Comment by atoav

I strongly agree with your point about abstraction. However I'd love if people who work on such interfaces would get a stronger grip on how the perception of depth works.

Painters for example use saturation, colors, occlusion, details, abstraction and perspective to get the most out of depth.

In a 3D scene with the same objects you can make or break the scene's readability, purely based on the placement of objects. What you can't do, is to come and slap 3D onto it and it will somehow work out. If you think 3D space itself will make it magically work, you are wrong. Like a graphic designer puts a lot of work into making 2D information readable, 3D information also would need a ton of work to become readable.

Interestingly enough a lot of 2D designs actually emulate levels of depth by using occlusion, focus, shadows, etc.

I can certainly imagine 3D interfaces that would work, you would only have to be very disciplined about your use of dimensions and how much to have on which plane and why.