The concept of a digital workspace was born out of the desire to create a seamless and familiar experience for users when switching between applications. The traditional method of switching windows, which involves mental context switching, was seen as cumbersome and unnatural. To address this issue, the team conceptualized a digital workspace that mimics the feel of a physical desk. This prototype allows users to work with their familiar applications in a similar way they would on paper.

The system consists of a virtual table that can be used to display any application, such as Google Earth, in a high-resolution and touch-friendly manner. Users can spread out their applications across the digital workspace, just like they would on a physical desk, without being limited by screen boundaries. This allows for a more natural way of working with computers, while still utilizing familiar programs. The team's goal was to create a system that wouldn't require users to learn an entirely new paradigm of working, but rather add to the existing workflow.

One of the key features of this digital workspace is its flexibility. Users can choose between using touch or traditional vertical screens, depending on their preference. This flexibility allows for a wide range of applications and workflows to be supported. The system also supports multiple input methods, including keyboards with haptic feedback, allowing users to work in a way that suits them best.

The team has developed a software component that replaces the window manager, enabling arbitrary transformations of 2D and 3D content. This allows for freely scalable and rotatable windows, as well as compositing capabilities. The system is built on Linux and can run with various desktop environments, such as GNOME or Unity.

In addition to the digital workspace prototype, the team has also developed a larger-scale version, dubbed "Conference Table." This setup allows multiple people to collaborate in real-time, without being limited by individual applications or screen orientations. Users can rotate content to present it to specific individuals, creating a seamless and collaborative experience. The Conference Table concept extends beyond the digital workspace, allowing for large display environments like tile displays.

The system is designed to support an unlimited number of screens, each with full HD resolution (1920 x 1080). This allows for a high level of detail and clarity, making it suitable for applications such as watching films. The system requires sufficient GPU power and fast interconnects to function smoothly, which has led the team to explore high-speed interconnects like Infiniband and 10 Gigabit Ethernet.

The team is currently developing their own high-speed interconnects to distribute content across multiple nodes in a cluster, utilizing GPUs for processing. This will enable more complex applications and workloads to be supported, while maintaining seamless performance and collaboration capabilities.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe intention the goal of this work is to free the user of the cage of screen mouse and keyboard the screens are getting larger and larger some people have two screens but it's still pretty much the same way of working with with your data with your applications you just have windows side by side and you switch between windows between applications which is always kind of a mental switch also a mental context switch and so we thought of how would it be to if the whole table would be just a digital workspace where you can work with your familiar applications like you normally do with paper spreading paper on your desk for reading for writing for doing whatever and just do that with your computer programs and that's a prototype of that we can just use virtually any application like google earth and the screens are very high resolution and they are capable of of touch and multi-touch and so i can use my google earth in a familiar way but just if it was a piece of paper on my table so i can use a web browser and just work with a web browser in in the same way whatever application you are used to you can use with this system but on a desk and free just from being aligned to the screen boundaries uh you just spread everything onto the table as you like it and as you prefer it and that's a much more natural way to work with a computer but without forcing people to learn a completely new paradigm of working because the programs themselves can be still just those the users are familiar with you so we just adding something to the familiar way uh of working with the computer widening up the space uh widening up the possibilities of of of interaction you can use touch or we also have the familiar vertical screen in that setup that might be there or might not depending on the particular use case well whether it's an engineering workplace or an accounting workplace or a digital content creation workplace so this is very flexible you might want to use a mouse so then we just use the mouse from the normal way of working so this is now pretty standard but so if we decide to go with that continue working here then that's completely seamless if you really want to uh type quite quickly and want to have the haptics of a of a physical keyboard then you just use it so we have one here you just place it where you want to use it that's also just a matter of preference and we support as much different input methods as possible it's running on linux the main component is where you normally have the gnome or the unity desktop for instance that's replaced by our own uh software component so essentially it replaces the window manager by a one which can do arbitrary things with 2d and 3d so freely transformable windows transformable in in terms of scale and rotation and whatever you want to do with it and in addition it's also capable of compositing 3d and 2d content so we did another prototype which is the conference table where people sitting around the table and because you are not limited to any particular orientation of your application but you just rotate and put every content to the person who is interested in you create a canvas for collaboration without the limitation of only being able to use particular content or work with particular applications that remains completely free this is the larger scale of this continuous display space we can also enhance this or extend this display in interaction space to large display environments like this tile display wall which is just made up from off-the-shelf hd televisions and just do the same thing as on the table and just spread our information our windows our content across the whole wall so think of a future office where you have a table like our multi-touch table and then somebody comes in it gives a means of a very seamless way of working between individual work and collaborative work and in environment supporting using your documents everywhere where some display space is available how big are those screens and therefore what sort of resolution are we talking about here each screen has a full hd resolution so 1920 by 1080 uh four by four tiles it's ak yes wow okay so can we watch some films yes yes of course that's also nice there's also a nice environment to watch films it requires a bit more work on the software infrastructure because it's running on the cluster uh this one just to be able to drive the displays with sufficient performance right and so how many computers are running that limit four so each equipped with two graphics cards so one graphics card has to drive two displays only so that uh yeah just sufficient gpu power is available for each display you need also very fast interconnect so we are investigating different uh different high-speed interconnects from uh infiniband to 10 gigabit ethernet so those that cluster is just off the shelf network is it all yes currently it's just off the shelf network and that's what we are currently developing towards to bring that to have high speed interconnect and also to be able to uh to distribute arbitrary content across different nodes in the cluster and all the gpus along that so i'm going to bump just this one only that will fall over that one times the tango ready seven so you don't need to do anything particularly complicated to multiply these two togetherthe intention the goal of this work is to free the user of the cage of screen mouse and keyboard the screens are getting larger and larger some people have two screens but it's still pretty much the same way of working with with your data with your applications you just have windows side by side and you switch between windows between applications which is always kind of a mental switch also a mental context switch and so we thought of how would it be to if the whole table would be just a digital workspace where you can work with your familiar applications like you normally do with paper spreading paper on your desk for reading for writing for doing whatever and just do that with your computer programs and that's a prototype of that we can just use virtually any application like google earth and the screens are very high resolution and they are capable of of touch and multi-touch and so i can use my google earth in a familiar way but just if it was a piece of paper on my table so i can use a web browser and just work with a web browser in in the same way whatever application you are used to you can use with this system but on a desk and free just from being aligned to the screen boundaries uh you just spread everything onto the table as you like it and as you prefer it and that's a much more natural way to work with a computer but without forcing people to learn a completely new paradigm of working because the programs themselves can be still just those the users are familiar with you so we just adding something to the familiar way uh of working with the computer widening up the space uh widening up the possibilities of of of interaction you can use touch or we also have the familiar vertical screen in that setup that might be there or might not depending on the particular use case well whether it's an engineering workplace or an accounting workplace or a digital content creation workplace so this is very flexible you might want to use a mouse so then we just use the mouse from the normal way of working so this is now pretty standard but so if we decide to go with that continue working here then that's completely seamless if you really want to uh type quite quickly and want to have the haptics of a of a physical keyboard then you just use it so we have one here you just place it where you want to use it that's also just a matter of preference and we support as much different input methods as possible it's running on linux the main component is where you normally have the gnome or the unity desktop for instance that's replaced by our own uh software component so essentially it replaces the window manager by a one which can do arbitrary things with 2d and 3d so freely transformable windows transformable in in terms of scale and rotation and whatever you want to do with it and in addition it's also capable of compositing 3d and 2d content so we did another prototype which is the conference table where people sitting around the table and because you are not limited to any particular orientation of your application but you just rotate and put every content to the person who is interested in you create a canvas for collaboration without the limitation of only being able to use particular content or work with particular applications that remains completely free this is the larger scale of this continuous display space we can also enhance this or extend this display in interaction space to large display environments like this tile display wall which is just made up from off-the-shelf hd televisions and just do the same thing as on the table and just spread our information our windows our content across the whole wall so think of a future office where you have a table like our multi-touch table and then somebody comes in it gives a means of a very seamless way of working between individual work and collaborative work and in environment supporting using your documents everywhere where some display space is available how big are those screens and therefore what sort of resolution are we talking about here each screen has a full hd resolution so 1920 by 1080 uh four by four tiles it's ak yes wow okay so can we watch some films yes yes of course that's also nice there's also a nice environment to watch films it requires a bit more work on the software infrastructure because it's running on the cluster uh this one just to be able to drive the displays with sufficient performance right and so how many computers are running that limit four so each equipped with two graphics cards so one graphics card has to drive two displays only so that uh yeah just sufficient gpu power is available for each display you need also very fast interconnect so we are investigating different uh different high-speed interconnects from uh infiniband to 10 gigabit ethernet so those that cluster is just off the shelf network is it all yes currently it's just off the shelf network and that's what we are currently developing towards to bring that to have high speed interconnect and also to be able to uh to distribute arbitrary content across different nodes in the cluster and all the gpus along that so i'm going to bump just this one only that will fall over that one times the tango ready seven so you don't need to do anything particularly complicated to multiply these two together\n"