The NEW 3D PanUbuntu Was: Is it me or does Hardy run like a pig?

[Paul Rumelhart]

Knapp wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 2:30 PM, Donn <donn.ingle at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I always thought (but not deeply :) ) that a first-person *world* would make a
>> great UI. Imagine something like PlaneShift (the game, very nice BTW) where
>> this happens:
>>
>> I am in the main room of my castle. Each wall is a 'desktop' I can zoom into
>> it, tear away zip across to another (or the ceiling). I can go out the door
>> into another set of desktops. Perhaps I code in the main room and run email
>> and stuff in the next.
>>
>> I don't have time to walk through doors and down stairs, but I can setup
>> hyperspace portals to any room.
>>
>> Icons to start apps can be on desktops or can be hanging like paintings on the
>> walls or floating around the space.
>>
>> I can have a vast room full of folder icons. Documents that I can throw around
>> (bump desktop style) and arrange into stacks as I need.
>>
>> The Recycle room can be a pile of trash -- folder and document icons all
>> scrunched-up. I can arrange them as I need. I pull a lever on the wall and
>> the floor opens and they all fall into a giant fire!
>>
>> I get a call on Skype (I know, don't kill me but Ekiga just won't work) and I
>> zip up to my sky-room where the interface floats before me. If I need to drop
>> a file onto the chat I can open a 'globe' which calls the entire castle into
>> it and I can quickly zip to the folder room and find one. I drag the 3D
>> document icons to the chat.
>>
>> Daemons could be actual monsters and such. Apache would be an indian with the
>> feather :) They walk about in the dungeons mostly. Their speed of walking
>> (flying, lurching) could indicate their activity. When the fork, they clone
>> and the children are smaller and chained to the parent.
>> To kill them you shoot them. Of course :D
>>
>> Outer space could be where you keep widgets orbiting the planet. Want to see
>> the latest Dilbert? Hyperspace to there and fly around your widget space.
>>
>> SSH would start a new castle next door!
>>
>> And so on. Would be cool. Now go code damnit!
>>
>> \d
>>     
>
> Did some research, running  a 3d program that has floating icons,
> clicking them to start a program is easy. Making the program that is
> started project onto anything in the 3d program is VERY hard. So we
> could with ease make it an run it on top of KDE as a program started
> and fun toy. Anything more would take real work, unless I am missing
> something.
>
>   
Why not make a desktop environment specific to compiz-fusion?  There is 
already a windows manager for compiz, why not a DE?  The cube is already 
a step down that path.  You don't have to jump fully into a Quake-like 
environment, you can start by replacing the start bar with something 3-D 
and working your way up from there.

Paul - who runs compiz happily both at work and at home