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3D Windows provide a natural progression from the 2D desktop.
A traditional 2D desktop presents information as a flat surface. the objects which you deal with are
background image, icons, text and the applications installed on the computer. The main visual
and organisational complexity arises from the order of overlap and transparencey of these objects.
However a 2D desktop inherently imposes limits which restrict us. Two of these are: limited space in
which to organise icons (once you have more than 20 icons things get complicated) and the fact that
you are forced to represent information derived from our real and actual 3D world in 2 dimensions
(that is: we are forced to simplify our view of the world, we lose information).
The next question is of course "How are we going to achieve this?". A key principle of the personal
computer is that you can easily do what you want to and organise your stuff as you like. You need
easily to configure, customise and create in the 3D space which your computer desktop becomes
- just as you would apply a photograph, select images for icons and arrange those icons into useful
functional or themed groups.
How do you best organise data in 3D? Well, it's tempting to say - "Show me the tool and I'll show
you how I use it." But the point here is that the tool we are looking at needs to be so general
purpose that you can intuitively do whatever you want...
Hmmm.
Let us start then from the 2D desktop. Here we have a 2D image with 2D icons visible on top of or in front
of it. The simplest manoeuvre is to give this image a little space. Move it backwards into the computer
screen and allow the icons to float between it and the front of the screen. So let us use that as our
paradigm. We carve out space behind the screen. Where there was a rectangular 2D image we now create
a simple 3D room - a box in which icons float.
And that's got to be easy to do. No extra software. No complex design tools. You - as you use your
computer day in day out - must easily be able to create this box. And that is all you should ever need
to do. Why? Because if we can create a single 3D space-box, we can create the world. That is, any 3D space
is simply a collection of 3D unit spaces. You create as few or as many as you like, and
organise and decorate them as you like.
This is just what ROOMS 3D Desktops does. You create rooms of
as many walls and of whatever size you want, and you decorate the walls as you wish - whether with family
photos (to create an album) or textures like rock (to make a cave).
And on a matter of principle - you need no other software. The ROOMS 3D desktop is self contained.
What of icons - objects in the world? We can hardly carve these out of empty space - we've already done
that for the rooms.
Well, in fact we can. We can extrude objects in the world. You need only to create a stencil - a template -
that is a 2D shape which you can then extrude - like squeezing toothpaste - into the world. So for instance
a table would become four extruded tubes for legs plus an extruded rectangle for a table top.
And ROOMS 3D Desktops supports this extrusion of objects as well. It
includes what it calls a Stencil Editor and a shape wizard to control the extrusion process.
"But in the real world (and in any virtual reality game world) objects do things - they move or control
equipment or whatever... they *DO* things." Precisely so.
How are we to characterise "they do things"? What is this stuff - doing things? Well, if we consider this
scientifically we can see that stuff in the world is all about cause and effect. And this is what we want to
mimic and emulate. Cause and effect. And we can characterise that as "events" which trigger "actions".
Most simply, you click on an icon and an application is launched. So ROOMS implements a way of describing
and specifying pairs of events and actions which is calls EVAC (yes, you guessed it, for EVent-ACtion).
Here we have it then:
- carve out rooms as 3D spaces in your desktop
- extrude shaped objects into your newly found 3D space
- add behaviour based on cause and effect
- allow normal Save As and Open operations for the spaces (worlds) you create
- make it general and acessible - no other software needed
Now once ROOMS 3D Desktops supplies all this - which it does - the general purpose, rational and
logical 3D engine which drives it can be used for other things as well. Such as 3D presentations -
an alternative to PowerPoint which is interesting, eye-catching, memorable and demonstrates the
originality of those who use it.
As someone once said: ROOMS 3D Windows is where your desktop meets
DOOM (remember DOOM? - never mind).
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