“I made an operating system UI within Unity” • Hacker News Board

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#181

Post by mirimir » Tue, Feb 11, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

MrEldritch wrote: post #176

mirimir wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, same here. Like, what's the point of an "operating system UI" in a Linux desktop environment? But then, I also don't get the point of doing that in some game engine called Unity. I mean, is that a viable way to do a desktop?

The point of doing an operating system UI in a game engine is so that you can use that operating system UI within games written in that engine! There's several examples - Simulacra, Emily was Away, Hypnospace Outlaw - that use the interface of an (imaginary) computer as their primary framing device. Or it could be useful in an immersive-sim type game where there happen to be computers you can interact with; you could…

Huh. I never got into gaming. Except that my life has become more and more LARP.

So yeah, I get it. Of course there'd be computers in games.

But once you have an OS in a game, why not just run a VM? Or would that use too many resources?

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#182

Post by RocketSyntax » Wed, Feb 12, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

Now hook it up to a VR headset so I can have 6 screens?

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#183

Post by dnadler » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 3:15 PM UTC

patrec wrote: post #109

dnadler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as the filesystem goes, navigating in Windows with the keyboard is WAY easier. I can't seem to figure out how to effectively navigate the file system on MacOS without resorting to the terminal. I routinely have trouble locating mounted file systems, can't figure out how to type in a specific path I want to go to, etc. These things are trivial on Windows, but seem not to be possible on MacOS. I'll give it the b…

Try Cmd+Shift+G in finder or open dialogues.

Very helpful. Thanks :)

Wish this was a bit more discoverable on MacOS - I think that's what windows' file explorer is particularly good at. Though, I'm almost certainly biased.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#184

Post by SQueeeeeL » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

ken wrote: post #170

hbosch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disappointing fact about the current state of mobile apps is that companies no longer think it's necessary to build two native apps.

It shouldn’t be. We never want to build the same app multiple times. What I (as a developer) want is for OS companies to stop with all the proprietary crap and cooperate so I can write an app once. Web apps and web-as-native (and previously, cross platform GUI frameworks) are our reaction to this lack of cooperation. See also: compilers, libraries, ORMs, autotools, Docker, ... We as an industry go to extreme lengths…

It's incompatiable for a good reason, the reasons just don't benefit us. It makes Windows/various vendors extremely wealthy to have bizarre lock in arrangements.

Re: “I made an operating system UI within Unity”

#185

Post by lkrubner » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

presidentender wrote: post #92

MrLeap wrote: post #40

Years ago, when I was adapting field manuals into Unity Games -- I got asked to create some training for a piece of field kit that relied heavily on a windows mobile device (very early windows mobile, that had a registry -- could run some win32 apps, had a noticeable delay of like 350ms between every input and it reacting...) I had that new-job-gotta-impress energy, so went _hard_ at this project. I added so many tin…

I worked for the same field-manual-into-Unity employer for a few years, first doing DoDAF architectures on a contract on Ft Huachuca, switching to the serious games division for a small number of weeks before I politely quit in frustration. We spent years building what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Army units. Great effort went into them. Coordination with active-duty officers, with GS civilian stakeholders, t…

This must have been a huge project, because I had a friend in Charlottesville, Virginia who got hired in 2008 to do almost the same for the Navy, "what amounted to UML diagrams of existing Navy units." They paid him $125 an hour and he took the work because it was the middle of the 2008 recession, but it was boring work. A year later they asked him to do more, but he turned it down.