Oblong's g-speak: the 'Minority Report' OS brought to life
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted November 14th 2008 6:43PM
posted November 14th 2008 6:43PM
[Thanks, Jamie]
posted November 14th 2008 6:43PM
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Great... And i thought it was hard enough already to type out a letter for grandma...
Seriously though, hopefully the interface makes usage faster and more functional then learning a new language and spending more time waiting on tech support to fix malfunctions.
Oh well, here's to progress :)
old old old news.
I saw this in person @ space symposium 2005 in Colorado Springs. I just happened to be flying satelites for 2SOPS durring that time @ Schriever AFB. And being a satelite guy, I was invited to tag along to see new weapon systems/software.
But yeah, its 100% more ran in person.
I can only hope that Johnny Lee got a job working on this project.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU&feature=channel
@ Raheem
Give it a rest. Please.
This interface is merely a PROTOTYPE. I am sure there is a market for this sort of thing. It just needs fitting.
Things take time. But when you hit the mark, the rest follows through.
You think any revolutionary invention (or whatever) was immediately accepted and praised? Of course not. BIG EXAMPLES: Windows Microsoft (the first one), Steven Job's first iPod and iMac, etc and etc.
Well, I can definatly see the military utilizing this in a command post somewhere during a war or whatever....they could deploy drones and fly them right there....NoOne dies...but the enemy :)
whop-t-do...a lot of eye candy but so what. Now if this could design a product better than the standard CAD workstation with 3D puck, then I would stand up. If this could help you draw better, creat music easier, then lets see it. All I say was a weak imitation of what was in the movie.
What's the big deal, GestureTek, Inc. (www.GestureTek.com) has been doing this for years and without gloves. They have multiple patents in this space and are the world leaders in interactive gesture control.
this shit is sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i want one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As cool as this is, it's not that new. Other companies (e.g. Phase Space) have done this before. As the price of CCDs continues to come down, as well as the DLP systems and processors, this will become more feasible. That being said, for the average user, it's just not practical. Sure it's nice to show off to friends/co-workers for the macho factor, but who's going to buy a computer system that takes up a whole room? And what's the improvement on how I type documents, read the news/comics, or check my e-mail other than more eye-candy? In my opinion, a more likely scenario is a self-contained tabletop version: no overhead cameras, just ones mounted in the surface. This could be hooked up to a projector/TV (like current computers can) to extend the desktop space. As far as an 'immersive' environment... the virtual-reality spacehelmet continues to limp along and may one day be 'cool' enough to meet that need.
Summary:
Pros - High coolness factor, ideal for complex virtual object manipulation and intuitive 3-D data handling
Cons - Takes up a whole room, currently pricey, doesn't improve handling of the vast majority of current media/data
Who Wants It - CAD users, CGI artists/engineers, VR gamers, mega-nerds
Who Doesn't Want It - Mobile/netbook users, the typical web-surfing/email-checking/memo-typing populous, folks on a budget
Sweet! The return of computers the size of a room. I knew it only a matter of time.
It's almost as mindblowing as NeXT Step was. We all still use NeXT Step, right?
Soooo, this looks alot like the wii, except using gloves instead of those controllers that look like remote controls.
They're referring to the introduction of the Mac user interface (almost 25 years ago). That UI was a revision of the Lisa user interface for home users. The elements that made this work were the mouse, icons and overlapping windows. They were around for many years before 1984.
The stuff in this video is the equivalent of the generic concept of a pointing device. A 3-D mouse.
There is no next generation representational abstraction, i.e. a replacement for icons. The 2.5 D interface (the 0.5D being the layers of windows on screen) is now a 3D interface.
There's no point having a multi-touch 3D mouse unless you have better ideas for what you'll be manipulating with it. They even had to fake automatic keying of a truck and a man from a couple of shots that were then combined in a third. Anyone who has done that kind of keying and composition knows that you need to do a lot more than point at what you want to get things done. Just because you are compositing some 2D footage in a shallow-depth 3D-space doesn't make the job of compositing that much more intuitive.
(yawn)
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
explanation: this doesn't need to be an OS - it can be an app - who cares if it's an OS.
Wake me when you invent an OS we don't have to REBOOT - now THAT would be a breakthrough.
Pretty sweet, but I personally can't imagine many uses outside out the graphics or CADD world.
How the hell am i gonna fap to pron on this!!!!!!!!!???????????????????
i would ruin those gloves i bet they cost more then my pc to replace!!!!
i wonder if i can sue Oblong if they chafe me!!
i am so l33t!!!!
oh god, now i'm all hard
Gestural control is definetly worthwhile but it could be better handled in VR. I don't see the need for all the screens when all you really need is a motion tracking head mounted display and motion capture gloves with feedback. These ideas are good, but this implimentation doesn't go far enough. To completely kill the mouse and keyboard you probably need to pair a VR version of the gestural interface with voice commands and replace menu-trees driven applications with adpative request and context driven applications (i.e. you request the application to do something the way you like and it learns and interacts with the user to map the user's prefered gestures and voice commands to its internal actions).
Took long enough...