Dr J's Guide to Drawing 3D ASCII Pictures (1994) | Hacker News Reader

Dr J's Guide to Drawing 3D ASCII Pictures (1994)

sunnyspot.org

34 pointsTomte14 comments

I was a little skeptical - after all was it really tricking me into thinking it's 3D? Or is this just an odd visual artifact? Then I read:

  Notice how the shaft now seems tilted to the left? 
  (Did you just catch yourself shifting your head to 
  the right? Convincing isn't it?!!)

And I realized I had just moved my head to the right to center the shaft without realizing it. I laughed out loud when he caught me on it.

Now I want a 3D text editor. Syntax highlighting by depth? or Python indents in the third dimension!

Proof of concept for Z-dimension Python indenting (cross your eyes):

  for line in file:          for line in file:
  print line                  print line
  print "all done!"          print "all done!"

I didn't believe you at first, and then I tried it. Bravo.

Actually, I prefer the inner part of the loops negative z-indexed (but you can image how it could flip as you move the caret around):

  for line in file:          for line in file:
  print line                print line
  print "all done!"          print "all done!"

However, staring at an IDE cross-eyed while trying to program sounds like a punishment one might cook up for devs who bundle Browser Toolbar Adware with screensaver packages that my mum likes to install, and not something I'd choose for myself.

In university, I did some research into Multi-Level Displays (essentially a transparent LCD a few millimetres in front of a standard LCD screen), but what held the tech back for consumer applications was that we hadn't yet found a killer app. (In contrast, the gambling industry loved them, and I see them often in Casinos in Vegas).

But it seems like it would be a perfect application for fake 3d IDEs.

Maybe if you couple that with an Oculus/hololens it could be a viable display.

I guess you can mix that with color syntax highlighting. Or maybe have the IDE run timing analysis on your code and adjust z-indexing to reflect where most of the time is spent.

One of the best things about the MLD was that it is a 'real' 3D (well, 2.5-D) display. The real separation of screens means that there's no need for special eye-wear or projection, and there is no nauseating delay in dealing with head-motion, eye-saccades or any of the other problems that I've heard plague long-term use of the Oculus.

alright this is awesome.

This is so cool I want this so bad lol

This uses the same technique as used for viewing Stereograms. Consider me rather impressed.

This is so cool! Could this be made into a little 3D roguelike?

Date: 1994.

But still not dated.

I don't understand some posters' obsession with "it's not from this week".

The convention is to append the year to a title if the article is not from the current year. But that's definitely not to disparage older content. Quite the opposite! Older articles are often more interesting (because time culls the less interesting stuff), and historical material is a lot of the best that appears on HN. We're always hoping people will post more.

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