Some of the most memorable scenes from Jurassic Park and Minority Report involve 3D computer interfaces that look amazing onscreen but haven’t taken off in real life. Yet 3D desktops aren’t dead, and their peak is still ahead.
What Is a 3D Desktop?
If you think about the typical computer desktop, it’s a 2D image where you move 2D images around to accomplish tasks such as copying files or running software. This 2D picture is just a representation of the data, so it doesn’t represent what’s happening inside the computer.
This is a big step over using a text-based interface since such a GUI (Graphical User Interface) is much more intuitive for people. Grabbing a “file” and moving it to a “folder” makes sense.
However, humans don’t live in a 2D world, and there’s no reason a computer interface must be in 2D. That’s where the idea of a 3D desktop comes into play. By making the computer’s interface 3D, you can have a representation of computer data and functions that exists in the same set of dimensions our real world…
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