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Science Fiction Interfaces

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Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#21

Post by inputcoffee »

ferentchak wrote: post #18
inputcoffee wrote: post #17

The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her". The second greatest, though, is quite visual: the interface in Minority Report. I wish I could find the interviews with the UI engineers who talked about the influences that went into it.

These are great 'low tech' interfaces. Now if you want a great 'advanced' interface think anything in the Cyberpunk genre, hard to beat direct brain interactions. Who needs clumsy words and floating pictures :)

I have a few thoughts about this!

What is the nature of the thought you want to transmit? How do you make sure that you are not transmitting idle day dreams? How can you be sufficiently precise for a computer?

Remember Firefox (Clint Eastwood movie) where you have to think in Russian to launch the weapons (spoiler!). Well, suppose you casually "thought" the word "shoot" or "fire" or whatever the Russian equivalent is?

Suppose your friend -- Maverick -- is goofing around with you and you're both in an inverted dive and you just think. "Oh that guy. Sometimes, I just want to launch at him."

The best way to interface is with language! You should have to say the command out loud or to type it out. That way you are being precise and deliberate.

Of course, it would be even better if you have a specialized language that was free of the ambiguity of human speech...

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#22

Post by ferentchak »

inputcoffee wrote: post #21
ferentchak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are great 'low tech' interfaces. Now if you want a great 'advanced' interface think anything in the Cyberpunk genre, hard to beat direct brain interactions. Who needs clumsy words and floating pictures :)

I have a few thoughts about this! What is the nature of the thought you want to transmit? How do you make sure that you are not transmitting idle day dreams? How can you be sufficiently precise for a computer? Remember Firefox (Clint Eastwood movie) where you have to think in Russian to launch the weapons (spoiler!). Well, suppose you casually "thought" the word "shoot" or "fire" or whatever the Russian equivalent is…

I always imagine it being like when I want to raise my arm. Except instead of "Raise arm" it would be "Fire z missiles"

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#24

Post by logfromblammo »

inputcoffee wrote: post #17

The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her". The second greatest, though, is quite visual: the interface in Minority Report. I wish I could find the interviews with the UI engineers who talked about the influences that went into it.

I am almost certain that I would hate using the Minority Report interface, as it was depicted in the film. If Tom Cruise's character actually had to use that every day, his deltoids would be the size of bowling balls.

And I'm sure his manager loves to see exactly what he's doing from 100m away.

If you stuck that UI into a pair of VR-AR goggles, and replaced the huge gorilla-arm movements with barely-visible finger twitches, I might consider it.

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#25

Post by vanilla_nut »

abledon wrote: post #20

My favourite sci-fi interface so far is the 'sand' interface in the superman scene on Krypton. Russel Crowe uses it to blast light into a baby. https://youtu.be/nHmLhRx7Oyw?t=1m50s I think it would be great for the eyes cause you are forced to exercise your depth perception rather than stare at a flat screen. Would even be better than an e-ink monitor[ http://www.dasung.com/ ].

I wish those e-ink monitors didn't look so much like children's toys- I'd love to pick one up.

In 20 years, I think we'll look back at LCD/OLED monitors like how we currently look back at CRT/pre-CRT monitors, and wonder how on earth we stared at bright configurations of tiny lights for 10+ hours a day.

Transflexive LCDs are, in my opinion, the future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_d.... I can't wait until phones/watches/laptops start using these. My eyes will be very happy when that day comes.

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#26

Post by pogo »

__sb__ wrote: post #6

Oh hey I run this, originally I was just collecting the fui designs for reference when trying to make my own as a desktop ( https://github.com/seenaburns/dex-ui ), but since then I've kept it going. My personal favorite is probably still Oblivion http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX but if these are too over the top science fiction, The Bourne Identity's is pretty fun too http://coleran.com/gallery-category/fui/#the-bou…

This is an incredible and timely resource for me. I'm currently building a spaceship cockpit for my young sons. I'm a former EE, so I've got the blinky LEDs, switches, LCDs, keypads, and other physical UI components covered, but I'd love to add a sophisticated GUI component. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a coder. Do you know if any sci-fi GUIs are available as Android apps for tablets? I have 3 Kindle Fire tablets that I would love to turn into dedicated GUI touchscreens for the cockpit.

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#27

Post by xg15 »

inputcoffee wrote: post #21
ferentchak wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are great 'low tech' interfaces. Now if you want a great 'advanced' interface think anything in the Cyberpunk genre, hard to beat direct brain interactions. Who needs clumsy words and floating pictures :)

I have a few thoughts about this! What is the nature of the thought you want to transmit? How do you make sure that you are not transmitting idle day dreams? How can you be sufficiently precise for a computer? Remember Firefox (Clint Eastwood movie) where you have to think in Russian to launch the weapons (spoiler!). Well, suppose you casually "thought" the word "shoot" or "fire" or whatever the Russian equivalent is…

You can (and should) ask those questions about any kind of UI.

How to make sure you don't hit the wrong button?

What happens if the image recognition misinterprets your gesture?

What happens if the voice recognition can't understand context and misinterprets things as commands? (Hey, turns out the last one is a real problem people struggle with at the moment)

That's why the field of UI design exists at all - and I don't think neural interfaces would be any exception to that: They will require their own kind of UI design.

Of course today, we don't know much about the possible design primitives, but I could imagine it becoming interesting...

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#28

Post by mwfunk »

logfromblammo wrote: post #24
inputcoffee wrote: post #17

The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her". The second greatest, though, is quite visual: the interface in Minority Report. I wish I could find the interviews with the UI engineers who talked about the influences that went into it.

I am almost certain that I would hate using the Minority Report interface, as it was depicted in the film. If Tom Cruise's character actually had to use that every day, his deltoids would be the size of bowling balls. And I'm sure his manager loves to see exactly what he's doing from 100m away. If you stuck that UI into a pair of VR-AR goggles, and replaced the huge gorilla-arm movements with barely-visible finger tw…

I've always felt the same way. Looks really cool, and probably a lot more appropriate for a movie than what people would really use, but really awkward and impractical for the tasks it's supposed to help accomplish.

It's sort of like having to swing a Wiimote to swing a sword in a game. Initial novelty value is great, but after a while, if you could do the same thing by simply pushing a button, why wouldn't you just push a button? No matter how good the motion tracking is, if it's not the most efficient way to accomplish the task, there's no point to it.

Aside from how cool it looks and the cinematic qualities that made it appropriate for the movie, everything he used that UI for could have been done much more efficiently with a mouse and keyboard-based UI.

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#29

Post by fpgaminer »

I have an almost fetish for retro and retro sci-fi interfaces.

I stumbled into this really gorgeous, simplistic terminal like design. I was so inspired by it I decided to re-create the style in HTML+CSS. Once I did that I had another spark, and decided to make it a working faux terminal. And then I had the idea that maybe I could turn it into a small little game. You discover this machine, like you dialed into it randomly one day, and have to navigate yourself around, discover the story through reading logs, and hack into other machines to progress through the levels.

It looked like this: http://imgur.com/a/pBOtP

I'm an engineer through and through; it was odd to be so inspired by a design that I went off to make a game :P

More recently I've been obsessed with the Alien: Isolation interface, which is showcased on the OP (https://68.media.tumblr.com/ea49aeb0e1a6961a7dc1b3ed02ebca85...). It's given me yet another hankering to ... do something. Not sure what yet, but it's just such an inspiring design.

Re: Science Fiction Interfaces

#30

Post by Arizhel »

inputcoffee wrote: post #17

The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her". The second greatest, though, is quite visual: the interface in Minority Report. I wish I could find the interviews with the UI engineers who talked about the influences that went into it.

>The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her".

No, that was the absolute worst UI in the history of films. Spoken words simply cannot carry remotely as much information as visually-seen images. Haven't you ever heard the saying "a picture is worth 1000 words"?

Let me give a modern-day example: at a typical Panera Bread restaurant right now, you can order a sandwich either by talking to some teenager at the counter, or by using the touchscreen kiosk. Panera lets you customize sandwiches heavily, by changing the bread, adding cheeses, changing/adding toppings, etc. So I walk into a Panera and would like to order a tuna sandwich but I want to see all the different options and make it completely customized. They have probably 20 different kinds of bread alone, not to mention all the other options. So which do you think is more efficient, having some teenager rattle off 20 kinds of bread, or looking at them on a screen? And how do I know what these breads are anyway? How long is it going to take for some teenager to tell me what all those things are, and maybe show me samples, compared to just looking at some photos on the screen? How about just verifying the order? With the teenager, how long will it take him to read off the entire order to me, and what is the possibility that the information will be received incorrectly because I can't hear him that well, he speaks with an accent or lisp, there's too much noise, or he just misspeaks or skips something? With a screen, I can see the order printed out exactly.

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