Was very interesting seeing the Croquet demo and all that they've gotten right. I would expect no less from some of the world's smartest and most experienced technologists getting together and trying to push boundaries. It looks like they've built a system that has the primitives available to become quite beyond what we've settled for. The most interesting thing that I can see coming out of this is that by combining service auto-discovery and self-modifyiable code, creating a hugely scalably and nearly infinitely extensible platform.

My biggest unanswered question is whether an adequate security model has even been conceived yet to handle this. It should be fun to find out.

Thank you for giving me a chance to talk to you guys!

The name "Croquet" has reference to the famous trilogy by Douglas Adams; "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy", "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", and "Life, The Universe and Everything". (Even the Japanese translated version has "croquet" in its title.)

as we discussed the next day, it's so cool to see people give a really convincing demonstration of a true alternative operating system, and so relevent for that OS to be collaborative in nature, and so atuned to the idea of p2p. it seems like a no-brainer, but when you look at the standard OS desktop, it does none of the things croquet does well.

my question about the structure of croquet as it is now is related to how it will scale, not just programmatically, which I'm sure is an issue that could be resolved easily enough, but also in terms of visualizing the entirely of the space. Certainly, with systems like the web, after which croquet seems to be modelled, it's not entirely necessary to have a global perspective of the network -- in fact most web maps make for nice visuals, but are not entirely useful to typical users. But it seems that since this space is more visual and spatial in nature than the web, things like hyper-linking, filtering, etc. need to be re-conceived.

overall, a inspiring project.

I was blown away by the presentation and demonstration of Croquet. I never thought an operating system could be something other than the typical Mac/PC design, and the idea that a user can navigate through a 3D operating system space in such a way was very cool. While the demonstration was a little spatially disorientating for me (I had a very hard time trying to look at both of the users’ perspectives at the same time), the idea that while each user navigates through their own space, they can also see their navigation through the perspective of another user is very helpful in collaborative projects.

The focus on collaboration within this operating system is also a very important aspect of Croquet. In the past, operating systems always seemed to be a very personal thing, but with Croquet the possibilities for collaboration are endless. Within this system, collaborative projects can be worked on in a personal, comfortable environment even if each of the users is on the opposite side of the world.

In regard to the aesthetics of the typical operating systems, the portals were a nice alternative to folders. The convention of using doors/portals as a means of navigation is also very useful in conveying the aspect of moving from one place to another. All in all I really enjoyed this presentation. It opened my eyes to the potential future of operating systems and a new way of looking at collaboration.

I was very impressed with teh Croquet demonstration, as much for its ideological promise as well as its technological basis.

I've been hearing about portals for a while, but this is the first time that I've seen them used to this extent, and this well. The portability and ease with which one can travel (and create) spaces was one of the major features I found intriguing.

Actually, the element I found most exciting was the modeling-within-the-space. I can think of many cases where multiple authors could simultaneously work on a single space...one or more modelers, texturers, lighters, etc. sharing a single "document", in this case a large space or complex model. It'd be a group of workers building a house, or ship.

My mind is also bubbling with things to do with the portals...for instance, I bet it's at least theoretically possible to map a portal onto each face of an object (or do a 2D mask, that would probably be easier), basically making three dimensional gates. What sort of object? A sphere, maybe, a swimming pool filled with "water" as a portal, or what would be really cool is a user avatar. The consquences would be downright mischievious.

There's a lot that could be done with Croquet, for many types of people, and it seems like there's a good foundation so that a user could build what they personally needed onto it. The interesting challenges, though, won't be ones of technology, but of convention and communication. It's good to see that's what its creators are concerned about.

I was surprised to see the Croquet at the first five minutes. The interface and the portal concept is really new to me. For long, I've been objected myself about the 3D interface. How could people manipulate and manage their informations in a 3D world? Croquet gave me a doable example.

The collaboration in the Croquet is also very interesting. Although I agree the benefit for the group cooperation in this system, I worry about the uplimit of the collaboration. It could not be 1000 people draw on the same paint board. And I want to see how simple can they realize on the interactiong between human and Croquet, because most people will exlude Croquet because it's a new thing and hard to start.

I found David Smith's presentation quite interesting. Being a primarily visual thinker, I appreciated the visual analogy for computer use. Walking through a portal seems much more natural than clicking on a button or hyperlink...and yet I think it really all depends on what type of information you're navigating through. If you're looking for textual information on a topic, a textual interface seems to make more sense--you wouldn't turn on your TV if you want to find the actual text of the Declaration of Independence. However, if you wanted to see images of the signing, or possibly a video or realtime 3D recreation of the signing, then Croquet would seem the ideal interface for finding this information.

I also have to point out that I love the fact that they were influenced by the Cyan game, "Manhole"--the visual symbolism in Croquet is quite reminiscent of that early Mac game!

It was great to see the people at squeak looking beyond the OSes of today. The looking glass metaphor brought to a virtual space by Croquet is really innovative. I can't even begin to imagine the possibilities of authoring for a system like that. It would be really cool if we could get some copies to play with once it is released. I have to say I was very dissapointed Alan didn't show up. I was ready to was his friggin feet.

David provided for a very interesting alternative! I would be interested to hear about all the projects at Squeak. I think they have a bunch more goin on than we/I know about. Jenova is right about gettin people to use a system like Croquet. It would take years for the social paradigm to shift their attitude to be comfortable with a 3d IT interface. But I think it can happen, the world learned Windows, right?

Croquet is an inspiring project on many levels. It was great to see how a collaborative tool and/or method evolved from the broader idea of “reestablishing what the computer is all about”.

POV was incredibly important within the CROQUET dimensional interface. The “game generation” VUP would take to the space with a minimal learning curve. However, It seems that most people have been conditioned to think in two dimensions. It would be interesting to see how a diverse demographic would react and navigate through the space.

We use visual cues like shadows, sun location, and landmarks to navigate through real space. Most maps are designed with North at the top of the page. It may be helpful to give the CROQUET ground surface a “grain”, or position a sun/moon in the virtual sky, to better inform the user of this interface.

The “portals” to other spaces were both fascinating and curious. It was provocative to have parallel virtual spaces that could be accessed from a single space. The only way to “expand” the boundaries of the original space is to create another parallel space. This could get very confusing, with a large number of spaces, without a nodal structure and/or mind map type navigation.

Regardless, the CROQUET concept is fascinating and rich with potential.

It was great to see someone taking steps to make the theory of a 3d OS a reality. There's a huge range of unexplored possibilities for computing, and it's wonderful to see someone explore them deeply. I'm not sure what research Microsoft is doing beyond what we've seen and what I've read about Longhorn, but I've always been puzzled that they haven't been more innovative.

The big issue I see with this sort of development is what to change and what to keep the same. What ultimately do we desire or need from an OS? What goals should we target, and what methods should we develop? When developing an interface you make choices to change the methods to gain advantages, and inevitably acquire disadvantages. With each update to software, we love some things, and miss others, but we're powerless to get back what we had, or change the current structure beyond skins, font sizes, desktop wallpaper, etc.

In developing a new OS I think one of the biggest concerns that is ignored is custom ability of the experience. If I want to have multiple instances of media player, damn it, let me have it! If I don't want a start menu, or a taskbar, figure out a way to let me change it! I want real choice in my computing experiences, not just an illusion of choice.

Croquet offers a space that I would love to design in. The possibilities for experience design are very unique when the author is given control of the physics and appearance of each world. I would like to think of Croquet as a creative space first and utilitarian space second. It's easy to imagine custom spaces like the ones that Neal Stephenson described in Snow Crash populating a 3D environmental layer, yet without limits on virtual real estate or linear travel.

Conceptually, the demo reminded me that we should leverage our powerful capacity for spatial memory. We intuitively comprehend and store location, so deeply that we visualize spatial relationships when we're looking for something that we've lost. Although it would be nice to have a map, even just of the local portals, it is ultimately unneccesary when we navigate through exploration and discovery.

As a big fan of collaboration, I definitely liked the possibilities present in Croquet, and think we should all be running it in ZML!

However, I agree with Andrew that most people think 2D, and I wonder if I actually had a chance to explore in croquet how long it would take me to be adept at navigating the 3D world, especially when 2D interfacing is so familiar and--now--intuitive. But The portals are 2d planes in and into a 3d world, and it seems a lot of the functionality and interfacing ocurrs there, with the buttons and icons, I think I wise choice in one of the pioneer versions of a 3D interface. It's like slowly acclamating the VUP. goood.

By far my favorite presentation of the semester, a very intrigueing/interesting set of ideas and implementation.

I strongly disagree with Andrew and Julie. I am a very spatial thinker, and I am pretty sure that when most people are navigating their way around the real world, visual depth cues are much more apparent than two dimensional ones. I can't for the life of me remember street names or peoples names, but I could tell you what the street looked like, the landmarks and what the persons face looked like. Also, most windowed 2D interfaces look exactly the same, even the icons of files and file names all seem to blend together if a quick glance is done. The continual archival of Word documents in one folder is enough to confuse anyone, even the most busy college student. But regardless, I am sure there is a pretty even split with that.

The presentation was brilliant, and croquet is pure genious in my mind. I was very concerned at first as to the similarities between Croquet and Second Life and There. The idea of a beam shooting out from a hand to symbolize possesion and manipulation, the concept of teleportation or portals. Everyone having a sort of home in a virtual 3D space and an avatar to physical represent them, everything being somewhat linked or collaborative. Kinda makes me wonder what came first? Not important...

So, an OS that's 3D. I really think the point that was made about all the graphic power going to waste. It's entirely true. Games are really the only apps using our 300-500 dollar GPU's at the moment. This is terrible! I would love to see Croquet on the new NV40 chipset. Would be fantastic and I don't think scaleing would be all that much of an issue, not immediately anyway. The idea of portable frames that link worlds is great, and having the ability to call up 2D information on them was fantastic. My father would love to see the Excel spreadsheet extruded in realtime. That was a another very "spacial" idea that made bells and whistles of all kinds go off in my head (all the good kinds of bells and whistles).

A rather unfortuneate side bar to all this was the recent post on Slashdot concerning a different 3D interface for windows. Nothing like Croquet of course, and the implementation was just a wrapper around a still strictly 2D GUI. A terrible idea, one that the general public seemed to think is the norm for 3D OS's. A terrible and unfortuneate thing. Croquet needs some more publicity!

The overall collaboration is going to be a very special one, one that maybe will take some getting used to. I could see initial confusion over who is editing what, and who has rights/permissions to edit what, what's considered private space, whats consider public space but nothing can be authored/ whats considered free / etc. Second Life sets things up with a sort of lock on each object each person creates, then they decide whether to make it "for sale" or freely distributed or editable. I would like to see what the Croquet folks have in mind for that problem.

Croquet seems like an enlightened foray into a modern world which until now has shunned the idea of viewing anything of an OS nature in 3D.

Mike pointed out that most of the apps that we seen in 3D seem to be dominated by games and this doesn't bode well for having a sense of realism injected into our computing experience.

We often find ourselves staring intently into a 2D screen in order to create things that resemble the reality that we live in and it would be exceedingly more realistic to be creating in the same way that we see the world. Logical? Yes. It seems that it was possible to move not only left or right, but after a question from Perry, it is also possible to move up or down, an intriguing prospect.

I was also impressed with the explanation of firewalls being represented simply as locked portals...or doors that don't even register as being there.

I was however daunted like many other at the prospect of actually navigating this interface in an efficient manner. Both Julie and Andrew noted that it may be quite confusing and I think that it would be hard to make this an effective workstation experience, I think it would be a feasible OS for artists and recreation, but even though you can view text docs and spreadsheets dynamically, it could be hard to wrap the common business world mind around walking to a document with the use of an avatar.

Overall, an intriguing OS and something to definitely watch for the future. I would love to play with this in the lab.