Project
Looking Glass
Sun's Contribution to the Open Source Community
June 29, 2004
Sun Microsystems is contributing Project Looking Glass,
based on Java™ technology, to the open source community.
Project Looking Glass is an exploratory project to bring
innovative 3D features to the desktop environment. The desktop
interface will offer an intuitive, new 3D environment to
interact with desktop applications featuring window transparency,
rotation, zoom, multiple desktop workspaces, and miniaturization.
Project Looking Glass offers a platform to realize a far
richer and more entertaining user experience for existing
and new applications in 2D or 3D. The technology enables
developers to build highly visual 3D desktops and applications
that will run on Linux systems such as Sun's Java Desktop
System. The Solaris™ environment will be supported
in the near future.
What does this mean to you?
If you're a software developer, please go to lg3d-core.dev.java.net
and download this early version of the code and join the
community in developing the 3D desktop.
Interested in using Project Looking Glass? The project
is in very early stages and a commercial version is not
available yet. Please go to www.sun.com/software/project-looking-glass
to keep up to date on our progress.
Why open source?
Project Looking Glass is in its infancy, and we'd like
to explore lots of ideas and possibilities. We're releasing
the Project Looking Glass code to the whole community to
explore every aspect of the technology rather than restricting
access to a privileged few. We believe this open development
is an excellent model to pursue this exciting and vast opportunity,
and your involvement is eagerly anticipated.
We have been working for several months on cleaning up
the software, providing basic features and functionality
necessary for 3D window management. A key focus was looking
at existing 2D desktop applications, and minimizing compatibility
and performance problems. The next step is to look at what
else we can do to foster real-world 3D interactivity. We
decided to open source this at a very early stage to ensure
that we got good feedback from the community.
What's in the open source project?
The following features are now available in the Project
Looking Glass open source release:
- 3D Window Manager Platform
- Java 3D-based highly scalable 3D platform with
client-server model support.
- 3D Window Manager and Application Development API
- Java API to develop new 3D desktop applications and
3D desktop window manager features.
- Native Application Integration Module
- Allows developers to run conventional X11 applications
in the 3D environment.
- Sample 3D Window Manager
- Provides a simple sample implementation for testing
and demonstration purposes.
- 3D Environment Lite
- Enables developers to run a simplified 3D environment
as an application on a Java 3D enabled platform including
Linux and Solaris environments. This serves as a development
tool to test implementations.
This is all available at: lg3d-core.dev.java.net
What's the licensing model?
There are three license choices for developers interested
in creating applications using Project Looking Glass.
For developers who are interested in reviewing, revising,
and redistributing the source code as part of their own
application, Project Looking Glass has been submitted as
an open source project in the JavaDesktop area of java.net
under the GNU Public License, or GPL.
For developers who are interested in developing an application
on top of the existing Project Looking Glass platform without
reviewing and/or altering the code base, there is a binary
version of the current state of the project available for
download under a traditional Binary Code License. This is
also available in the JavaDesktop area of java.net.
Finally, for developers or organizations interested in
other uses or revising the source code but wish to keep
their implementation and related application proprietary,
please contact Sun at lg3d_license@dev.java.net.
Project Looking Glass Community
Meeting
Wednesday June 30, 2004
4:30pm to 6:00pm
The Argent Hotel, City Room
San Francisco, California, USA
www.argenthotel.com/location.htm
4:00-4:30 Registration
4:30-4:45 Welcome, Introductions, and 3D Desktop Project
Demo
4:45-5:30 Technology Overview, Possible Sub Projects, How
to Get Started
5:30-6:00 Q&A and Networking
Please join the conversation with the Project Looking Glass
developers from Sun Microsystems. This meeting will be technically
focused introducing developers to the project and letting
them know how to get involved.
You can meet the team from Project Looking Glass and other
developers while enjoying food and refreshments. There is
open admission. You do not need a JavaOne Conference Pass
to attend.
No webcast will be available, but we will post the information
available at the meeting on the website. We'll also have
several presentations and Project Looking Glass at JavaOne,
and we'll post as many as we can on the web.
You can see Hideya Kawahara on stage with Jonathan Schwartz
and Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems demonstrating the
Project Looking Glass technology and announcing the open
source project at java.sun.com/javaone/
(select View Webcast).
If you have any questions, please send them to: project-looking-glass@sun.com
About JavaDesktop and java.net
JavaDesktop
(at javadesktop.org) is a java.net community for developers
of applications with rich client interfaces. java.net
is a Web site used by the developer community that expands
the Java technology portfolio of applications, tools and
services in applied areas of technology and vertical industry
solutions. More than 52,000 developers worldwide have joined
the java.net collaborative community, and are engaged in
more than 900 projects ranging from Java technology-based
games development to desktop technologies to enterprise
development such as Java Web services. java.net is sponsored
by Sun, the creator and leading advocate of Java technology,
with editorial resources and technology infrastructure provided
by CollabNet, Inc. and O'Reilly & Associates.
