[vos-d] Flux Worlds Server Announcement

[Karsten Otto]

I have been wondering about 3D user interfaces recently. We got the  
desktop metaphor for 2D, but does this really serve the requirements  
of a 3D space as well? I get the feeling that we might need something  
different here; the bulk of interaction in 3D space is likely to be  
different from shuffling papers around. Of course, as long as the 3D  
client does not replace the desktop entirely, some degree of  
integration is necessary - copy+paste as input enhancement is a good  
example.

However this is not my field of expertise (anybody got good papers on  
this subject?), so I can only speak from personal experience. The "3D  
interface" I used lately was WoW, and I found it responsive enough.  
Interestingly, while it has buttons that trigger actions, I mainly  
used them as a quick way to arrange keyboard shortcuts during normal  
gameplay. The only time I ever used the interface in a "traditional"  
way was for complex actions like trading items. Actually this is  
quite similar to my Blender experience - it drove me crazy when I had  
to use the menus, but was a breeze once I knew the keyboard  
shortcuts. Not sure if there is a lesson there...

Regards,
Karsten Otto


Am 02.04.2007 um 17:55 schrieb Peter Amstutz:

> On Mon, Apr 02, 2007 at 09:26:59AM -0600, S Mattison wrote:
>
>> The TerAngreal browser, I feel, doesn't serve as an integrative
>> metaversal tool; because it uses proprietary OS-GUI-interface system
>> calls, to generate the 'chat area' as well as the 'user list', and
>> even the 'menus'.
>
> Well ironically, the point of that is to serve integration with the
> user's desktop.  For various reasons, 3D-based GUIs tend to be clunky,
> due either to lack of polish (the GUI hasn't had the years of
> development attention that say GTK has), lack of integration with the
> desktop (things like cutting and pasting doesn't work like the rest of
> the desktop, if it works at all) or simply being slow (because the GUI
> is rendered on top of the 3D scene, the update rate of the controls is
> throttled to that of the update rate of the 3D scene as a whole.)
>
> Thus, the use of WxWidgets to create a native look and feel was a
> deliberate design decision, not because it was easier (because it's  
> not,
> it actually makes some things a lot harder.)
>
> -- 
> [   Peter Amstutz  ][ tetron at interreality.org ] 
> [ peter.amstutz at gdit.com ]
> [Lead Programmer][Interreality Project][Virtual Reality for the  
> Internet]
> [ VOS: Next Generation Internet Communication][ http:// 
> interreality.org ]
> [ http://interreality.org/~tetron ][ pgpkey:  pgpkeys.mit.edu   
> 18C21DF7 ]
>
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