[XPERIA X1 General] Mark A Cilenti:
3D Today Screen

To further flesh out the principles behind a 3D UI for Windows Mobile, I have constructed a mock up of what a 3D Today Screen could look like and work like. Here is a screen shot, 3D goggles required.

View attachment 163823

There is also a demo that animates the Today screen to show how it could work in 3D, and some of the 3D visual effects that can be used to good effect. This demo can be run on your PC or your X1 in portrait mode.

I will describe what you can see in the above screen shot and what happens on the demo.

1) The first effect is to animate the Tabs used in programs like Pocket Plus 4.

The [Time] Tab is pressed and the screen sinks to the bottom. The remaining tabs remain raised. Thus the tabs behave like real buttons when pressed.

2) The clock, another important Today Screen element rises and falls, to show the different looks attainable through 3D rendering. In the real thing I would envisage users being able to set the depth of the clock by a tap and hold menu.

3) Phone, WiFi and Bluetooth icons. These are raised to different levels to illustrate different modes. Example Phone Icon at the bottom would mean Phone is turned off. Icons raised half way would represent Phone on, and icon raised to the top would mean phone + GPRS data connection on, similary for wifi and bluetooth icons.

4) Next we have an animation of the Xperia Logo, rising and falling smoothly though the layers in 3D. In the real UI I would envisage animations like this pulsating, rising and falling smoothly, to add some subtle 3D action to the static Today screen we have currently in 2D, like animated wallpapers on your PC.

5) Then we have the animation of the Program icons. These are animated to convey real world pressing of buttons that fall under your finger, giving the very real impression you have pressed a real button. The Windows Media Icons demonstrates a shallow press. The Word Mobile icon demonstrates a deep press into the screen.

The idea behind a 3D UI is to have elements behaving as they do in the real world, responding and moving to your touch in a real way, in 3D.

In the real 3D UI I would envisage that the 3D rendering and behavior of icons and elements could be toggled on and off. So when you have time and your 3D goggles handy, you can enjoy and participate fully in the 3D experience, but when you are out and about, you have 3D turned off, and use your phone normally in 2D.

Having a 3D UI for Windows Mobile is no harder to create or more complicated than creating a skin for programs, a feature which many programs and software developers already allow.

This is the next step to produce a 3D skin for a Windows Mobile program like Media Player, where skins and there creation is easily facilitated and changed in the program options.

I am willing to help produce the art work for 3D skins for all other accesible programs used on the X1, Like S2U Lock, S2V, Media Player etc.

I am thus posting a request for collaboration on a 3D skinning project. ( Please IM me on XDA Devs, or post on this thread )

If you have a program you want skinning in 3D, if you can locate and post the original art work, Jpegs, PNG, Bitmaps etc, I'II have go at rendering it in 3D, so together, we can produce an installable cab file,to present to the X1 community the X1's first 3D skin. It would not be the worlds first 3D skin because WinAmp already has one, on the PC.

I dare say someone in XDA Devs may want to produce a real 3D skin for the 2D Touch Flo 3D...but I wont go there :p