Rao, for one, agrees. "There are some subtle things about aesthetics and movement that have real utility," he says. "For example, shading can make it easier to detect things, and physics can give you a stronger intuition about where the mouse is, or a faster recall about where you put something, so you can go and grab it before you can even name what you want."
Despite these clever features, however, Rao warns that Agarawala's company could quickly find itself in the same position as Mirror Worlds. The fact that Bumptop is written in the common programming and graphics languages C++ and OpenGL is an advantage; it means that individual users will be able to download it to their Windows PCs, without waiting for Microsoft to adopt or clone the technology. And doubtless, many computing enthusiasts thirsty for fresh alternatives to the traditional desktop will do exactly that. But there's still a big leap from cult status to widespread consumer adoption.
"Bumptop is very nice, and Anand is a guy I would immediately want to hire," says Rao. "But most of these ideas for reinventing the desktop have already been explored by one person or another, and the reason they failed was not that they didn't work well enough. It's a matter of how many levels of change would be required, and whether the need is deep enough."
At Microsoft it takes years to bring to market even minor advances in desktop graphics such as the Windows Flip 3D feature in Vista, Rao points out. "Even if you got people inside Microsoft to agree on using something like Bumptop, it wouldn't go out the door anytime soon," he says.
On top of that, the profusion of information and entertainment options on the Internet means that consumers have less and less reason to spend time monkeying with their PCs' desktop environment. "What really stopped progress on the next generation of GUIs was what happened on the Web," Rao opines. "People were willing to go back to much more impoverished interfaces in order to get a richness of services and connections to other people. All of those things are much more interesting than having a slightly better desktop user interface. I'm afraid there are just too many cool things to do on the Internet for [Bumptop] to pick up a lot of attention."
For now, Agarawala is just concentrating on finishing Bumptop--and he says that even cooler things could come later. "I think there are some really awesome possibilities for things beyond the desktop," he says. "This theme of physics-based interaction opens up a lot of new ways to organize and interact with information."
E-mail
Audio »
Print
Favorite
Share »
Digg this
Add to del.icio.us
Add to Reddit
Add to Facebook
Slashdot It!
Stumble It!
Add to Newsvine
Add to Connotea
Add to CiteUlike
Add to Furl
Googlize this
Add to Rojo
Add to MyWeb
Download
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tags
3-D software video games