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Thread: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

  1. #1
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    Red face Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    I thought it was dead but not only is it at 1.0 it also has Ubuntu packeges. Anyone try it out??

    http://www.osnews.com/story.php/1678...s-1.0-Released

    https://lg3d-core.dev.java.net/binary-builds.html

  2. #2
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    I lost my first reponse here... it may be rather telling that I am having a far more stable and 6x faster desktop experience on a computer that's less than a quarter the power of the one I was just using for Looking Glass.

    Installing it was the first part.
    For some reason, the downloaded packages crashed the gui depackage program. Not Looking Glass's fault; I did it via the command line, and once I figured out the correct order to install the packages, it worked.
    Added itself nicely to the list of Sessions, all was good.

    Logging in was fast!
    I was greeted by a pretty nice desktop background which fluidly moved around as I moved the pointer, a funny looking dock thing, a ginormous Sun Java logo that did a funny animation along with my pointer, and that's about it... A pretty nice, simple desktop.
    I am going to excuse the ugly appearance, since this is very early days and default themes seem to always look awful.

    It all looked rather neat, and was running quickly enough at this point. My fears regarding "What the heck? A 3D desktop environment running through a virtual machine or even mentioning Java as its platform... are they nuts?!" were gradually subsiding.

    It was weird to navigate. If I brought the pointer anywhere near the top left of the screen, a file manager would materialize showing me icons in Desktop. Kind of weird...
    At the bottom left of the dock thing, I found a menu!
    Opened it (just by hovering over it, again) and it unfolded rather smoothly. The first thing I tried out was Demos. This section had some really cool examples of items for a 3D desktop; a bunch of physics objects, some balls, a Newton's Cradle... neat stuff. All of these were full 3D directly on the desktop, and could be minimized just like any other app. (In Looking Glass's case, pretty weirdly; more on that later). These were really neat examples, and they show the potential for stuff like this. However, I still must wonder "Why?". Most of the 3d demos were pretty useless, while the "3d web browser" looks pretty 2D to me (just in a 3D window).

    Okay, enough of those! I moved onto some more useful apps; I went over the Firefox, ready to post "I did it!" here. I noticed that the menu in Looking Glass is not based on my menu in Gnome at all. I suppose that's safe since Gnome or any other desktop trying to load Looking Glass's 3D stuff would be disastrous (but great if it ever did work), however it also meant that all of my apps were missing from this menu. Firefox was there, though.
    Anyway, I loaded Firefox and it opened. Windowed apps here are pretty cool; the windows are full 3d, you can flip them to expose notes at the back (which you can write, and I imagine would be pretty handy, though I haven't tried much to be totally sure of their usefulness yet; adding notes to the back of the window for a particular document in GIMP would be amazing, but unlikely... I'm willing to be very surprised, though).

    Then I tried to use Firefox. I noticed that upon loading Firefox, the system had slowed to a crawl. The pointer was impossible to control (very sluggish), and key input had at least a 2 second delay. Upon minimizing Firefox, it all went back to the usual acceptable speed. Very weird. Essentially, I could not actually use - with any kind of speed - any "normal" 2D programs.

    Another weird thing is the image quality here. Everything 2D within a window was blurry, though the desktop itself was not. This is probably a combination of drivers and the problem with 3D desktops. I had hoped that, being the big daddy of 3d desktops, Looking Glass would have overcome this... sadly, it has not. Window contents are, for me at least, blurry / hard to read.

    I would have checked out the settings, such as screen resolution, to see if maybe it's all been set wrong, but none of those utilities seem to be here yet.

    Anyway, the story of minimizing! Minimizing was a trial because of the sluggishness when I had Firefox open (by the way, this same sluggishness happened with the 3D browser demo so it's not just Firefox). I did it in the end, and it minimized. Minimized programs get a 3D preview in the dock thing, which I guess is rather cute but also kind of cluttery. I bet that'll be configurable some day. (Hopefully the whole dock will be removable, actually...)
    I made the mistake of middle clicking on one of those previews, only to close Firefox and lose that message I told you about earlier. A new desktop has to be learned so it's not really their fault, but a bit of a weird way to do it. The problem I was having was that I just could not figure out how to unminimize Firefox!

    I hate gestures, but my fiddling with them did show some interesting functionality. I can throw a window over to the right side of the screen, and fun stuff like that.

    As I said earlier, those 3d objects that work on the desktop act in an identical way to everything else when minimized or moved to the side

    There are some nice "fancy" effects, for example moving the pointer off a windowed app makes it fade away based on how far away the window is.


    All in all, I think it's a neat idea but this is still very early days. It seems like it will be a long time before I'll be using Looking Glass, but I wish them luck in reaching that stage.
    This project is already intriguing and has some neat ideas, but it needs a lot more polish and some better application support.

    If I had to unify all this, I'd say that Looking Glass is being constrained too much by the 2D desktop world. The things that killed it were 2D programs, while the 3D programs ran fine. The only problem is that those 3D programs don't do much; they bounce around, but they currently serve little purpose. Some day maybe they will; maybe an HTML page will be interpreted into a 3-dimensional world instead of a 2-dimensional page; after all, half the point of HTML is to be read in numerous ways.
    Maybe GUIs never needed to be 3D; maybe our heads prefer 2D interfaces and once we end up working in 3D it all ends up befuddled. We don't know for sure, though, since few have actually tried a full-on 3D desktop; maybe this whole other dimension will some day produce more than just potential prettiness and actually offer a new kind of organization.

    Stable or not, Looking Glass is a very worthy experiment that could perhaps pave the way for even better, faster things to come.


    For now, I'll stick with my 2D desktop and watch with much interest and with due appreciation for those who are taking on the challenge to revolutionize the desktop interface.
    As someone said in the comments for that article, there is a lot going into simplifying desktops with stuff like voice recognition. That, too, is a very noble effort. In fact, I have to agree that voice recognition seems a lot more useful than a 3d desktop. However, it takes great dedication to take anything this far, and these guys clearly want to see stuff that's new; they want things pushed forward, and I would love to see it happen. (Just so long as it works in the end).
    Last edited by Mr. Picklesworth; December 21st, 2006 at 07:13 AM.

  3. #3
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    I've been watching PLG with interest for a while, but was never able to get it running. Installing now
    Bean Count!=Knowledge (see above)
    Microsoft gives you windows, linux gives you the whole house

  4. #4
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    The Feisty Fawn Testing

    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    Cool! I thought this was just a one-off tech demo, and didn't know people were still working on turning it into a real desktop environment. I'll hafta give it a whirl...

    Edit - This thread probably shouldn't be in the Feisty forum.

  5. #5
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    First, I must comment that the Ubuntu packages are of a very high quality - they even set up a separate gdm session!

    As far as the project goes, after using it's simultaneously one of the most stupid and awesome things I've tried in a while.

  6. #6
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    Then I tried to use Firefox. I noticed that upon loading Firefox, the system had slowed to a crawl. The pointer was impossible to control (very sluggish), and key input had at least a 2 second delay. Upon minimizing Firefox, it all went back to the usual acceptable speed. Very weird. Essentially, I could not actually use - with any kind of speed - any "normal" 2D programs.
    What hardware and drivers do you use? I believe LG requires the same driver features that AIGLX/XGL/Compix require for running regular X apps. If you can't run AIGLX or XGL with decent speed, LG is going to be just as big of a problem if running regular X apps.

  7. #7
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    Quote Originally Posted by kejar31 View Post
    I thought it was dead but not only is it at 1.0 it also has Ubuntu packeges. Anyone try it out??
    Yes I did. Installing as easy as can be, just download the 3 files and sudo dpkg -i filenames and log in with gdm and use looking glass in stead of Gnome.

    I don't think it looks pretty. It is not fast en responsive like Gnome is. There are almost no programms visible in the menu, but ok..it's nice to play with. But after a few minutes it was over with the fun, I'm a Gnomer!

    Made a picture here.
    /Jos

    Linux on the desktop (Dutch): http://www.digiplace.nl
    We write about Linux (Dutch) http://www.linuxweblogs.nl

  8. #8
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    There is no reason why compiz/beryl couldn't steal some ideas from LG. In-fact a lot of the suggestions/wishlists in the their respective forums (more beryl than compiz though) suggest stuff that looking glass already has, like window titles on the side, flippable windows, etc. I particularly like how the minimized windows look, you can see everyting without having to unminimize a window. That would be great to see in any desktop environment, though osx does something similar but not as cool. One thing I like about LG is the intergration. Thats what makes osx so great the fact that the widgeting system and the windows manager work together and everything is consistant. In-order to have that in linux, the DE devs are going to have to start supporting the composite extension throughout their desktop, not just the window manager. I see KDE doing this first as QT pretty much provides this type of functionality out of the box. I'm not sure if gtk can do it to, though I know they support cairo. Another reason I say KDE will reach this goal first is because they have a better history of intergration than gnome, a huge example is something as complex and robust as konquerer.

    Take note however, that I'm a gnome user and wouldn't touch KDE due to their over-abundance of UI elements. There is just way too much going on and thats just not pretty. I'm doubtful that this will change with KDE4 as there still isn't a clear KDE HIG for 4.

  9. #9
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    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    I had a play. And it's...strange. Very unintuitive, kinda ugly, and slow as hell on my machine.

    Some nice ideas, but very clumsy.
    I like the fact that it makes a new GDM session for it tho.
    Bean Count!=Knowledge (see above)
    Microsoft gives you windows, linux gives you the whole house

  10. #10
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    Hardy Heron (Ubuntu Development)

    Re: Project Looking Glass 1.0 Released

    Quote Originally Posted by d3v1ant_0n3 View Post
    I had a play. And it's...strange. Very unintuitive, kinda ugly, and slow as hell on my machine.

    Some nice ideas, but very clumsy.
    I like the fact that it makes a new GDM session for it tho.
    That's pretty much what I'd say too. It's a bit sluggish for me with my crappy graphics board. But I think some of its features would be good for usablity. Font's are awful for me, as I don't use GDM so they're not configured.

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