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3DNA Desktop
by Steve Gibson, Jul 22, 2002 12:37pm PDTAs a little experiment to broaden our horizons a bit with FileShack we've worked out a little deal with the folks at 3DNA. Here's a fun desktop tool that some of you guys may enjoy. A 3D desktop with some fancy utils that may remind you of things like Netcaptor. The 3DNA folks are asking for your feedback if you download this and check it out. But if 3D desktops arent your thing though dont waste everyone's time. You can grab the file here from FileShack and leave your comments here. Oh yeah, and some images of the beta world. (They have a few different 'themes' for the thing as well as allowing people to mod it themselves) So, whadya think of the beta? note: No we didnt get any $ for this, it's just a favor for someone I know and you wont begin to regularly see things like this or anything. Dont worry. :)
Comments
This looks really cool, although some of it is a bit slow and choppy on my system. The biggest thing I would like to see is walking using the mouse, instead of keyboard. Perhaps a click-and-hold system like Everquest and other similar games, or even just using a mouse wheel or middle navigation-scroll-button to move forwards and backwards.
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Critiques/requests:
1. Multi-monitor support!!! I know that only a small percent of users run dual monitors, but I don't see why every 3D app should crash when I try to run it in dual monitor mode. Sorry, it's my pet peeve. :)
2. Some of the poster-framed things on the walls were ads, I believe, but quite a few weren't.. Allow customization (via a right-click popup menu like all the other customization options) for non ad posters.. and if more ads are added in the future, make sure that the user still has a place to add his or her own touch.
3. The "Options" bar that popped up in the middle of the floor looked really cool. I'd like to see more animated things like that in the future. I know it doesn't really fit with the villa theme, but perhaps in the space station theme that's coming out soon more 3D animated stuff like that would be in order.
4. Relating to #3, 3D animated stuff like that feels naked without some sort of sound effects. For things that seem to have a metallic feel like that, add a subtle sound that plays only during the animation, but make sure to add an option to turn it off as well. Also, make sure NOT to add ambient background noise/music/etc. as it'd get really annoying for anyone who tried to use this is a main operating environment.. (Even though the ocean seems odd with no background sounds..)
5. Something I'd really like to see, although I don't know if it's possible... It would be really cool to combine something like this with a Window Blinds type program.. Something that makes all the app windows that pop up at least somewhat fit with the theme.. (I know it's not practical to ask you to re-write every app in existence with a 3D interface that matches, but a Window Blinds type thing that makes things feel like they fit together really well could help the environment feel more like it belonged..)
Questions:
1. What's up with the door? It looks like an elevator or something from a distance, but when I get close to it, it turns to a swirly blue thing.. Is it something for a future release that hasn't been added yet? Or am I having a strange bug?
2. On a bare spot on one of the walls, I noticed a checkerboard pattern similar to the wall full of web browsers.. Are there plans to put the wall to use? Or is it just skinned like that to keep from having a big blank space? (I'm just curious, hence the questions section..) It'd make a good spot for a bigass customizable poster, like I mentioned earlier. ;)
Nice work!! I can't wait to see the next release, as this is really coming along nicely..
Oh, and unlike many other people, I didn't have any performance problems at all, which is surprising since I run a Duron 850 with a Radeon VE...
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The good stuff:
Nice idea
Themes rule
The bad stuff:
Slow and choppy (even on a 1ghz geforce2 gts)
Takes a long time to do anything
Suggestions for improvement (not stating the obvious):
Needs an intuitive interface for moving faster in the 3d world (shortcuts etc)
Customization, would be cool if the user could place the different things where he/she likes it and customize the 3d world to the max
That's about it I think...
can you rocket jump in this? :D
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Textures suck
Memory consumption : 107MB on my pc
Litestep type of an idea
Needs alot of improvements
and WHY???? 2d is better and easier
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1)No money changed hands for this (we're a small new (Canadian) company without the phat lewt for that kind of thing). Steve was just kind enough to post the link.
2) We're trying to make a 3D desktop that doesn't suck (and we know how bad they've sucked in the past)
3) It's free (hence the ads), so there's no harm in trying it out
4) You guys are good at ripping into new things, so real feedback from you would be much appreciated
5) We HAVE done our research on the attempts that have been made before (if you've tried it, so have we) - this isn't just a blind stab in the dark
6) YOU DON'T HAVE TO WALK IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. We did do SOME research, believe it or not ;)
7) If you think this could be done better in any way GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK, that's why you guys are the first ones to get this beta (and remember, it's just a BETA. It can only get better with your feedback).
All we want is love. Is that so much to ask?
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Until 3D interfaces do that, then they're just novelty.
Nice try, though.
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i want to try this soo bad :o
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If you're going to have a sun and a sky, have realtime day/night cycles. Us geeks really benefit from having sensoral input on what time it is. Helps our bodies relax or get going.
I see a lot of people commenting about the sluggishness, or lack of file navigation. I seem to remember seeing a proof-of-concept idea where file navigation happened inside spheres, where moving the mouse slid the sphere around you, displaying all the files in a directory. The more files, the denser the surface of the sphere. Icons were interactive the same as Windows. Clicking on a directory link quickly sucked you through the wall of the sphere (through the directory you clicked on) and into another sphere. Moving files from one directory to another wasn't great, though; you had to click & hold while you rotated the sphere over another directory. Releasing the mouse button sucked you into that new directory where the file was deposited. Cutting and pasting worked too.
The major disadvantage was that you couldn't get an overall image of the directory tree and the contents of a directory like in Explorer (tree on the left, contents on the right). Anyway, I thought it was pretty slick. All these file icons whirling around you...
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Ah well, there's always some sucker out there that'll pay for these. :-P
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Apps layer 1
Music layer 2
Porn layer 3
Browser layer 4
Etc etc
"Scrolling/Diving" through them with Left Shift and Mousewheel would be a fast and effective way to work with several desktops at one time.
Is it really that hard to make?
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Why not? if it's a boring day, things like that can be useful.
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I'm all for 3D rendered GUIs, but every application of it I've seen focuses on on creating something novel like walking around your desktop, instead of increasing productivity.
Personally, I'd like to see something very much like my current desktop that is rendered in 3D to take advantage of features available via the 3D hardware that would make my current desktop (or say, something very much like it rendered in 3D and displayed without perspective) do a whole lot more and look a whole lot better.
That's not as whacky as it sounds - imagine using lighting effects and shaders (subtly) to differentiate between inactive and active windows; you could make icons that look everybit as good bitmap icons, but using 3D models they could be animated, scaled, antialiased, etc.
We could use 3D rendering images to make desktops from vector elements instead of raster elements, get rid of a whole host of problems we have with raster desktops (like resolution scaling and the inability to properly antialias things), and in the process make things look a lot better and add all sorts of new types of feedback (your drive icons start to bloat when they're getting full, etc).
You get the idea... let people do more, do it faster, and do it better, and the _might_ give you some money for it...
...and hurry before Microsoft beats you to it!
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ACCESS DENIED, ACCESS DENIED, ACCESS....
GRANTED.
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-Runs fine (850mhz/128mb/GF2)
-Seems sort of sluggish compared to snappy pop-up menus though, I think adding bunnyjumping into this would be a big plus (don't forget the jump pads!).
-Have to agree with some of the other posters on the useability of the whole thing, especially for use on a normal workstation. The whole concept of having to move around in a room just seems much more fitting if you use the VR-goggles and sensors that sort of fit with it. I bet you could license this sort of thing of to NASA or whoever actually uses VR-equipment.
-A 3D-accelerated Windowblinds sort of approach would definitely rock. I'm sure it's in the works as we speak, and it'll probably ending up looking like WC3 (think menus/icons instead of dead orcs) with the ability to make it look "flat" with a top-down look, or you can zoom in and flyyy through the objects.. (Yeah, too much WC3 :/ )
-A cool enviroment for the above approach would be the traditional desktop, of course, with small racing cars, stapler, paper clips, computer and all that (what those things represent is pretty intuitive, eh?). The ability to add own objects to the desktop is a must as well.
I dunno, it was fun to mess around in (yes, I *did* try bunnyjumping, but no go), but it doesn't really *improve* anything over the 2d desktop, it's just a new 3d-rendered wrapping smacked into a "room", it probably has its uses, but as mentioned I don't think it'll work faster/better than what GUI's offer today..
I think I'll just uninstall this and go to bed now..
If I need a hand on my keyboard and a hand on my mouse to do anything, it's immediately made me less productive, and made my computing experience harder. I can get around my 2D desktop just fine without touching anything but my mouse.
I think the idea is great, but there just aren't the right devices available to the mainstream computing world to make something like this even comparable to a 2D desktop in terms of speed, productivity, and usability. Maybe if there were a more intuitive way to get around a 3D desktop, things like this would be more successful.
The whole thing just feels clunky. It takes effort to do things, and most of the actions involve windows that pop up and exist outside of the whole virtual 3d world. If windows become integrated with the actual program, and can be moved and used like physical 3d objects, then I might be able to see actually using it. But until then, the fact is that the desktop just isn't 3D, and this program will only feel like a more complex way to interact with something that is inherently far less complicated.
I like the idea of having my own little virtual house, but having it floating in the middle of nowhere like that totally spooks me. It'd be cool to have a yard, and maybe even neighbors (people on your network?), and being able to let others into your house would be awesome. Especially if you can design it yourself (build it with your bare hands?).. people love to show off their desktops.
But I think it'll be a long time before something like this meets success. I don't think people really want to think of their desktop as something with an actual physical representation, and they don't want to live in a house inside of their computer. The focus shouldn't be on making a virtual world, it should be on making the 3d interface provide something that a 2d interface cannot.
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http://www.benbarker.com/3Ddesktop.jpg
Screen capped, resized, and uploaded while in the 3D dektop program. Pretty cool. I wouldn't use it because of the extra overhead it adds though.
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http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/index.htm
It's called Task Gallery and here is the summary:
The TaskGallery is a running 3D research prototype user interface that expands the desktop into an entire office with an unlimited number of desktops. The screen becomes a long gallery with paintings on the walls that represent different tasks, and the user moves quickly and easily from one to another with a simple series of mouse and keyboard commands. We tried to make the illusion appeal to the lessons in navigating physical space that we learned as children, so that people would “get†the system intuitively without having to learn or adjust to it. The less people have to think about how to work their computer, the more mental energy they have left for their real work.
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You have to throw out things and actions that you used in the real world when using a computer. WIMP forced this a long time ago, and people have learned and adjusted. For the beginning user, it's a pain, but it was easy to implement. So, we lived with it.
3D desktops have to do a lot more work. My real world sense says I could take that calculator and arrange it somewhere else. I can't do that here (at least I think I can't) with everything. I could rearrange the toys, but I can't do it for anything else.
The problem is, either apply the real world paradigm in 3D or don't try. I couldn't drag the Recycle Bin anywhere, and I thought I could since I could move other things. It confuses the user, and the bottom line is that it's basically just a graphically nice Start Menu.
However, in the interest of real feedback...
- Objects movable and perhaps stackable on shelves would be a worthwhile feature.
- Drag and drop of objects onto objects would be nice, especially physically dragging files to a printer and such.
- No lighting?
- Too limited in functionality. A 3D file browser would have been ideal. One thing that could benefit from 3D is a file browser for sure.
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I personally don't think the "room" metaphor works for a user interface, it didn't work when MS did it with Bob, it didn't work when Packard Bell bundled it as their stock interface and it doesn't work now.
Tis a nice piece of coding, I just don't feel that the basic idea is sound.
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I havn't used this, only seen the shots, but from what I've seen I think it's terribly flawed.
My advice:
Create an untextured 3d UI. First duplicate the standard windows interface except use 3d, such as all the icons are tiny 3d boxes that light up when you click them. Experiment with this. Then try to ask yourself what aspects of 3d could be taken advantage of to make it easier to access nested data in 3d than it would be in 2d.
How can you take advantage of this extra dimension? People run in higher resolutions for a reason: they can fit more on the screen at a time. Well, with an extra dimension you can theoretically fit many times as much data on the screen at a time. There has to be a way to take advantage of this.
I don't know the right way to do it, but I do know how I would go about trying to figure it out, and in my opinion what 3DNA is doing doesn't look like the right way.
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A 2D desktop functions just fine.
If I start up a program, the program still runs in 2D. Though, I suppose 3DNA doesn't have much say in that aspect :P I guess I'm just having a hard time distinguishing between a 2D OS, and a 3D Desktop...
When I think "3D Desktop", I think everything should be in 3D... webpages should render on a folding/unfolding sphere or something, and I get to rotate the sphere instead of tabbing between webpages or using the start-bar... Applications run in a 3D space, and I have a HUD for anything I need to run quickly for when using the utili-sphere would be slow/cumbersome.
But I guess it just occured to me... all a 3D Desktop really is, is like Wallpaper. It sits there and doesn't really do much except look pretty. Which is fine. But really, I'd settle for a 3D representation of a 2D Desktop... it'd be just like the desktop we have now, only maybe the icons would shimmer, or the Start Bar would unfold, and melt, and unmelt and other cool eye candy. I don't really want to walk around on my desktop... I just want stuff to be immediately accessable... I don't need to see previews of webpages, since they're really too small to read anyway.
I'm sure a lot of people would agree with me that a full 3D GUI for Windows would be totally bad-ass. But that's a long long ways off still. So, for now, I think of 3D desktops as Wallpaper. As such, a 3D Desktop should basically have 3 things:
1) Be accessable, and have all the icons I need quickly available, like a normal desktop.
2) Normal desktop functionality... deleting stuff, maybe some basic file moving and copying. Some cool sound effects. Drag & Drop, etc.
3) Look pretty.
Anything beyond the above is really just making things more gimiky... like walking around a virtual apartment, shooting a basketball, etc. An gimiky is fine for when you first start up a program, or when you're really bored and just want to mess around. But it still needs to have solid functionality.
Also, I think the objects physics are really laggy. When you go up to that toy area on the roof, and those blocks are sitting on each other... it starts to lag like a mofo... but of you throw them off the table so they're not stacked, it speeds up quite a bit.
One more thing, there definately needs to be some speed optimizations... My machine is a 1.5 ghz intel, 512 ram, GF2 Ti... and I'm getting horrid frame rates... especially noticeable when turning, etc. Maybe it's just the mouse code? I dunno. Needs work.
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Cool stuff even though I haven't seen it yet.
http://www.overburned.com/shackdata/broken.png
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