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Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

jurassicsystems.com

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Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#31

Post by freshyill »

kalleboo wrote: post #21
freshyill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another day on Hacker News, another interesting project where the author hasn't heard of Modernizr.

Ironically, it is using Modernizr. Seems like whoever created it had trouble with HTML5 audio though...

Ugh. In that case, they're missing the point of Modernizr. If there's no polyfill or fallback available, the solution isn't to say "Don't use Safari". At the very least, they could display as useful message that says something like "Your browser doesn't appear to support feature X, try browser Y instead."

When I see "Don't use Safari", I interpret that as "I'm too lazy to make this work in Safari", rather than "this doesn't work in Safari".

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#33

Post by rrhyne »

bhouston wrote: post #14

SGI IRIX operating system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX I used that at my first programming internship at university. Even then (1999) it was a dated OS, but it was still fun it. I wonder if they used IRIX in the movie because the VFX guys making the movie, ILM, were doing all the VFX work using Softimage on SGI machines running IRIX at the time.

I recognized it as well from working in SoftImage, PowerAnimator (became maya) and Houdini on these systems.

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#34

Post by Aqueous »

rcruzeiro wrote: post #29
Aqueous wrote: post #17

The Jurassic Park Computer System...created and maintained by Newman. Credit where credit is due: it takes a lot of skills to keep a bunch of velociraptors pent up using a Macintosh LC II. What always amused me is that in order to trigger the locks, the "computer whiz" girl had to navigate some sort of 3d control environment, probably the most ineffective way possible to control something that should be random access…

She navigated the file system using fsn (which by the way existed. it just never catch on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn )

I thought it was so cheesy that it had to be fictional, because of all the misrepresentations of computer interfaces in other movies like "Hackers." This is apparently a common assumption.

It's admirable that SGI was experimenting with interfaces. However in this situation having to navigate such an interface created a very real safety hazard. I suppose she could have used the regular file browser instead - or perhaps the substantially less exciting XTerm.

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#35

Post by astrojams »

This brings me so much joy. This movie - the SGI and this scene in particular made me want to switch from being a business major to a computer science major in college. I did and it was the right decision.

I bought an SGI Indy and spent a lot of time in the shell just so it would look and feel like the scene from this movie. I don't know why it affected me so much but it did.

So much love for the author who create this simulator.

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#36

Post by AtmaScout »

brador wrote: post #24
malux85 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

me too, I want it back now! ... I was just remembering what a PITA it was programming when I was younger - no internet at home meant I had to read the code of similar programs to try and figure out how to do things. Every day I'd come home with a box of floppy disks full of open source programs to read, and satellite jpgs downloaded from the noaa website. later on I got internet access and that's when I hooked it up…

Shoulda turned off the fences...

Not the raptor fences of course.

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#37

Post by scelerat »

S_A_P wrote: post #26
alex_anglin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the 'Ah Ah Ah You didn't say the magic word' sequence shows up on a Mac desktop.

That movie was ahead of its time and predicted a unix based Mac OS. Prophetic indeed Newman!

Apple already had a unix-based Mac OS for five years by the time Jurassic Park came out, A/UX. My first computer job was at a nascent ISP around this time and most of the servers (mail, www, accounting) were Quadras running A/UX. One IIfx with several massive (for the time) hard drives for Usenet. It was basically the System 7 (Mac) UI bolted on top of System V unix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=A/UX

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#38

Post by kisielk »

rcruzeiro wrote: post #29
Aqueous wrote: post #17

The Jurassic Park Computer System...created and maintained by Newman. Credit where credit is due: it takes a lot of skills to keep a bunch of velociraptors pent up using a Macintosh LC II. What always amused me is that in order to trigger the locks, the "computer whiz" girl had to navigate some sort of 3d control environment, probably the most ineffective way possible to control something that should be random access…

She navigated the file system using fsn (which by the way existed. it just never catch on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn )

There's an open source implementation called fsv:

http://fsv.sourceforge.net/

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#39

Post by itsnotvalid »

Aqueous wrote: post #34
rcruzeiro wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She navigated the file system using fsn (which by the way existed. it just never catch on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn )

I thought it was so cheesy that it had to be fictional, because of all the misrepresentations of computer interfaces in other movies like "Hackers." This is apparently a common assumption. It's admirable that SGI was experimenting with interfaces. However in this situation having to navigate such an interface created a very real safety hazard. I suppose she could have used the regular file browser instead - or perhap…

Worst thing is when a movie did most things with real UI being thought as mocking things up. So latter movies increasingly use fake UIs instead.

Re: Jurassic Park computer system in the browser

#40

Post by bch »

malux85 wrote: post #11

Wow! This is cool. The computers in Jurassic Park is what got me into programming when I was young. I saw their 3D weather overlay when the storm was approaching and thought "THAT IS IT!". I was 8 years old at the time. I was determined to learn and create that system - I started learning C, so that I could open and close files. I learnt OpenGL so that I could create the 3D scene. I learnt socket programming so that…

No, _your story_ is cool. Its amazing how dogged a kid with a vision can be. This sort of attitude and environment needs to be passed on to future programmers, and preserved in the current ones. Kudos.
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