Hi Ross, the circular menus you mention at 1:05′38″ are called “pie menus” and the idea was first published in 1969.
The foremost expert in this I know of is Don Hopkins, who worked to implement and popularize them for decades. He has a good overview here: “Pie Menus: A 30 Year Retrospective”.
@UsefullPig writes above about the pie menus in The Sims: that was Don Hopkins.
@NightNord and @chiefwhosm mention Maya in page 3 of this thread as another application that uses them, and Don has the following to say about that:
QuoteBill Buxton at Alias and his marketing team spread a bunch of inaccurate FUD about their "marking menu patent", which I accidentally discovered and tried to correct and get him to stop doing decades ago, but he refused, and continued to spread FUD.
So Alias kept advertising their "patented marking menus" for DECADES, purposefully and successfully discouraging their competition 3D Studio Max, AND many other developers of free and proprietary apps as collateral damage, from adopting them.
When I asked Buxton about the "marking menu patent" before it was granted, he lied point blank to me that there was no "marking menu patent", so I couldn't prove to Kinetix that it was OK to use them, or contact the patent office and inform them about the mistakes in their claims about prior art, and the fact that the "overflow" technique they were claiming in the patent was obvious.
That quote is from this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103627
He wrote the whole story about pie menus and patents in “Pie Menu FUD and Misconceptions”.
I’m very interested in this subject and I’ve enjoyed your video tremendously, thanks!