Auto Scale feature looks like something that is a combination of Expose and the Task Bar, but works better than both. I think this is a really innovative concept for window managers.
Re:What I don't get (Score:2, Interesting)
Object lesson (Score:4, Interesting)
The screenshots for Metisse suck and you can only use FVWM - what gives? It is a great demonstration of how productive Java is though.
Looking Glass: Looks awesomeMetisse: Looks like crap
Looking Glass: one guy in his spare time
Metisse: "a lot, see the source" (really one dude hacking other sources though)
Looking Glass: from scratch because of Java APIs
Metisse: hacked X server, hacked FVWM, hacked vnc.
Looking Glass: very secure
Metisse: insecure (it's in C and it's hacked up code)
Looking Glass: easy to write plug-ins, dynamically load
Metisse: hack fvwm in C, recompile
There was an article a while back saying that the language doesn't matter for security because it is bad programming that is responsible. Even without looking at the source I can guarentee there's no buffer overflows, double-free's, format string exploits, etc in Looking Glass. And I would bet my life savings there's at least several in Metisse.
There was an article recently about Java performance where most posters insisted it's still slow and jerky, but the movie of Looking Glass [sun.com] sure looks good to me. It's sad that people still use C/C++ to create lame hacks like this Metisse when there are such better alternatives. Can you imagine if the whole OS was written in a modern language? [slashdot.org]
Re:What I don't get (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know about you, but I see some serious usability innovations in 3d space for audio work. I have a bash script that starts up Hydrogen, Qsynth, and RoseGarden and that's *just* to do midi work. I need a terminal for ecasound if I'm using my guitar or doing vocals, and then I need Audacity for postproduction. I've run out of space on my screen.
There's a reason many audio guys have 2-3 monitors when they're working, but I can see a good 3d desktop making the monitor I have stretch so that I won't *have* to install two more monitors.
Come to think of it, I can see it helping me all over the place. I'm trying to build the thing right now, I hope it works well. ;) I love KDE, but I'll drop KDE in a heartbeat for a good 3d WM.
Re:What I don't get (Score:5, Interesting)
To date, the only Window managers I could get all of these things to happen in are Sawfish and TVWM.
Knowing that one man's feature is another man's bloat, Window managers should put everything into modules and make it easy to add/remove features.
The best way to go is to make the core contain an event manager, a titlebar manager, and an API.
Everything else should be components that add in later, since anything could be bloat, though it should be capable of adding anything else.
The only Window manager that I know that is that tiny but also extensible is TVWM, though extension is a real pain.
If the window managers are extremely difficult to extend, then bloat goes in and stays in. Much better to live without it and "stifle innovation" by making it a separate program or part of an extensible manager.
Not a troll:Linux GUI problems still not addressed (Score:4, Interesting)
OpenGL or not, the Linux GUI still looks like a hack...and the screenshots showing Emacs don't help.
The vastly different look and feel, from one app to the other, is one of the main problems, but it is never gonna go away...
Re:3d desktops and performance. (Score:3, Interesting)
For a good example of this effect in action, grab any sufficiently large browser window while running Windows XP, and drag it around on the screen very quickly in a circular motion. You need to have the "show windows contents while dragging" option turned on. Now, notice the windows behind it are constantly being redrawn, a lot slower than you can drag the window around. Also, your CPU usage will spike to pretty much 100%. Now, try this same thing on a Mac that is running OS X with Quartz Extreme enabled... No redrawing. Occlusion is all heandled by the GPU. That's the benefit of pixmaps.