I made an operating system UI within Unity. Thoughts ?, Hacker News

[–] michsky ??? (points ) points points 7 days ago ( (children)

About Project Glass:

Glass is a simulated operating system user interface (UI) project and it is being made with Unity . 4. It is not a real OS, although everything in the package is functional and can be changed easily. This is basically a remake of the original project which was released 2 years ago.

If you’re wondering why I’m working on this project , you can search for Simulacra, Welcome to the Game or Emily is Away and you’ll get the idea (plus it’s fun). You can even count GTA for its phones and browser. This project is much much bigger than the examples though.

If you want, you can try it yourself by downloading this Windows demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p3AACMd6KuRnHctsq (uJfMq3BwBM) L / view

97 fps showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_2e0LebNY

permalink

(embed

report

give award

[–] undefinedNANString 1 point (2 points) (3 points) 6 days ago (2 children)

Ehh You have a different business model. Your generally not selling a full product.

That OS thing could definitely get repackaged and sold a million times.

The way open source in corporate land works is like this.

The code itself is free, but installing it is often hard. For example, Mongodb is like this. It’s much easier to give up and pay the Mongo DB company to host it for you. permalink

(save ) (parent )

report

give award

reply ()

[–] (Philipp (2 points) 3 points 4 points 7 days ago (2 children)

Amazing. Is there something like a high level class concept diagram or something for your project? For me it was something like

OS -> AppWrapper -> App -> Page -> Widget.

E.g. OS on specific object -> BackgammonApp -> MainPage, SettingsPage -> SliderWidget, ButtonWidget etc. (permalink)

(embed) (save

parent

give award

[–] michsky ??? [S] 3 points 4 points (5 points) 7 days ago (1 child)

Mine’s like: Canvas / Root> Managers (controlled via scriptable assets)> Setup / Boot / Lock> Task Bar> Desktop> Apps / Windows> Widgets

Desktop is my main parent for apps and windows. Whenever I focus or click on an app, I’m giving it a higher priority.

I don’t know if you understand the stuff I’ve said, but it’s actually not that complex when you see the Hierarchy yourself.

Since you’re working on such cool projects, let me know if you need source files of this project.

permalink

embed (save )

(parent)

report
give award reply

capiers points (points ) points 7 days ago ( children)

The thing about an OS is it has to be able to run smoothly on computers with different specs. Having an OS that has a lot of animation transitions, blurs and transparencies taxes the graphics cards or cpu depending on the system.

Apple can do this because they manufacture their own computers that support this. Windows is designed to run on PC’s with various types of hardware and is why it is one of the reasons it is the most widely used OS.

It no doubt has its flaws.

permalink embed

save (parent )

g ive award
reply

[–] (Freak_ey (9 points) (points) points 7 days ago (5 children)

Surely you could just have quality settings for the OS and a rough diagnostic check to gauge what sort of specs the machine has?

Obviously that would require more work on Microsoft’s part but I wouldn’t think that it would be so prohibitively expensive / difficult that they couldn’t.

Obviously I’m completely speculating.

permalink

embed (save )

(parent (report )

give award reply

[–] (Molion ) 8 points (9 points) 17 points 7 days ago

() (3 children) ()

My experience with native unity UI, as well as what others seem to be saying, is that working with it is a massive pain in the butt . Especially if you have any experience with web or a proper UI framework.

We’ve been looking for a solution for our own UI, but didn’t really find anything good. We finally settled for just using the alpha for the new unity UI stuff and waiting for the final release.

Any thoughts?

permalink

embed

save

parent

report give award

reply Read More