Thursday, 28 December 2006

Sun Launches Looking Glass 3D Desktop for Operating Systems

Sun has rolled out the Looking Glass, a 3D desktop interface that provides an OS-neutral version of some of the elements found in OS X and Microsoft's newly released Vista OS.

Michael Larabel, founder and editor-in-chief of Phoronix writes, "Project Looking Glass has reached version 1.0! For the uninformed, Project Looking Glass is an open-source 3D desktop environment for not only Linux but also Solaris and Windows. This software is all powered by Java after three years in development. Curious to see what Project Looking Glass looks like in action, as well as some of their Java 3D applications? We have an arsenal of images to demonstrate this software as we run it on Fedora Rawhide FC7."

According to the developers, Looking Glass includes several features not included in either the Apple or Windows Oses—the ability to 'fly' left or right to a new virtual desktop, or to use the 'back' of a virtual window. Windows can also be organised on their 'side', allowing a 'bookshelf' view of the available windows.