Re: Cybercity
Kevin Goldsmith (unitcirc@netcom.com)
Mon, 10 Jul 1995 21:08:30 -0700 (PDT)
> I have seen an app (name?) that shows lots of internal Unix info
> on an Xwindows screen, rendered as coloured 3D columns.
>
This might have been a knockoff of the SGI Visual File System
program that was shown in Jurassic Park ("This is a Unix System, I know
this..."). It's a nifty gimmic, but it doesn't really supply you with
very much information. Hierarchies for file systems are much better
displayed in 2D, but I do agree that file size is very useful to see in
3D if you can look at the whole thing at once. What I wonder is what is
really usefull to see in 3D? A lot of the thing non-artistic things have
already been exploited (Medical Data, Architecture, CAD, etc...) Is
there a way where artists could use 3D tools to allow people to see
mundane information in a brand new light and shed more understanding
about it?
> I'd go along with that. Surely we will _never_ dispose of 2D representations.
> There is (a) just too much that you can do in 2D, and (b) some things that
> are harder to understand or even do in 3D.
>
here here
Kevin