Kids with their buttons, this is how we used to send ICQs back in the day:
(fun fact: You can tile this gif) e: ah I'll just do it in the comment
Ahhhh that takes me back. I haven't seen that gif for like 20 years.
There were a lot of these tiling loopable gifs at one point, I wish I had saved them.
I want more brass levers with porcelain handles. I want my car to look like the Nautilus on the inside.
A gentleperson of extraordinary taste I see.
I'll take three!
As usual, thinking way short.
why not buttons that change color/labeling/shape.
why not dials that shrink and grow.
why not levers that pop up when needed.
make scifi scifi again.
The far-future panels from Discovery can totally do that. It's too bad they just don't do it.
He's right, but the reason is money.
It's just cheaper to have a one screen that can be configured with a code change to do everything rather than physical buttons that need a full hardware change to do something else.
Though, why the hell everything has to get smaller, thinner, lighter. Like whats wrong with size and weight? Heavier and bigger things have more tactile feel to it. I can feel I'm actually using something rather than just pretending to be a mime.
Phone are getting bigger though, wish they were smaller again.
Somewhere along the line we lost the virtue of do one thing well. Do it right, move on, do something else right. If you need complexity plug some right things together.
Now is the time of jack of all trades, master of none, stuff it into a phone whether appropriate or not. Get the job done as cheap as possible with the same generic crap. Do you want your airplane pilot using only a touchscreen ? Why should it be different for a spaceship, a car, an audio engineer ?
A steering wheel, once learned, is a wonderfully flexible interface that meshes with human intuition, throw rock left, rock go left, we have brain circuits devoted to this stuff, it works. Tactile interfaces can and should speak to our evolutionary core. Let's take a step back, economic imperative be damned.
Sorry captain! I'm cranking my knobs as hard as I can, but until my dipstick gets wet enough there's just no pushing it in her any deeper.
Scotty: don't tell me she cunt do it laddy! Giv'er all ya cun muster! Dig deep and give the ole' cunt 'ell!
Wait I want a wall-mounted hardware charcuterie board.
Let's not leave out toggles and joysticks.
Completely superfluous according to the Vulcan.... checks notes security Chief.
Touch style interfaces in sci-fi are a production cheat. Print/paint a sheet and stick it on a back-lit panel: instant set piece.
Problem is, they look cool, so once the technology arrived to make them real, everyone went overboard.
Now we get the shittiest physical UI's ever imagined.
Problem is, they look cool, so once the technology arrived to make them real, everyone went overboard.
Isn't the problem they're also cheaper in real life? Like in the car industry the only benefit is that it's saving time and money for the manufacturer.
Being able to rearrange a control panel to individual people's preferences means each station can be tailored for different needs, even different species and abilities. You give up the consistency, where someone can tell you exactly where the right button is, but it's far more accommodating during day-to-day operations about the ship.
That said, I hate it. Give me dials and buttons any day of the week. I could do without the 10,000 indicator lights though. Engineering in old starship just looks like a Gik'tal concert.
In the context of star trek thats no excuse. They could easily integrate a little replicator into the panels for customizable tactile interfaces. Like you get on duty, select your specific customized interface profile, wait the ∼5 seconds for the old one to be reclaimed and the new one to materialize and you're good to go. They can keep the standard panel interface right next to it just in case.
5 seconds? You need your matter conversion matrix realigned if it's taking that long.
I've been trying to get starfleet to approve mini-replicators in control panels for years but I always get the same "it's just not worth the materials cost" but honestly when was the last time you saw an Admiral use a control panel themselves?
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