Interview with the guy who made the perspex "buildings"(?) props that represented the central computer database, with a photo of one of them if you scroll down a bit:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180301013110/http%3A//hackersc...
Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
21–30 of 147 posts
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#22Not 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.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware.
As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had.
We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#23Not 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.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware. As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
I don't remember her ever saying she actually has experience with the browser, just that she knows it. She could have just used UNIX in general and only read a lot about the file browser, or perhaps briefly tried then incredibly slow version.
It's not even too much of a stretch to imagine she has never seen the file browser, but is able to figure it out on like one can with modern GUI apps.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#24Bit 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…
I'm more saddened by the state of hardware. It's amazing and very practical and basically perfect for everyday use... But it was a lot cooler back then.
WebGL file management doesn't seem to hard to implement, I'm guessing it would be a weekend project to make a demo, now that one doesn't actually need math to draw 3D stuff.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#25Not 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.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware. As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
She didn't need to know IRIX if she knew some other flavor of Unix, she was probably savvy enough to use man and access documentation if needed.
The point is though most mock the scene as though the software they show was entirely fictional and made up, when it was in fact real and was in fact still UNIX.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#26Not 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.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware. As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
She was the granddaughter of a billionaire so it's not unreasonable to imagine she may indeed have had access to high end hardware. "No expense spared".
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#27Hmm. 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.
3D interfaces so far usually mean you navigate a 3D model of some digital space which appears to you behind a 2D screen accessible with a keyboard and a mouse which are 3D physical objects in your 3D real world (keyboard,video,mouse).
3D interfaces are quit different without the 2D screen barrier and either your are inside the experience (VR) or the experience is outside around you (MR/AR).
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#28I think City of Text thing is onto something, and reminds me immediately of memory palace[1] method.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#29Not 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.
Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box, and while it was real software, it was dog-slow on low-end SGI without a graphics card, so she had to be using some pretty expensive hardware. As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had. We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
> Because its unlikely that the girl would have had access to an IRIX box
She's related to Hammond, who owns an island. I'm sure he could get her an old box and some manuals to play with, if not outright a state of the art system.
> As a filesystem browser it was not useful. Someone with Unix system experience would prefer a 2D browser, which IRIX also had.
But isn't that exactly the sort of thing a clever kid with access to fancy stuff would mess around with?
> We only used the 3D browser for our demo setup for visitors.
Which would perfectly explain why it popped up on the production systems. To make it look fancier for Hammond/any investors/the people visiting in the movie.
Re: Sci-Fi Interfaces: Hackers
#30I recently stumbled upon this
https://usegpu.live/demo/geometry/binary
and it reminded me of the city of text.