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by silversmith 3147 days ago
I'm not sure it's nonsense. What I see is incremental change. Take the workstation, and move it to virtual space. Then add more 2D screens. Then try a different input or display method, one small step at a time. Sounds reasonable to me, much more so than re-inventing every part of the interface at the same time, and hoping to get it all within spitting distance of what's right.
2 comments
mikeash 3147 days ago
It’s as stupid as creating a fancy raster graphics system with windowing and fast refresh rates and hardware acceleration for 3D rendering, and then using it to display a bunch of programs that pretend to be a 1960s teletype.

Using new technology to incrementally improve existing ideas and techniques usually works better than trying to start completely from scratch.

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veli_joza 3147 days ago
I would also hope for such incremental change, but I don't see it happening. If you take a look at historical development of desktop OS UIs, you'll see all concepts established in 80s and not much (any) progress since then. Icons, buttons, menues, windows, even whole applications (file manager) are unchanged, while there's very few new UI elements (date picker, for example).

VR should be considered as completely new medium. 2D windows in VR should only be used as backwards-compatibility layer. Re-inventing every part of interface at the same time sounds great to me. Let's make as many competing solutions and then pick ones that work the best. This paves the way not only for rich VR experience, but also for AR.

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theptip 3147 days ago
> VR should be considered as completely new medium.

I think you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater here. There are plenty of teams working on brand new UI/UX experiences in VR, and I'm sure that in time the old 2d paradigms will have more competition. But also, I still choose to use a terminal for git when I could use a GUI, so I'm not actually convinced that "2D windows in VR" are going to or should go away.

The OP shows a great step towards being able to replace your workstation with some VR goggles, a keyboard, and a CPU. That prospect excites me more than any "new medium" VR experiences that I can see on the immediate horizon; being able to work from a beach hammock and not compromise on workspace efficiency is incredibly appealing.

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