Hi everyone!

I've had this idea floating 'round the back of my head for a while and never got to trying it. Would it be feasible to create a desktop environment a la GNOME or whatever using the Blender game engine? I'm just thinking, people are going ga-ga over these slick OpenGL accelerated, scene-graph based drawling libraries (clutter, quartz, aero or whatever you call it) while here we have in BGE more real-time graphical and logical bling than any of them can hope to match.

As I see it, stuff like drawing windows etc should be pretty easy. Drag and drop file management would probably require a dip in to Python but still should be doable.

What about displaying applications? Take Firefox, for example. Is there a way to get an interactive Firefox window to display in BGE, perhaps even with usable Flash?

This is where I run in to a wall. Anyone have any ideas? I should stipulate that, while I'm familiar with Python, I know nothing about using it with Blender. At this point I'm more interested in whether people think this is a fool's errand or perhaps something interesting.

Or, if someone else knows of a similar project, please let me know!

Thanks!

You really don't want to do this.

This won't speed things up, it would just slow things down by creating an
added layer (the game engine) in between things.

You would also run into a lot of security issues.

You could use GHOST (The window manager) blender uses to create a gnome type desktop env... That would be a LOT of work though, and
in the long run probably not worth it unless you are really really into programming window managers....

SirDude wrote:

You really don't want to do this. This won't speed things up, it would just slow things down by creating an added layer (the game engine) in between things. You would also run into a lot of security issues.

I am not deterred! I insist on seeing why I really don't want to do it for myself!

I'm not too concerned about speed. Speed becomes less and less of a factor every day.

What kind of security issues to you expect I'll see?

I'm not too interested in working with GHOST. I specifically want to do this to explore BGE and Python.

Thanks for the feedback. Other thoughts welcome! Anyone know of example code that takes output from the system (say a directory listing) and puts it in BGE?

Thanks again,