I got to admit, EC Henry has a point.
The Holographic UI in "Star Trek: Picard" isn't unique or special.
It's been done to death in Hollywood since Minority Report.
What type of UI would you prefer to be portrayed in "Star Trek: Picard"
EC Henry - The Awful Holograms in Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter Kamen Rider Blade
- Start date
I got to admit, EC Henry has a point.
The Holographic UI in "Star Trek: Picard" isn't unique or special.
It's been done to death in Hollywood since Minority Report.
What type of UI would you prefer to be portrayed in "Star Trek: Picard"
EC Henry always has great videos. I figure the holo-bridge concept is something every fan must have had since Voyager.
The windows are fine, the cargo ship is basically a huge shuttle and has to dock and land a lot, so having a window as a last ditch safety measure makes sense for a vessel like that. The floating transparent holograms are junk though and only make sense if you have to see stuff behind them as a sort of on the fly free floating annotation. I like to imagine the horizontal flight control Rios uses actually supports the hand and that the other holo controls act physically too, but there is no indication of that. We should have got free form customizable holographically generated controls which look physical. Or, go two steps further and make the control replicated and holographic.
Have the free floating stuff as forcefields and light, while the main controls are replicated in place. That gets around power issues because the main controls won't disappear due to an unstable power grid, even though the floating windows might. You won't fall through a chair either.
They could have a fully 3D sensor map useful for combat, navigation, plotting courses, and planning all sorts of things even movement of cargo around the ship. In fact, equipping the cargo bays with tractor beams linked to the 3D map and showing cargo could allow the user to move cargo by moving the miniature cargo.
They should have doubled down on the replicate anything anywhere aspect of the Sirena and made it so the crew rarely went to grab anything from a replicator instead of having it appear right near them.
It also needs a stronger LCARS, or at least a concept underpinning everything so every element has some sort of implied meaning rather than just being data and lines.
The windows are fine, the cargo ship is basically a huge shuttle and has to dock and land a lot, so having a window as a last ditch safety measure makes sense for a vessel like that. The floating transparent holograms are junk though and only make sense if you have to see stuff behind them as a sort of on the fly free floating annotation. I like to imagine the horizontal flight control Rios uses actually supports the hand and that the other holo controls act physically too, but there is no indication of that. We should have got free form customizable holographically generated controls which look physical. Or, go two steps further and make the control replicated and holographic.
Have the free floating stuff as forcefields and light, while the main controls are replicated in place. That gets around power issues because the main controls won't disappear due to an unstable power grid, even though the floating windows might. You won't fall through a chair either.
They could have a fully 3D sensor map useful for combat, navigation, plotting courses, and planning all sorts of things even movement of cargo around the ship. In fact, equipping the cargo bays with tractor beams linked to the 3D map and showing cargo could allow the user to move cargo by moving the miniature cargo.
They should have doubled down on the replicate anything anywhere aspect of the Sirena and made it so the crew rarely went to grab anything from a replicator instead of having it appear right near them.
It also needs a stronger LCARS, or at least a concept underpinning everything so every element has some sort of implied meaning rather than just being data and lines.
Something consistently more legible, when we're depending on them to convey backstory/plot points/both. I wanted to see the data on Bruce Maddox.
Also: I don't expect La Sirena's OS to be on the same level as LCARS. It's a civilian ship, however much Rios has modified it.
Also: I don't expect La Sirena's OS to be on the same level as LCARS. It's a civilian ship, however much Rios has modified it.
The Windows are fine for smaller vessels around the "Shuttle Size".
But larger StarShips don't need them.
But larger StarShips don't need them.
I think John Eaves has been doing too much "Star Trek: Discovery" style StarShips that he lost his touch with the TNG era design.
Sure!
They could have made the control method more like a fully 3D RTS or dumbed down Kerbal Space Program. Show everything in the system or interstellar level with compressed distances and physical holographic items which look photo realistic. Speak and draw directions in a casual way and have it interpret the input to create precise orders. Literally grab any object to see deeper information, open it like a box or peal it like an orange for internal information. Toss it back into position to reset it. Want to fight, then point at an object and order a general strike or particular attack.
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I do too. I've seen this video a couple of times and the one take away I have from it is that bland isn't a bad thing. I want the tech in Trek to be bland at times. The tech is the background minutia, and not always the centerpoint of the show.
One aspect that I appreciated was it felt very much like holographic tech taken in a different direction as presented in TNG. We saw an extensive emphasis on holograms, especially with VOY, and I can't imagine that going away after VOY's return.
Didn't click on the video, but the holograms (like the uniforms) looked like they handed out copies of Countdown and instructed them to do "something like that"
Floating holographic controls are one of the trends I hate most in modern sci-fi. I just don't get why it's so prevalent. It's so overused that it no longer looks cool and futuristic, it just looks lazy.
I find it's important to remember that having a tactile control surface is often more comforting and easy in ways. I've always preferred having a wireless mouse connected to my laptop, because I find having a real mouse is far more comfortable and has superior control options to the laptop's trackpad. It's easily portable and doesn't take up much extra space, so for me it's much preferable.
I do like that the laptop has a trackpad for such options, but I've always found it more awkward to use.
I do like that the laptop has a trackpad for such options, but I've always found it more awkward to use.
Floating text can work, it’s basically what a HUD is, but it has to be very bright to compete with daylight and fighters use Hand on Throttle and Stick (HOTAS) because not having to lift your hands from the flight controls decrease response time and tactile controls can be used without looking.
That works when you're in the cockpit of a fighter that has to constantly move around and dodge, but on the Bridge of a StarShip, I don't think it's that beneficial compared to Solid Holograms in most cases and Solid Interfaces.
Modern Helmets have the HUD projected onto the Visor that goes along with the head and adjusts data based on where the pilot is looking.
I can see the future where Fighters have a Coffin style cockpit and the entire cockpit is a hologram where they're floating in their chair and can look around in 360° like in Macross or Gundam or many other Anime Mecha Franchises.
Don't forget that your arms would get tired pretty fast. There's a reason why KeyBoard, Mouse, or even TrackBall are far more ergonomic.
Mice & Trackball are my preference with TouchPads as a nice backup solution that I disable more often than not.
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They have the hologram track the head at least once in PIC bits it’s pretty messy because it’s also the control. So the person was looking around and the controls were moving implying a button press could be thrown off with a little head movement. Better to have the ghost holograms just as information overlays.
you may want to consolidate your posts.
EC Henry makes great videos, but he's wrong here. There's no point in creating a holographic workstation, it's more efficient to just generate the interactive interface. While it is true that the 24th century will likely be wildly more advanced than we project in Trek, it'll probably lose it's tether to modern Trek fans if it becomes too esoteric, so the next logical step from TNG's LCARS that audiences can handle would be these volumetric or holographic ones. So what if it's easy to generate with CGI, that's a good thing for the show and something they simply couldn't do episode to episode even 15 years ago.
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