The Parallel Reality Computer https://duncancragg.substack.com/p/the-parallel-reality-computer?r=1sq2dz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web (very short article!) _

Cool idea! Do you imagine a single object being able to live in multiple spaces, or does each object have a single home?

Thanks, Daniel! There's only one "space" overall but you can have, say, rooms of your own in that. Every object (3D or 2D) will usually be in one main place, but also every object you see can be grabbed (referred to) by its link and dropped anywhere else you like, giving 2 or more incoming links to that object. Is that what you're asking?

Yeah exactly, just thinking about how the linking would work. I think it makes sense for there to be some home for each object, as well as a way to refer to them from other locations, which seems like how you’re thinking about it.

Yonder

YonWhatWhat? 😄

I've been thinking about how exactly this kind of 3D OS would look. To me, I think the best kind of interface is neither purely 2D (like our existing web apps (nor purely 3D (like a virtual reality copy of our real world). Instead, it would look a bit like this Fluent Design concept and these Spline 3D website mockups. So it'd be like our existing 2D apps, but objects placed in this 2D space shadow each other like they would if you had a piece of paper in real life, and you placed a cup on it. No current app does this right now, but I really think the time is ripe to have real 3D websites and apps (and I agree that the idea of an app is the wrong approach but that's the best way to describe it).

I have nothing more to say - apart from "exactly!". Oh, and "really appreciate what you say, and those images"!!

I've been calling it 3D PBUI, physically based UI, named after physically based rendering. Screenshots are from Spline (which people use to make partially 3D websites) and Fluent Design concepts and trailers. Here's another concept: Microsoft hires a particular design studio that uses this kind of design language for basically all of their new products now. The new products don't have 3D UI at all, but I find these concepts to be the most compelling. This article's got a cool video who shows off the design language even more: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20996748/microsoft-fluent-design-mobile-office-apps-new-updates-features

You're unstoppable, Kongwei Ying. I can't keep up. 😄

I hear that's a really common sentiments amongst folks who grew up when Microsoft was first on top