Luminocity OpenGL Videos

I thought about this a couple of years ago.

I actually commented on an IRC conversation between Keith Packard and (if I remember right) Seth Nickell on a related subject (acceleration and optimization of fd.o) and suggested OpenGL for hardware acceleration of all desktop features, right on top of Xserver. But I got heavily flamed ("that's right short of impossible and would require GL hardware for all users, moron" -type replies) and the public conversation became awkward and died. Half a year after, details of the OS X desktop were released and I thought "Bummer, this could be under development for X now..." since I alone am not able to, nor have the knowledge to start a project like this.

Now, when people are experimenting on it, it seems to be working out perfectly fine. I'm glad, albeit somewhat disappointed people didn't listen years ago. We could have been far ahead in this by now.

Think of your desktop having global illumination in a true 3D space, set right after your rooms illumination, you'd have an extension of your RL surroundings! Now THATS a usability improvement!

(You could even photograph your office or cubicle and have the desktop completely reflect your space (specular highlights in buttons or reflecions in a glass window border), but thats pretty obvious given a little teaser of the possibilities.)