How to fix the holographic displays in Picard

[Dukhat]

it’s tactile and people aren’t waving their hands about like idiots. Also having to hold your arms up in the air all day long pressing on air buttons has to wear out the arms over time. It’s not practical.

Except the characters in the show using them didn’t have any problems and don’t feel that they look like idiots, so it sounds like you have an issue with something that people in the future find normal. Which is the exact opposite of your usual rants that the people in PIC don’t look or act ‘futuristic’ enough for you. So what’s your problem?

 

[JamesRye]

I don't particularly like the holograms (I'd prefer that they stick with established convention), but there was that cool scene where we saw the holographic Locutus and then old man Picard through it, which I thought was quite a powerful moment. As for flying ships with holographic controls, I guess it makes more sense than that awful sequence in Insurrection, where they flew the ship with a joystick!

On the one hand, you'd get tired, just try sitting at a table and then rest your elbows on it. Now lift your elbows off the table, for me it gets uncomfy after about 2 minutes. That said, if there were haptic feedback, so that you could 'rest' on the hologram, or grip it - then maybe that gets around the issue?

 

[The Old Mixer]

I guess it makes more sense than that awful sequence in Insurrection, where they flew the ship with a joystick!

There should be a board rule against reminding me of that...

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

I agree the position of the screens is odd but it's a good idea to keep them transparent in some way so the crew remember what is genuinely solid when running around.

It would have been cool though if Picard could switch them to Lcar theme when he uses them

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

I guess it makes more sense than that awful sequence in Insurrection, where they flew the ship with a joystick!

Ah yes the first symptoms of the we need to make Trek look cool insecurities.

Or was the phaser bazooka first

 

[AlanC9]

Last I checked, we weren't supposed to support our arms with the desk while using keyboards (wrist rests aside, but most folks don't have them). And I certainly don't hold my arms up with my fingers; you can't type that way.

There might be an issue with how high the displays are, though. But a keyboard isn't something you're supposed to look at, which isn't true for a lot of what goes on on the holodisplays.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Last I checked, we weren't supposed to support our arms with the desk while using keyboards (wrist rests aside, but most folks don't have them). And I certainly don't hold my arms up with my fingers; you can't type that way.

There might be an issue with how high the displays are, though. But a keyboard isn't something you're supposed to look at, which isn't true for a lot of what goes on on the holodisplays.

The desk still supplies a area to take pressure off your arms depending on how you type. I type at a low horizontal angle to the desk so yeah by wrists and part of my forearm rest in the desk. Again to hold your hands up while piloting a shop for at least 8 hours a day would be ridiculous. The first season of tng tried to show a better position if the seating and the helm station. Waving your hands so wildly in the air for 8 hours a day would be exhausting. Nope panels are where it’s at.

 

[fireproof78]

The desk still supplies a area to take pressure off your arms depending on how you type. I type at a low horizontal angle to the desk so yeah by wrists and part of my forearm rest in the desk. Again to hold your hands up while piloting a shop for at least 8 hours a day would be ridiculous. The first season of tng tried to show a better position if the seating and the helm station. Waving your hands so wildly in the air for 8 hours a day would be exhausting. Nope panels are where it’s at.

I would write Starfleet Corps of Engineers immediately!

Never mind all the assumptions in this post. That shifts are always 8 hours, that all vessels are controlled the same way, or that Rios might just be a particular case with his ship.

The danger in this post is the assumption that what we see in Picard can be applied across all of Starfleet. Which it cannot.

Finally, having done 8 hour shifts waving my arms around with power tools, and the like, I can say while it is exhausting at times it is something completely adaptable. Humans (and others) are notoriously adaptable creatures. Simply study the history of different keyboards and their operation to see that. And I thought I would never learn to type.

 

[Llywela]

I watched the show. At no point was it ever suggested that Rios spends 8 hours at a stretch constantly tapping away at holo controls above his head. He mostly seemed to lay in a course and then sit back, making only minor adjustments here and there. Even emergency scenarios when more continuous hands-on control was needed tended to be over fairly swiftly. Most of the controls needed for actual maneouvring were at a low level and perfectly ergonomic. He only really reaches up during the initial take-off sequence - and I distinctly remember space pilots in things like Star Wars and Firefly similarly reaching up to flip switches above their heads during take-off sequences. La Sirena's controls weren't so very different, other than being holographic.

 

[Dukhat]

Nope panels are where it’s at.

I’m sure the PIC producers are taking your silly complaints into account and are frantically rewriting their season 2 scripts to accommodate flat panel displays just for you

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

There also seems to be the assumption that those transparent displays don't hold weight but if they are holotech then they can

 

[Captain pl1ngpl0ng]

im a welder and welding on walls or ceilings ar no fun at all, total strain on your whole arm
in a matter of like half a minute, about the time it takes for a rod to burn down.
so, i dont think pilots of starships are waving their hands wildly in the air for 8 hours,
i think it's more of plotting in some digits, 20 sec tops at a time.

(i like the idea of having Picard switch to lcar if he wanted.)

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

so, i dont think pilots of starships are waving their hands wildly in the air for 8 hours,
i think it's more of plotting in some digits, 20 sec tops at a time.

I would imagine it's only when the action starts that you would need arm waving because with Trek tech you can just tell the computer to set course for a charted planet

 

[Captain pl1ngpl0ng]

^ yeah i agree, in war/battle, then i assume its a lot of frantic movements going on.

 

[TRON JA307020]

I watched the show. At no point was it ever suggested that Rios spends 8 hours at a stretch constantly tapping away at holo controls above his head. He mostly seemed to lay in a course and then sit back, making only minor adjustments here and there. Even emergency scenarios when more continuous hands-on control was needed tended to be over fairly swiftly. Most of the controls needed for actual maneouvring were at a low level and perfectly ergonomic. He only really reaches up during the initial take-off sequence - and I distinctly remember space pilots in things like Star Wars and Firefly similarly reaching up to flip switches above their heads during take-off sequences. La Sirena's controls weren't so very different, other than being holographic.

picard looked like a total idiot using those holo controls in battle. He seemed uncomfortable the entire time.

 

[Dukhat]

picard looked like a total idiot using those holo controls in battle. He seemed uncomfortable the entire time.

Er, probably because he hadn’t been aboard a ship in 13 years?

Keep trying, Pube. One of these days you’ll get there, but you’re not there yet.

 

[fireproof78]

picard looked like a total idiot using those holo controls in battle. He seemed uncomfortable the entire time.

Hmmm...in a show about Picard leaving Starfleet and being out of the game for a while he appears uncomfortable returning to a battle? Nope, I got nothing on why this might be the case...

 

[Llywela]

picard looked like a total idiot using those holo controls in battle. He seemed uncomfortable the entire time.

That was because he hadn't piloted a ship in a couple of decades and was unfamiliar with the interface - in much the same way that my grandmother, who can use a landline telephone just fine, can't cope with a smartphone, not because there is anything wrong with smartphones but because it isn't the technology she is familiar with and she is too elderly and set in her ways to adjust. Picard was supposed to look uncomfortable with the interface, to underline his ongoing personal story arc about being old and out of touch after a long period of retirement and hermitude - that was a deliberate feature of those scenes, not a bug. Rios, who owns and usually pilots the ship, is perfectly comfortable with the controls. So was Soji, during her brief mutiny.

 

[RAMA]

Luckily there's nothing wrong with them. Problem fixed.

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RAMA

EC Henry has a great video on what is wrong with the holographic displays in Picard and how to fix them.

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He makes a good point that we've seen back in TNG and Voyager that holograms can be solid. So why not use holograms that look like solid consoles?

I love his idea of essentially making the bridge a holodeck and being able to materialize chairs and solid consoles in any configuration you want or need. For example, he mentions that instead of Picard complaining about the unfamiliar holographic displays, he should have been able to materialize TNG style consoles that he would have been more familiar with. It makes sense and it would have been really nostalgic to see.

 

[Kpnuts]

Luckily there's nothing wrong with them. Problem fixed.

RAMA

That's your opinion. Not fact.