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Virtual Desktop?

Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 9:41 pm
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 :)

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 8:32 am
by VincentG
Not that I'm aware of, but will run it by the development team.

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:53 am
by britrb
Thanks mate :)

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2019 6:45 am
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!

Re: Virtual Desktop?

Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2020 8:53 pm
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.