Anybody done a "Deg" with TOS interiors?

[Ptrope]

@Lensman Im currently working on a "TNG style" TOS bridge in Second Life, I'll post some pics when its nearer done if you want.

@Ptrope Do you mind if I base a few ideas of my own on your season 4 engineering?

Nope; don't mind a'tall!

BTW, here's the only decent image I rendered up of my experimentation with the 'glass bridge' based on the original 'Cage' design:

I was starting to try to lay out a touch-control board, based on the arc of the buttons and blinkies - it was very rudimentary at that point. You can see here how I used a very similar scheme to Vektor's as far as retaining and polishing the black-on-gray consoles, although I didn't make any structural changes to the set piece (the idea that was going through my head when doing this was to create this as a variant of the Poser model, with a somewhat-polished version of the 'Cage' bridge that included all the physical buttoins, but also had the black consoles UV-mapped so one could make the physical buttons invisible, and apply glowing texture maps to the consoles directly ).

The McCoy pic was obviously just a placeholder - at that point, I didn't even have the finalized correct textures for all those displays . The upper displays were mapped to be able to use 8 different screens, all frameless in one big black pane, basically as was done in "The Cage."

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Of course Herman Zimmerman and others already did a take on an updated TOS bridge for Paramount - that's essentially what the Enterprise bridge in ST:TFF is, and it's my favorite of the TOS-based movie bridge sets.

 

[Wingsley]

There seem to be two schools of thought here on "modernizing" the TOS bridge set, or any TOS sets:

1: The "New Voyages"/"Starship Exeter"/"Farragut" approach - faithfully re-create the TOS bridge set, with its tactile switches and glowing buttons, and if any changes are made they should be very subtle.

2: A TNG or TMP5 approach - take the basic shape and texture of the TOS bridge, and eliminate many of the specifics, including all the tactile buttons and switches.

Why are these the only two choices? Why not consider a third option between the two?

3: Wingsley's approach - almost-faithfully recreate the TOS bridge, with very similar control panel texture and layout, but most of the tactile buttons and switches has been replaced with TNG / iPad-style touchscreens of a very-similar-to-TOS layout. The remaining switches and buttons would be roughly analogous to today's keyboard/mouse interface, helping give the operator basic menu navigation functions. The touchscreens could change at will, providing multiple control panel layouts for different functions. This would go a long ways to logically explaining why the TOS bridge offers less visible readouts, gauges and controls than that of today's space shuttle cockpit: it doesn't, because the many layers of controls and automated interfaces would be concealed until each is needed.

 

[Ptrope]

#3 is perfectly valid, although I think once you have some touch functions, at least on something like bridge consoles, then anything you can do with a physical button can be done just as easily with a virtual one (I wouldn't recommend it for smartphones, for instance, where the user experience has shown me that there are some things for which a physical button is a better choice, but a phone has an entirely different purpose and task list). Bridge consoles are also large enough to more easily contain the equipment necessary to create useful haptic feedback, regardless of screen configuration, so a virtual keyboard could still provide the sort of tactile experience needed to improve speed and accuracy that are lost on a touchscreen keyboard where one can't tell by feel what one's actions are doing.

My idea above was just a single experiment at seeing what a smooth bridge interface could look like on the OS architecture, but I completely agree and intended that the consoles could and would be flexible and configurable based on both tasks and user preferences, so an engineer, for example, could have a basic engineering monitor panel that could be swapped with a touch to become a warp control board or an environmental mix board, or communications could go from a subspace comm panel to an internal comm panel to a video conferencing substation. All of that was, for me, going to be part of "warpOS" , with a commonality to all of the Starfleet controls, regardless of the configurations, just as they attempted with LCARS (but something wholly different from LCARS and more consistent with the era of TOS), and "warpOS" would also function on the updated communicators and personal comm screens.

And dammit, the main viewscreen should have the capability to window different displays and to include tactical overlays on whatever the view might be at the time!

 

[publiusr]

I think having different size monitor screens would also to be a plus. Would that I had enough money and time, I'd have a TOS feel bridge of some size with different visual displays. Spock would have a large hooded CRT, plasma screens, LEDs LCDs, rear projection, lightboxes with gels even--all to suggest different levels of warmth. I would raid old Nuclear installations for their gauges, old aircraft cockpits, submarine control rooms, Looking Glass airplanes, old nuclear installations, etc. Mix all of that up.

 

[JJohnson]

I started to model an "updated" version of the TOS bridge a couple of years ago. Got the outer shell and outer ring of consoles mostly finished before it got set aside for other things. It's on my go-back-and-finish-someday list.

Vektor, you and Deg3D had great work on the Enterprise!! I still have those saved somewhere on my computer. I'd love to see y'all's take on the ship's interior. A more detailed / functional, maybe slightly modernized (but NOT the iBridge we got in the new movie) bridge and interior would be a great thing to see.

 

[DrMcCoy]

Love this thread!

Does anybody have a link to the "Deg" thread the OP referred to? I did a search but haven't been able to find it...

 

[Ptrope]

deg3D's "TOS.5 Enterprise" site