Virtual Desktop?

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britrb
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2008 8:27 am
Location: U.K.

Virtual Desktop?

Post by britrb »

Are there any plans to produce some sort of virtual desktop program using TrackIR?

Something that expands the desktop area to say three of four times the size of the monitor, and you use your head to look around the desktop which is maybe in the shape of a hollowed out sphere. It could be quite useful in a working environment where multi monitor support is not available and you are using several different applications at the same time (for instance Excel, Word, and Internet Explorer) and need to switch between them quickly.

Or is there already something like that out already?

Have fun all,
Brian :)
VincentG
Posts: 7728
Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2006 5:00 am
Location: Corvallis, Oregon

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Post by VincentG »

Not that I'm aware of, but will run it by the development team.
britrb
Posts: 15
Joined: Sun Jul 20, 2008 8:27 am
Location: U.K.

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Post by britrb »

Thanks mate :)
oliverpolden
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Oct 07, 2019 6:27 am

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Post by oliverpolden »

lol, I just wrote a post about this. After writing the post I knew what keywords to search for and found this. I think it's a great idea. Would hopefully be simple to implement, really doesn't need to be complicated.

Would help the environment too by reducing numbers of monitors bought, save energy and space!
steakfest
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2020 8:30 pm

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Post by steakfest »

I know I shouldn't resurrect an old thread, but wanted to add something to this discussion.

I was also thinking about this capability and I even had an idea on how one might make it really useful. I think instead of rendering a virtual display that you pan around, we should consider just taking the head tracking data and feeding that into a system that supports multiple desktops. For instance, old school window managers that I used to use on Xwindows like FVWM, let you create a grid of multiple desktops. It would be cool to have that grid and be able to switch from one desktop to the other by just turning your head to the side.

It's not the typical, gradual approach that you get with flight sims and other sorts of games, but I think that it just might actually be even more useful, since you're not going to be doing things like trying to render your screen in some virutal 3d space.

Then you could do other cool things like.. if you're grab the titlebar of a window and turn your head, the window "comes with" to the new desktop, etc.

I could see myself using something like this for sure.

Other benefit.. I find that when I'm using the trackir, my posture is better, since it kinda has to be, or the image is all over the place. This would force me to have better posture while I'm using the computer.
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