Comment by TowerTall
19 days ago
Microsoft never really left the dream of creating Bob behind. If you look at their Virtual Reality Portal it is basically a modern version of Bob where you start in a livingroom and need to go into into other rooms to perform certain task. To start apps you eg. need to pick them from a book shelf. Essential the same a Bob.
A few images for reference. Notice that you start MS Paint same way in the VR portal and Bob.
VR Portal: https://onewindows.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/windows-mix...
Bob: https://static1.howtogeekimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl...
Its funny that as soon as microsoft need to make an alterate UI for computers they always reach for the home as an analogy. Are they really that short of creativity that rooms full of stuff is all they can imagine computers as?!
If you look at their Metro UI that was very innovative, and looked a lot like "real stuff" less than the equivalent iPhone/Android UIs at the time, from memory.
I disagree. Metro UI was ugly, space wasting, and a blight on UI design. I even disliked it on mobile which it was arguably designed for.
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Rooms with stuff are natural, we all live in them. And even Game devs tend to implement them as interfaces, because it's simple to understand for beginners and laymen. Any innovative interface has to build knowledge and understanding with the users first, and that usually fails.
I dont see Apple or Google using room based interfaces, it seems to just be Microsoft these days.
Please can you point out some games that do this? I cant find any.
FWIW I actually really enjoyed that VR Home concept, far more than any of the current ones. At the time that I had the headset that supported that and still ran windows I was enamored with the space and spent a lot of time in the loft space, the one at the top of the skyscraper.
I did as much of my computing in that space as possible, pulling up multiple desktop windows and floating applications and pinning them places. On one wall I had the Zune software with my whole music library, and my music played from that place, so I imported 3d models of speakers (I managed to actually find an end user use case for that default Windows user folder and I still as an admin and dev wonder why it's a default) and stuck them next to the app and they persisted. I'd drag discord around with me and I could even access the screen of my phone by bringing up Your Phone.
I found it really kind of nice to use, and I wish the space had been more capable. Able to take more object formats, able to handle more vertices, I wish I had been able to boot directly to the virtual environment and eschew the step of switching between desktop and virtual mode. It also visually paused basically every app and desktop you didn't specifically keep active, except for Zune--that would go into Mixview and look cool as hell on the wall.
I miss it, and I'm sad they killed it and I'm not aware of an experience like it for linux on an openish device atm.
And Jesus wept!
https://youtu.be/z4FGzE4endQ
That video is 100% accurate of the feeling of VR in the 90's, both of the behaviour of the believers, the experience itself, and the reactions from the onlookers :)
I remember once buying a graphics card that included one of these virtual environments where files were on shelves, etc. Wish I could remember its name.
Was it Packard Bell Navigator?
https://winworldpc.com/product/packard-bell-navigator/39
Nah. This was much later and in full 3D.
Magellan was pretty cool. I think it shipped on Magnavox PCs in the 386 era.