What I like about Niri and hyprland is that I don't need to think about where windows open and about positioning them. This then looks very tiring, but I could be wrong. Would have to play with it.
I've often wondered if all they are missing is eye tracking and the ability auto tilling manager? I'd love to be able to press ctrl, look at three windows in my zoomed out view, and then release and have all 3 of them be distributed by a normal tiling window.
I agree that laying things out on an infinite 2d plane is surprisingly time consuming. We must be missing some affordance or something in how this should be?
I kinda already have this with Niri's infinite-scrolling horizontal strip and Vicinae as the control plane for complex stuff. like, to replace my Niri setup I'd need a 48:9 (!) monitor
I've found that working in a style similar to this is very useful for managing multiple threads of work at the same time.
I use virtual desktops, where each desktop contains a single thing that I am working on, and everything related to it. Then any good window manager can switch between them quickly and even give you a spatial sense of where you are. I organize them as a priority stack, so the topmost priority is in top position and then it goes downward from there
There's a lot that this "campus" product does that isn't present in such a set up (multi user, zooming, etc...) but virtual desktops give you a lot of the benefit and come built in to most of our operating systems
Very cool interface and reminiscent of figma/excalidraw in the way they provide an infinite 2d canvas for shapes and figures. Most tools of these types tend to implement layers as well, which might be loosely analogous to multiple desktops and could be a neat interface element to explore. The impetus for layering in a drawing tool is very different from the impetus for doing such in a desktop windowing tool.
The 3d demos are similar to what you experience when using a VR headset with desktop emulation software. I ran experiments with that for several months and while the concepts were interesting, context switching in a simulated physical space was actually a lot slower than alt+tabbing between things.
It's basically already been said but, this seems absurd. I'm not quite sure what TRUE benefit you'd get from this but it seems more frustrating than it's worth. I can't figure out a reason to do this unless I'm just in the mood to piss myself off.
Personally this is perfect! I like it for organization...
Having 20 work-trees with 20 terminals (for running the server) with 20 browser tabs open became a pain to organize; with campus I can visually lay them out and know which one is linked to which one (this was near impossible before so im sold)
Cofounder of a now-defunct multiplayer, real-time infinite canvas project here (Here.fm)
We could not for the life of us figure out how to make this a meaningful productivity tool. Yes, we had meetings here, and yes, drawing all over someone else's screenshare was actually useful - And building islands of data was an interesting mental model. It descended into messy chaos no matter what you did, and anything you would do to try and combat that undid some of the benefits of the canvas to begin with.
It was a lot of fun to hang out in as a multiplayer live video room, though, so we leaned into that with (relatively) more success.
Any workspace, real or virtual, descends into messy chaos without someone actively organizing or cleaning things up. It's bad enough by yourself, but the minute it's shared with others, it will devolve quickly. Think about any shared file system, data library, workshop, kitchen, etc...
This is why librarians, janitors, lab managers, document controllers etc. are essential to make spaces functional and organized.
Just gave it a spin and feels very rough / unpolished.
- Why is the default scroll wheel action panning vertically and not zooming in and out (the main interaction)?
- Why is the app size 1GB?
- Everything feels clunky / not native - these are not my real apps.
This would need a lot of work to feel frictionless but I like the concept.
Back in 2013 or 2014 when the first Oculus dev kit came out, the first thing a colleague of mine coded up was his own "virtual" workplace. By trade he was a graphics game dev that had been working on FPS games, but changed fields to more traditional tech work.
He made his own virtual 3D office where he could whip up new screens whenever and wherever needed, IIRC, these computers in the virtual world were virtual machines with some very bare bones Linux distros. He argued that it was a very good replacement for having to buy and mount new physical monitors.
Can't remember how long he actually used that solution, but it did look cool.
Sweet. Another of my projects just died. Well on life support, since this is on Mac while mine is on Linux. Though it also depends on how flexible this is.
Absolutely ABSOLUTELY love the idea and the first thought I had was Virtual Desktops! If that's a correct way to think about it then I can absolutely see myself using each tile (Desktop/Monitor to me) to contain a single thread of work.
I don't use agents at all and I think that building agent/Ai-first is gonna push away people like me (who don't want to deal with agents or any related concept or even git tbh). I'd genuinely say generalise into a Virtual Desktop typer thing.
In your blog, you mentioned that each tile is sorta like a computer (sandbox?) in itself actually containing AND running the work. That's brilliant! Now, if you could make it possible that one single tile could fill the entire screen, like a typical desktop view, on demand. Incase I just want absolute focus on one thing (I'm not always looking across all three monitors) and not be in 'Canvas mode' seeing all my Virtual Desktops.
I could also see myself working across three (or more) tiles where I've got docs in chrome, vs-code open in another and something else (more docs? Terminal? Doesn't matter). Fact is that the infinite canvas literally replaces me having to buy two - three monitors to get the same feel. I could now buy a single large curved one and have infinite monitors.
I had an inkling of this feeling when I saw Omarchy (A tile-based Linux distro from Basecamp / 37signals). What I thought was missing was infinite-ness and a little spatial something? I actually literally thought, what if those tiles didn't squish together like that and the BG were a 2D infinite canvas?
If you pull this off just right and actually focus on getting the desktop version right first (I believe that's where your users are), I believe you may have stumbled onto a different kind of operating system paradigm for a workflow issue we try to solve with even more physical monitors.
I never shut off my PC so I can imagine long lived virtual monitors wayyy off in the canvas ether with all that work still open and waiting until I'm ready for that frame of mind.
I don't have anything to say about the disappearing message except that it's cool as a way to ping or get someone's attention but a dedicated chat box? window? Just a little foldable flourish in the bottom left or right corner so yu can directly 'chat' with someone persistently who's in your space (or you're in theirs) is way more healthy for a serendipity than a disappearing message where it's kinda like an implicit race condition and loses the asynchronous nature of letting me consider a text before I reply especially in work settings. I'd also not want to give access to my entire canvas ether as opposed to selectively allowing access to specific virtual desktop lol
As for 3D? Meh I don't know. Don't need that but other people may like it. I'm just approaching this from a workflow angle. Love the whimsy regardless.
I absolutely want this, I would absolutely pay for this, I think this is a great product in the Figma range and I absolutely wish you all the best of luck because this is awesome. Just focus on the operating system /workflow angle for a desktop use-case first. I couldn't try it (don't have a Mac) but I got the idea from the video.
Good luck, guys! And ykw? I wonder if I could fork around with Omarchy and give it infinite canvas since it's already 95% there. Never mind the social feature or 3D graphics yet.
Hey, author here. Thanks for the feedback! The goal definitely is to focus on the core. I mentioned this in the video, I like to think of this as a (multiplayer) work sandbox. I'm really curious about all the different workflows people have/ could build.
28 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 20.8 ms ] threadThey mostly do not gain a lot of users. Good luck!
I agree that laying things out on an infinite 2d plane is surprisingly time consuming. We must be missing some affordance or something in how this should be?
Seems there's more to this.
Would explore more.. Might be cool to see integrations soon
I use virtual desktops, where each desktop contains a single thing that I am working on, and everything related to it. Then any good window manager can switch between them quickly and even give you a spatial sense of where you are. I organize them as a priority stack, so the topmost priority is in top position and then it goes downward from there
There's a lot that this "campus" product does that isn't present in such a set up (multi user, zooming, etc...) but virtual desktops give you a lot of the benefit and come built in to most of our operating systems
The 3d demos are similar to what you experience when using a VR headset with desktop emulation software. I ran experiments with that for several months and while the concepts were interesting, context switching in a simulated physical space was actually a lot slower than alt+tabbing between things.
Answer: you get a mess.
That's why browsers weren't built like that, and also why I think this will not work.
But happy to be proven wrong of course.
Having 20 work-trees with 20 terminals (for running the server) with 20 browser tabs open became a pain to organize; with campus I can visually lay them out and know which one is linked to which one (this was near impossible before so im sold)
We could not for the life of us figure out how to make this a meaningful productivity tool. Yes, we had meetings here, and yes, drawing all over someone else's screenshare was actually useful - And building islands of data was an interesting mental model. It descended into messy chaos no matter what you did, and anything you would do to try and combat that undid some of the benefits of the canvas to begin with.
It was a lot of fun to hang out in as a multiplayer live video room, though, so we leaned into that with (relatively) more success.
This is why librarians, janitors, lab managers, document controllers etc. are essential to make spaces functional and organized.
This would need a lot of work to feel frictionless but I like the concept.
He made his own virtual 3D office where he could whip up new screens whenever and wherever needed, IIRC, these computers in the virtual world were virtual machines with some very bare bones Linux distros. He argued that it was a very good replacement for having to buy and mount new physical monitors.
Can't remember how long he actually used that solution, but it did look cool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
I don't use agents at all and I think that building agent/Ai-first is gonna push away people like me (who don't want to deal with agents or any related concept or even git tbh). I'd genuinely say generalise into a Virtual Desktop typer thing.
In your blog, you mentioned that each tile is sorta like a computer (sandbox?) in itself actually containing AND running the work. That's brilliant! Now, if you could make it possible that one single tile could fill the entire screen, like a typical desktop view, on demand. Incase I just want absolute focus on one thing (I'm not always looking across all three monitors) and not be in 'Canvas mode' seeing all my Virtual Desktops.
I could also see myself working across three (or more) tiles where I've got docs in chrome, vs-code open in another and something else (more docs? Terminal? Doesn't matter). Fact is that the infinite canvas literally replaces me having to buy two - three monitors to get the same feel. I could now buy a single large curved one and have infinite monitors.
I had an inkling of this feeling when I saw Omarchy (A tile-based Linux distro from Basecamp / 37signals). What I thought was missing was infinite-ness and a little spatial something? I actually literally thought, what if those tiles didn't squish together like that and the BG were a 2D infinite canvas?
If you pull this off just right and actually focus on getting the desktop version right first (I believe that's where your users are), I believe you may have stumbled onto a different kind of operating system paradigm for a workflow issue we try to solve with even more physical monitors.
I never shut off my PC so I can imagine long lived virtual monitors wayyy off in the canvas ether with all that work still open and waiting until I'm ready for that frame of mind.
I don't have anything to say about the disappearing message except that it's cool as a way to ping or get someone's attention but a dedicated chat box? window? Just a little foldable flourish in the bottom left or right corner so yu can directly 'chat' with someone persistently who's in your space (or you're in theirs) is way more healthy for a serendipity than a disappearing message where it's kinda like an implicit race condition and loses the asynchronous nature of letting me consider a text before I reply especially in work settings. I'd also not want to give access to my entire canvas ether as opposed to selectively allowing access to specific virtual desktop lol
As for 3D? Meh I don't know. Don't need that but other people may like it. I'm just approaching this from a workflow angle. Love the whimsy regardless.
I absolutely want this, I would absolutely pay for this, I think this is a great product in the Figma range and I absolutely wish you all the best of luck because this is awesome. Just focus on the operating system /workflow angle for a desktop use-case first. I couldn't try it (don't have a Mac) but I got the idea from the video.
Good luck, guys! And ykw? I wonder if I could fork around with Omarchy and give it infinite canvas since it's already 95% there. Never mind the social feature or 3D graphics yet.
Windows, Linux and even web versions are planned!
https://www.raskinformac.com/