The Looking Glass project has reached version 1.0 after 3 years of hard work:

"This release is the culmination of 3 years of work, starting with Hideya san who originally conceived of a bold, new type of window system, through the initial shake down of the proof-of-concept demo by an internal Sun community, followed by the open sourcing of the technology, which generated such enormous interest that it brought down the java.net servers several times. From that point on many people from around the globe have contributed to the project; contributing to the core, contributing applications, performing testing, writing and translating documentation, etc. The project owners (Hideya, Paul, Krishna and myself) are very grateful for all of the great contributions we have received from you, the LG community."

Looking Glass is a project sponsored by Sun Microsystems made to create an innovative 3D desktop environment for Linux, Solaris, and Windows. Windows native applications cannot be used under the Looking Glass project. To remain a platform independent project, Looking Glass was programmed in the Java language using the Java 3D system. Despite the use of graphics acceleration features, the desktop explores the use of 3D windowing capabilities for both existing application programs and the ones specifically designed for Looking Glass.

Looking Glass has many innovative features like the creation of reversible windows, which allows the user to write notes and comments on the windows' backs, or displaying application dialogs without risking them being detached from the application they relate to. Other features include icons that reflect the live status of the window they represent and zooming of a window when it receives focus, provision of a panning virtual desktop and many more.

Please enjoy some screenshots of the Looking Glass project in action:




Download Looking Glass now from Softpedia.