Just stumbled across a phantastic prototype video (the BumpTop 3D Desktop Prototype) by the Digital Graphics Project at the University of Toronto that’s illustrating some cool new interaction techniques for desktop object manipulation. It’s building on the idea of Piles (that’s an older concept Apple still holds the patent on) and using gestures to manipulate files (or their representations as icons, resp.) on a high-fidelity desktop environment. Object behavior like momentum, acceleration etc. is simulated through a physics engine much like the engines built into newer Ego Shooter games.