Agreed. Like windowing systems allowed sharing the 2D screen, AR/VR systems will need to be able to share 3D space. I need my mapping app showing the way at the same time as my social networking app is popping up info about the friends in my view at the same time my pokemon-go-ar is showing the latest pokemon hiding in the bushes, at the same time as restaurant app is showing which restaurants have seats right now. (or whatever)
Sure, some people will want to tune out / turn off all other apps from time to time but the ability to run them together is really key it seems.
I wish browser VR supported popping 3D things out of the screen. Currently browser VR is click a button, browser display's that page's VR presentation in your VR. But run one of the many VR virtual desktops that show your computer's desktop as a virtual monitor in VR and suddenly I want a standard so that a webpage can make a 3D object and it pops out of the virtual monitor. Ideally like a browser tab I could pop out lots of different VR-VR apps/pages/etc all running at the same time, all integrating in the same 3D space.
I heard two and a half talks at last year's BUILD with the folks working on _Windowing_ in Windows and directions things are headed, and the really interesting stuff was all the hints of "we can't talk about it in detail yet, but" stuff and almost all of that was hints of what it even means to be a Window in 3D and how things interact in that sort of space. (Not just for today's version of Windows Mixed Reality, but also potentially how that shakes up all of Windows' base windowing capabilities whether 3D or 2D, how it may drive even 2D windowing moving forward, depending on how things shake out.)
(Something I don't think a lot of people notice, too, is how important 3D is to the Fluent Design System, and not just for Material Design reasons of faking paper stacks for visual interest in 2D, but probably because a lot more of Microsoft is taking 3D very seriously than it currently seems obvious that they are given the current intentional "no hype" approach.)
It certainly sounds like the Windows team has been thinking about all of this sort of stuff for years now, and I'm very curious to see a lot more of it come to light rather than just "we're thinking about it". This article also hints at some more of it getting released as real services SOON™.
I'm presuming we'll hear a lot more about Azure Spatial Anchors at this year's BUILD, and that could be quite interesting based on the hints in this article.
Sure, some people will want to tune out / turn off all other apps from time to time but the ability to run them together is really key it seems.
I wish browser VR supported popping 3D things out of the screen. Currently browser VR is click a button, browser display's that page's VR presentation in your VR. But run one of the many VR virtual desktops that show your computer's desktop as a virtual monitor in VR and suddenly I want a standard so that a webpage can make a 3D object and it pops out of the virtual monitor. Ideally like a browser tab I could pop out lots of different VR-VR apps/pages/etc all running at the same time, all integrating in the same 3D space.