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Space — Get a fast, unlimited desktop in VR
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@rrhoover @bigscreenVR is playing in this space as well. One of the most fascinating VR use cases for both work and play, in my opinion. Curious about @blakeir's thoughts here.
@jacksondahl @rrhoover @bigscreenvr @blakeir cool concept. it's called spaces but really it should be called windows in your VR space. I was kind of hoping that the VR incarnation of Windows would be more immersive. imagine the user as the mouse. rather than choosing windows, you choose spaces within your 3D Vision, a physical space segmented into partitions representing the windows. in order to implement effectively each space would need to have experience and sets of inputs that utilize the volume. that's what I hope spaces with time evolves into.
@the_onlyhope @rrhoover @bigscreenvr @blakeir Agree here. Most interesting things that happen in VR will not be "X (thing we already do) for VR", but rather imagining a new way of doing that (and more) given new medium. I think this will probably be true for productivity, social, gaming, and cinematic stuff
@rrhoover @jacksondahl so we built @cnverg from the start to run in browser, with full multitouch control, and optimized for giant touchscreens as the "dream" device (which we built a bunch of). Cost of displays are always what has held large scale touch back. But with VR desktops and environments, any flat surface can become a touchscreen... I'm excited, and this looks like a great start!
@the_onlyhope You'll probably have a better chance of getting something like that with AR like Hololens
It does seem to be an interesting product but it also reminded me about this essay by Bret Victor a long time ago. http://worrydream.com/#!/ABriefR...
With technologies like VR, I feel we should push for new visions of interaction design rather than super-imposing the same old interactions on new technologies.
Just my 2 cents. :)
Nice product. But, regarding claims that "this is what your desktop will look like in VR" -- these types of interfaces work well on flat, 2D screens, with keyboard or perhaps touch screen input. Performing tasks inside VR, whether input heavy tasks, browsing content, etc, will require different types of interfaces and experience design.
Good product - hope designers jump in and find inspiration for the type of interfaces required for a VR world.
this reminds me of hiro's study in snowcrash (the book). hiro has a house in the metaverse (virtual world) with a virtual study.
It'll be interesting to see how much more efficient this makes you (if at all). Ultimately I agree with Karthik as I don't see an incremental improvement being enough to drive user adoption. Any thoughts @shacheng?
@boatshuman @shacheng i agree 100%. its cool tech, but 1) you can't see your hands which makes typing weird and 2) i dont really feel like i ever need more than 2 screens to get something done.
I added this to the largest VR collection on PH :)
https://www.producthunt.com/@jur...
A really cool use of VR in productivity. Some could be thinking about getting a VR Headset to try this.
Wondering if there is a difference in visual quality | readability of the documents based on type of VR interface, for example, HTC Vive headset vs Rift?
I worked on a fairly similar 3D desktop at Intel a while back. To me, the main benefit is the ability to organize documents in a visual way that helps make sense of the information and remember it. http://fkaouane.free.fr/IEEE/Com...
This is what a WIMP desktop looks like in VR, but are not going to need desktops in VR.
WIMP was great when it was proposed ~50 years ago (many of the key components date back to the mid-60s and can be seen in Engelbart's Mother of All Demos video from '68). And it's had a good run. VR gives us a chance to move forward. WIMP and all it influences up and down the stack (think filesystems, hierarchies, etc) will be around for a long time on legacy systems, but we can do better.
It's not doing something new just for the fun of it (although that can be entertaining!) it's because we need it. There's many reasons why this design breaks and most become apparent very quickly you try to spend long periods of time with this kind of design.
Here's some of the issues:
* Each WIMP element requires full attention. This is a subtle but a huge problem with moving today's designs directly into 3D. We have evolved to give full attention to one thing but we also have an amazing ability to do secondary processing on what's going on on the edges of the action. Looking ahead (predators that we are) we have good resolution and color/depth perception. On our periphery we have black and white perception with bad "pixel" resolution -- but, crucially, our peripheral vision is great at processing movement/change (We need to see something catching at great up so we can climb up a tree, we don't need to know if it's a leopard or a tiger, time for that later). So appropriate 3D/VR/AR/immersive designs will be those that take that into account, for example, pushing notifications (which today are obnoxious rectangles) into the side and leveraging the mechanisms for detecting something important that we have evolved over thousands of years, freeing up space in front of us for what's really important.
* WIMP is designed for keyboard and mouse, which is to say discrete inputs (keyboard) and small but high precision movements (mouse). It's been expanded to other I/O mechanisms, but clumsily. VR involves the person in direct interaction, and the "resolution" is relatively low, because we can control well our extremities and bodies but not with micrometric precision. Our movements are continuous, not discrete. VR/AR will not just be gestures and voice, but also direct interaction with virtual objects that we can understand in a physical way.
* WIMP's fundamental (visual) design blocks are all square areas between 16-64 pixels of width/height. These elements are too small to be manipulated and accessed with any reliability in a 3D/VR/AR environment. Additionally, most of the text and iconography is also too small in VR to use effectively. Current apps are primarily designed around bitmapped graphics and when you're in a VR/AR environment you can zoom in and out infinitely. So unless almost everything is vector-based graphics, you end up with grotesque/unusable images.
* It's a 2D foundation and 2D solution. Making it float doesn't make it 3D. It just changes the axis in which it is 2D.
* WIMP is static. It is at its core a flat view of the data world at a point in time, and it can't handle multidimensionality properly without massive modifications. This is why, by the way, its primary organization mechanisms become so obnoxious when we use them for days or months at a time. Windows accumulate, folders get out of control, etc. And when we don't know what to do we stick a search icon on a corner and let the person using it figure it out. These concepts were created when multitasking and multithreading was something you could only do on a mainframe, and PCs would work for a few hours and then you'd turn off the machine or the program, and start again. There wasn't memory or CPU for anything else. Doing VR/AR/immersive properly requires doing multi-dimensionality properly, and requires integrating the time dimension as a fundamental component rather than the afterthought it is today, where time is for the most part merely a column that we use to sort lists on.
Many of the same problems are already present in "ports" of these designs and mechanisms to portable touch devices, so many solutions apply there too.
I'll keep this post short(ish?) by stopping here. I'll only add that it would be a reasonable thing to ask: so if not this, then what? I have some answers and that's what my work has been focused on the last few years. I'm working on getting more out in public form soon, and I'm not keeping things back "because stealth" but rather to be able to put forth the most coherent vision possible. That said, I'll be happy on engage on specific issues/arguments or anything.
******Note: It's my first post/comment on Product Hunt, so I want to add something in terms of tone: These discussions are often hyped as religious wars (VI vs EMACS!) and sometimes my opinions may be blunt but they come from an optimistic POV (ie define problem, find solution!) and are not personal. I hope it's seen as that, if not I apologize and I welcome any corrections or pointers in this regard.
While I point out what I think are serious problems, I also think *anyone working on a solution deserves respect*, and I respect the people that are working on these products even if I don't agree at all with their approach. They believe in one path and are going for it. This stuff is hard. I think we've only failed (as an industry) to push forward more, we've been a bit too timid... perhaps PTSD from when Microsoft used to crush anyone who dared do anything that might upset them.
After all reasonable discussion and its results are what, paraphrasing Fry "separates us, Humans and Robots... from Animals.... and Animal Robots."
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