Hi together

A small startup is working on a new user interface called Dizmo. It runs
HTML/JavaScript applications called Dizmos. They are displayed in windows
that can be freely placed and rotated on the display. In fact, their
interface does not assume that the display has "up" and "down" at all.
Also, it is optimized for several users working at the same time on the
same display. It is supposed to work well with touch and various pointing
devices.

I am still collecting ideas for use-cases of this interface.

For example, I think it would come in handy in combination with an actual
PC: Imagine it to be integrated into an office table. You could have ready
the POV-Ray documentation on the side of your keyboard at all times, while
using a normal PC to write your scenes. Also, while working on other stuff,
a Dizmo could show you the rendering progress without taking up precious
space on your main screen.

Also, wouldn't it be fancy to shuffle around your own rendered images like
in in the movie "minority report"? Or maybe allow your visitors to do so
by having a large screen with dizmo in your living room?

Do you have any further ideas related or not related to POV-Ray? I really
like to hear any opinions about the usefulness of their software.

Greetings
Urs

[1]:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/114216817/dizmo-a-new-revolutionary-user-interface

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> A small startup is working on a new user interface called Dizmo. It runs
> HTML/JavaScript applications called Dizmos. They are displayed in windows
> that can be freely placed and rotated on the display. In fact, their
> interface does not assume that the display has "up" and "down" at all.
> Also, it is optimized for several users working at the same time on the
> same display. It is supposed to work well with touch and various pointing
> devices.

Several users working on the same display implies the display should be 
quite large (>30" diagonal). Arbitrarily rotated windows implies you 
need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing. Seems like 
this would work really well once we have 8Kx4K UHD TVs :-)

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On 06/03/2014 10:21 AM, scott wrote:
> Arbitrarily rotated windows implies you
> need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing.

It's called "vector graphics". ;-)

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Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 06/03/2014 10:21 AM, scott wrote:
>> Arbitrarily rotated windows implies you
>> need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing.
> 
> It's called "vector graphics". ;-)

In fact, displays that actually work with vector graphics (see 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_display) instead of pixels indeed 
existed at some point: Instead of scanning line by line with a cathode 
ray you can also scan arbitrary lines.

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scott wrote:

>> A small startup is working on a new user interface called Dizmo. It
>> runs HTML/JavaScript applications called Dizmos. They are displayed
>> in windows that can be freely placed and rotated on the display.
>> [...]
> 
> Several users working on the same display implies the display should
> be quite large (>30" diagonal). Arbitrarily rotated windows implies
> you need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing. Seems
> like this would work really well once we have 8Kx4K UHD TVs :-)

Dizmo is indeed exploring the limits of available hardware. Maybe it is 
the first use case of these TVs with ridiculously high resolution. After 
all, who has the bandwith to transmit a TV show in that resolution? It 
would also be interesting to see how current consumer graphics cards 
cope with such a configuration.

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>>> Arbitrarily rotated windows implies you
>>> need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing.
>>
>> It's called "vector graphics". ;-)
>
> In fact, displays that actually work with vector graphics (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_display) instead of pixels indeed
> existed at some point: Instead of scanning line by line with a cathode
> ray you can also scan arbitrary lines.

The "some point" would be "the point when buying enough RAM to hold an 
entire framebuffer was prohibitively expensive".

While vector graphics has the advantage of smoothness, it has several 
unfortunate downsides:

- You can't turn a real-world image such as a photograph into vector 
graphics.

- Some effects such as blurring are trivial with raster graphics, but 
impossible with vector graphics.

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> - Some effects such as blurring are trivial with raster graphics, but 
> impossible with vector graphics.

Actually, I don't think anything forces a vector-based display to use
sharp lines. In theory you could have out-of-focus lines, the amount
controlled by the software.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Arbitrarily rotated windows implies you
>> need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing.
>
> It's called "vector graphics". ;-)

Like attached? Sorry that looks rubbish, I can only imagine how bad it 
would look on something with a much lower ppi like a large TV. People 
are not going to want to sit up close and use something that looks like 
that when they are used to 300-400ppi+ on phones and tablets.

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Attachments:
Download 'capture.png' (7 KB)

Preview of image 'capture.png'

> scott wrote:
>
>>> A small startup is working on a new user interface called Dizmo. It
>>> runs HTML/JavaScript applications called Dizmos. They are displayed
>>> in windows that can be freely placed and rotated on the display.
>>> [...]
>>
>> Several users working on the same display implies the display should
>> be quite large (>30" diagonal). Arbitrarily rotated windows implies
>> you need a very high pixel density to avoid visible aliasing. Seems
>> like this would work really well once we have 8Kx4K UHD TVs :-)
>
> Dizmo is indeed exploring the limits of available hardware. Maybe it is
> the first use case of these TVs with ridiculously high resolution. After
> all, who has the bandwith to transmit a TV show in that resolution? It
> would also be interesting to see how current consumer graphics cards
> cope with such a configuration.
>
I would guess the card could send primitives to the display and the 
display would have a few GPUs to control sections of the screen.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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