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Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

scifiinterfaces.com

11–20 of 147 posts

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#11
post #5

I wrote about hackers too, http://www.dusted.dk/pages/phlog/2023-12-02.txt the gist of that rant is that what you see in hackers is not what's not their screens, but what's in their minds, through a poetic lens.

That's a pretty nice interpretation!

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#12
Not exactly related, but I'm shocked by the amount of people, older people even working in IT who mock the girl in Jurassic Park saying "it's a Unix system, I know this", when in fact what they showed was a Unix system and the 3D interface they showed was real software SGI shipped with IRIX.

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#14

Hmm. Now I'm curious if you could actually get a 3d interface with all that information dynamically rendered running with reasonable performance on period accurate personal hardware - it's definitely in the scope of the 95 demo scene stuff.

You need a working Z-buffer and then it could be pretty fast. S3 Trio came out in 1995 too and was decent enough.

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#15

Not exactly related, but I'm shocked by the amount of people, older people even working in IT who mock the girl in Jurassic Park saying "it's a Unix system, I know this", when in fact what they showed was a Unix system and the 3D interface they showed was real software SGI shipped with IRIX.

most people in IT don't do any research beyond six inches in front of their face and task at hand.

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#16
Bit embarrased to say I tried to implement the 3d file browser from this movie and failed when I was first learning C. I did get the 3d boxes to show up and display files/folders and it was cool (to me) to move them around in 3d but doing even slightly complex stuff required "polynomial math" which was beyond my skill level.

It still saddens me irrationally to see the state of UX today. It isn't cool and i have many visions of doing all this stuff with webgl and more (not 3d boxes but futuristic yet practical UI). Modern UX feels like art majors designed it by a committee and MBAs+lawyers were the target audience. I no longer even see anyone in tech thinking out if the box with radicallu new windowing systems and alternatives to hypertext and browsers.

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#18

Not exactly related, but I'm shocked by the amount of people, older people even working in IT who mock the girl in Jurassic Park saying "it's a Unix system, I know this", when in fact what they showed was a Unix system and the 3D interface they showed was real software SGI shipped with IRIX.

They wanted to say "this is an SGI system!" but had to go with "this is a Unix system" ..

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#19

This is a nice website, with an interesting purpose. Though i suppose reviewing sci-Fi movies notions of interfaces will soon clash with the dryness of reality. The 90's were wild in that sense, you could imagine that the internet superhighway would be a superhighway you could literally drive on with your Avatar, and countless movies and tv-series presented things thus. The noughties were way more grounded in reality…

> The 90's were wild in that sense, you could imagine that the internet superhighway would be a superhighway you could literally drive on with your Avatar, and countless movies and tv-series presented things thus.

> The noughties were way more grounded in reality, even the Matrix had Trinity hacking into a server using a OpenSSH exploit on a black and white terminal.

That's a wild contrast to try to draw, since the actual direct experience of the network in the Matrix (and which is the focus of the film) was an immersive virtual reality of exactly the type you are trying to contrast the portrayal in the Matrix with, and the “hacking in to a server with an OpenSSH exploit” occurred as a simulation within that virtual reality.

Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers

#20

Hmm. Now I'm curious if you could actually get a 3d interface with all that information dynamically rendered running with reasonable performance on period accurate personal hardware - it's definitely in the scope of the 95 demo scene stuff.

While I loved the 3D imagination of the 90s, 3D navigation is not the shortest way to the needed information. Imagine your file structure would be organized like a video game? It's the same reason why transparent touch screens and VR doesn't really work.
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