If computer interaction benefited from being more ‘like reality’, then Microsoft Bob or any of the countless other attempts to create a reality- and/or 3D-based computer interface, would have caught on long ago.
The thing is, computer interaction can benefit quite a bit from a 3D space. I really liked what Microsoft did with WMR Portal and how it let you organize your apps simply by placing them in a 3D space, meaning you could have a cinema space with all your video related apps, a stack with games that you were playing, a stack with games you finished, etc. You could have frequently used webpages pasted to the walls. You could just grab the things, resize them and put them somewhere else. It was far more intuitive than any 2D interface I ever used and extremely customizable to your needs.
The problem was that it was also incomplete and unfinished in a lot of other ways and Microsoft just gave up on it. Outside of WMR Portal there has been surprisingly little effort into building good VR user interfaces and even less when comes to actively taking advantage of the 3D space (e.g. plenty apps still use drop shadows to simulate 3D instead of making the buttons actually 3D).
Will be interesting to see how well VisionPro does in this space. They seem to be a lot better with the basic UI elements than everybody else (e.g. dynamically lighting them to fit the AR environment and using real 3D), but at the same time, their focus on a static sitting experience without locomotion drastically limits how much advantage you can take from the 3D. Their main menu so far looks more like a table-UI stuck to your face than an 3D UI.
This has been tried and tried again, and it never catches on. Computer interfaces that are completely detached from physical 3D space are just much more flexible and easy to use.
If computer interaction benefited from being more ‘like reality’, then Microsoft Bob or any of the countless other attempts to create a reality- and/or 3D-based computer interface, would have caught on long ago.
The thing is, computer interaction can benefit quite a bit from a 3D space. I really liked what Microsoft did with WMR Portal and how it let you organize your apps simply by placing them in a 3D space, meaning you could have a cinema space with all your video related apps, a stack with games that you were playing, a stack with games you finished, etc. You could have frequently used webpages pasted to the walls. You could just grab the things, resize them and put them somewhere else. It was far more intuitive than any 2D interface I ever used and extremely customizable to your needs.
The problem was that it was also incomplete and unfinished in a lot of other ways and Microsoft just gave up on it. Outside of WMR Portal there has been surprisingly little effort into building good VR user interfaces and even less when comes to actively taking advantage of the 3D space (e.g. plenty apps still use drop shadows to simulate 3D instead of making the buttons actually 3D).
Will be interesting to see how well VisionPro does in this space. They seem to be a lot better with the basic UI elements than everybody else (e.g. dynamically lighting them to fit the AR environment and using real 3D), but at the same time, their focus on a static sitting experience without locomotion drastically limits how much advantage you can take from the 3D. Their main menu so far looks more like a table-UI stuck to your face than an 3D UI.
This describes what I want - being able to have relatively blank walls/spaces that light up and fill up with content when you’re wearing the headset.
This has been tried and tried again, and it never catches on. Computer interfaces that are completely detached from physical 3D space are just much more flexible and easy to use.