12 ms·

Star Trek LCARS Interface

76 points by mentalpiracy 3y ago

jljljl 3y ago
The thing that always fascinated me about LCARS and Star Trek interfaces was the labelling -- rather than a label that tells you what a button does, or whats being visualized on screen, you'll get a random-seeming number or an unlabeled chart. Most of Starfleet Engineer training must be memorizing what those number labels mean...
- GravitasFailure 3y ago
  I'll chalk that labeling scheme up to trying to look good for a shot but not needing to stand up to any real scrutiny, but I have often wondered how usable a LCARS-inspired interface would be and what would need to happen to make it usable.
  - olyjohn 3y ago
    I've seen demos like this for years, but never anything actually that useful made with the LCARS interface. It looks great, but I don't think it's actually useful for anything more than a dashboard. It goes make some great dashboards though.
    - GravitasFailure 3y ago
      Funny you should say...I was eyeballing trying to make a LCARS interface to monitor two printers running Klipper and an AirGradient monitor.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      The "canon" answer is that LCARS in addition to being extremely task-specific is alleged to be extremely user-specific and things are where a specific user expects them to be, laid out as that user expects to need them and different users would see very different layouts even for some of the same stations. (That implication is that they are extremely user-customized dashboards, so the design pattern resembling what today we call "dashboards" makes quite a bit of sense.) Of course, given the technology at the time TNG was made, showing a lot of different user-specific LCARS panels was nearly impossible, which is why it is "alleged" more than canon fact in the TV shows.
      - rkagerer 3y ago
        Guess in a way it makes sense with all those different alien species with diverse cultures and varied intuitive signaling hints.
    - squarefoot 3y ago
      I had the LCARS theme on my Nokia N770 like 15 years ago. It wasn't purely a gimmick as it could be used to launch software, read news, play music etc. Very beautiful; too bad Nokia for well known reasons decided a few years later to stop developing devices running Linux, but that's another story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXBPjLdJnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXBPjLdJnU
- qbasic_forever 3y ago
  Maybe everyone runs conky to show CPU load, how many people are playing counterstrike in the holodeck, etc.
piperswe 3y ago
Interesting, this seems to be inspired by the LCARS interfaces seen in ST: Picard, rather than TNG. I do quite like the slight tweaks LCARS got in Picard.
- joezydeco 3y ago
  The "About" page (click on the [i]) confirms this.
Stevvo 3y ago
Loved the ending credits scene in the last season of Picard. It's two minutes of just beautiful renderings of the screens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJ0xtJGg3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJ0xtJGg3w
- tenpies 3y ago
  On that note, for those who were put off by Picard, season 3 was actually quite good. Definitely worth a watch. And if you haven't seen any of it, I would almost say reading the episode summaries for the first two seasons is enough. Some of those first two seasons was just catastrophically bad, even by Star Trek standards.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - morkalork 3y ago
    Even in season 3 it was dangerously cheesey at times. Also the plot was structurally awkward. They wanted to do a long story arc like DS9 but crammed it into too few episodes so it felt rushed and not like DS9, but then it also didn't have standalone episodes like TNG so it didn't feel like that either. But, to be fair, it's a new show so should be judged on its own but I don't believe the combination of pieces was greater than the sum in end, only less.
    - WorldMaker 3y ago
      "Structurally awkward" is probably the best way to describe all three season arcs in Picard. The writers seemed to focus on "No tell, only show" plus "surprise twists" rather than character motivations so all three plots wound up feeling "upside down and backwards" in my opinion with key exposition infodumped in the end that I think would have been much better up front. They wouldn't have been "surprise twists" in that case, but that would have been for the better overall I think because you'd actually understand what all the various season villains were actually trying to accomplish. "No tell, only show" is a common problem in a lot of "Prestige TV" right now, leading to so many episodes feeling oddly paced where things need entire scenes across multiple episodes that probably should have been a two minute conversation. So that is not entirely a Picard flaw given how much current TV seems to suffer from it. (It certainly comes from a good intention, coming from the adage "show don't tell" taken to a logical, but awful extreme.) But it stands out a lot more in Picard especially, I think, because you watch old TNG episodes and they did so much exposition/setup in just a carefully worded "Captain's Log" and in that context it seems (at least to me) so how obvious how much could the Picard TV show have used a few more "ex-Admiral's Log" moments to just speed up a lot of filler.
gigel82 3y ago
I'm a trekkie and love the nostalgia of LCARS, but let's be honest: as an UX, it sucks (it's for show, not for usability).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Freire_Herval 3y ago
  Lcars is just a stylistic theme that effects color, fonts and geometry. It's not ux. It can be configured to suit any page flow or layout you want..
  - gigel82 3y ago
    Do you have examples of UIs built with LCARS colors, fonts and geometry?
    - Freire_Herval 3y ago
      Just look at it and use your logic. It's simply very basic geometry combined with a specific font. That's it. There's decorative stuff like the curved spine but the layout is very simple. The buttons are rectangular there's nothing super complex here that is very far from a basic flat design. I would say lcars is a precursor to flat design. Don't let your thinking be flat where you can only come to conclusions that are data driven. Use your intuition and project the creative consequences yourself. LCARS is owned by paramount so it can't really be used as a UI theme anywhere else without permission. But what if it could? Just imagine it, it's not that hard. Hacker news can be themed into lcars with largely zero change to the XY location of every element. Picture it with your minds eye. edit: I ended up finding an example: https://www.thelcars.com/menu/ https://www.thelcars.com/menu/. But everyone should be able to come to the same conclusion without data. It's so trivial that illegal fan made examples do exist.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
retrac 3y ago
Just to nerd out a bit, according to the ST: TNG Technical Manual written by Michael Okuda (co-designer of the original LCARS graphically) and Rich Sternbach, LCARS is also a tactile interface. Pressure sensitive, with force feedback, depth and resistance of the display can be varied slightly, creating ridges, variation in texture, which can complement the display. It's a fascinating idea.
- qbasic_forever 3y ago
  Aren't apple's force/3d touch screens basically that, minus actually changing the interface geometry (but still having pretty sophisticated haptic feedback)?
  - quelltext 3y ago
    You mean that feature they got rid off a while back and replaced with something much simpler? https://www.macrumors.com/guide/haptic-touch-vs-3d-touch-whats-the-difference/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/haptic-touch-vs-3d-touch-wha... (I'm just ranting.)
    - tadfisher 3y ago
      I believe that was the result of a patent lawsuit brought by a company called Immersion, who developed several haptic technologies during the first wave of VR tech in the early-mid 1990s. Why they couldn't work out a licensing deal is anyone's guess; even Nintendo pays those royalties.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    No, they did log a patent to do that but they never implemented tactile ridges etc. I guess the tech is not ready
- tolien 3y ago
  They made that explicit in Voyager. In Year of Hell, Tuvok switches his consoles to a tactile interface after being blinded by an exploding torpedo and continues as tactical officer using that.
ggeorgovassilis 3y ago
I made a super-star-trek port (playable online): https://github.com/ggeorgovassilis/superstartrek https://github.com/ggeorgovassilis/superstartrek
rkagerer 3y ago
I love the Okudagrams sequence during the closing credits of Season 3 of Picard. Less relatedly, I'm only on episode 3 but for an old Trekkie like myself this season is the gift I wished so hard for and never thought could ever possibly come true. Thank you Paramount!
wanda 3y ago
I remember installing a Windows XP LCARS theme, back when I was watching Star Trek every day as soon as I got back from college – and I remember strongly regretting the decision immediately. Needless to say, it looked kinda cool, but not quite right for obvious reasons, and the actual experience of using it was... not great. To borrow an expression from House MD, it wasn't a unicorn, it was a donkey with a plunger taped to its forehead. I settled on making myself an LCARS new tab web page instead. That was pretty cool, I've often given thought to remaking it... but I'd probably get sidetracked too heavily from my actual work and end up an insomniac with an LCARS Linux distro and a very full inbox. Aside: I really miss the Windows Classic look. I know you can sort of get it back in Windows 10 but I'm not on Windows these days, I just miss how Windows 98/2000/XP looked and behaved... well, maybe behaved is a bad word. Aside 2: It appears the author of this simulation has made a few of these LCARS simulations https://www.mewho.com/ https://www.mewho.com/
jeegsy 3y ago
This is really cool. Loved this season, well its the only one i've watched. Does anyone know a way to launch a webpage as a screensaver?

76 points by mentalpiracy 3y ago

The thing that always fascinated me about LCARS and Star Trek interfaces was the labelling -- rather than a label that tells you what a button does, or whats being visualized on screen, you'll get a random-seeming number or an unlabeled chart. Most of Starfleet Engineer training must be memorizing what those number labels mean...

GravitasFailure 3y ago
I'll chalk that labeling scheme up to trying to look good for a shot but not needing to stand up to any real scrutiny, but I have often wondered how usable a LCARS-inspired interface would be and what would need to happen to make it usable.
- olyjohn 3y ago
  I've seen demos like this for years, but never anything actually that useful made with the LCARS interface. It looks great, but I don't think it's actually useful for anything more than a dashboard. It goes make some great dashboards though.
  - GravitasFailure 3y ago
    Funny you should say...I was eyeballing trying to make a LCARS interface to monitor two printers running Klipper and an AirGradient monitor.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    The "canon" answer is that LCARS in addition to being extremely task-specific is alleged to be extremely user-specific and things are where a specific user expects them to be, laid out as that user expects to need them and different users would see very different layouts even for some of the same stations. (That implication is that they are extremely user-customized dashboards, so the design pattern resembling what today we call "dashboards" makes quite a bit of sense.) Of course, given the technology at the time TNG was made, showing a lot of different user-specific LCARS panels was nearly impossible, which is why it is "alleged" more than canon fact in the TV shows.
    - rkagerer 3y ago
      Guess in a way it makes sense with all those different alien species with diverse cultures and varied intuitive signaling hints.
  - squarefoot 3y ago
    I had the LCARS theme on my Nokia N770 like 15 years ago. It wasn't purely a gimmick as it could be used to launch software, read news, play music etc. Very beautiful; too bad Nokia for well known reasons decided a few years later to stop developing devices running Linux, but that's another story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXBPjLdJnU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXBPjLdJnU
qbasic_forever 3y ago
Maybe everyone runs conky to show CPU load, how many people are playing counterstrike in the holodeck, etc.

piperswe 3y ago

Interesting, this seems to be inspired by the LCARS interfaces seen in ST: Picard, rather than TNG. I do quite like the slight tweaks LCARS got in Picard.

joezydeco 3y ago
The "About" page (click on the [i]) confirms this.

Stevvo 3y ago

Loved the ending credits scene in the last season of Picard. It's two minutes of just beautiful renderings of the screens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJ0xtJGg3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWJ0xtJGg3w

tenpies 3y ago
On that note, for those who were put off by Picard, season 3 was actually quite good. Definitely worth a watch. And if you haven't seen any of it, I would almost say reading the episode summaries for the first two seasons is enough. Some of those first two seasons was just catastrophically bad, even by Star Trek standards.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- morkalork 3y ago
  Even in season 3 it was dangerously cheesey at times. Also the plot was structurally awkward. They wanted to do a long story arc like DS9 but crammed it into too few episodes so it felt rushed and not like DS9, but then it also didn't have standalone episodes like TNG so it didn't feel like that either. But, to be fair, it's a new show so should be judged on its own but I don't believe the combination of pieces was greater than the sum in end, only less.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    "Structurally awkward" is probably the best way to describe all three season arcs in Picard. The writers seemed to focus on "No tell, only show" plus "surprise twists" rather than character motivations so all three plots wound up feeling "upside down and backwards" in my opinion with key exposition infodumped in the end that I think would have been much better up front. They wouldn't have been "surprise twists" in that case, but that would have been for the better overall I think because you'd actually understand what all the various season villains were actually trying to accomplish. "No tell, only show" is a common problem in a lot of "Prestige TV" right now, leading to so many episodes feeling oddly paced where things need entire scenes across multiple episodes that probably should have been a two minute conversation. So that is not entirely a Picard flaw given how much current TV seems to suffer from it. (It certainly comes from a good intention, coming from the adage "show don't tell" taken to a logical, but awful extreme.) But it stands out a lot more in Picard especially, I think, because you watch old TNG episodes and they did so much exposition/setup in just a carefully worded "Captain's Log" and in that context it seems (at least to me) so how obvious how much could the Picard TV show have used a few more "ex-Admiral's Log" moments to just speed up a lot of filler.

gigel82 3y ago

I'm a trekkie and love the nostalgia of LCARS, but let's be honest: as an UX, it sucks (it's for show, not for usability).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Freire_Herval 3y ago
Lcars is just a stylistic theme that effects color, fonts and geometry. It's not ux. It can be configured to suit any page flow or layout you want..
- gigel82 3y ago
  Do you have examples of UIs built with LCARS colors, fonts and geometry?
  - Freire_Herval 3y ago
    Just look at it and use your logic. It's simply very basic geometry combined with a specific font. That's it. There's decorative stuff like the curved spine but the layout is very simple. The buttons are rectangular there's nothing super complex here that is very far from a basic flat design. I would say lcars is a precursor to flat design. Don't let your thinking be flat where you can only come to conclusions that are data driven. Use your intuition and project the creative consequences yourself. LCARS is owned by paramount so it can't really be used as a UI theme anywhere else without permission. But what if it could? Just imagine it, it's not that hard. Hacker news can be themed into lcars with largely zero change to the XY location of every element. Picture it with your minds eye. edit: I ended up finding an example: https://www.thelcars.com/menu/ https://www.thelcars.com/menu/. But everyone should be able to come to the same conclusion without data. It's so trivial that illegal fan made examples do exist.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

retrac 3y ago

Just to nerd out a bit, according to the ST: TNG Technical Manual written by Michael Okuda (co-designer of the original LCARS graphically) and Rich Sternbach, LCARS is also a tactile interface. Pressure sensitive, with force feedback, depth and resistance of the display can be varied slightly, creating ridges, variation in texture, which can complement the display. It's a fascinating idea.

qbasic_forever 3y ago
Aren't apple's force/3d touch screens basically that, minus actually changing the interface geometry (but still having pretty sophisticated haptic feedback)?
- quelltext 3y ago
  You mean that feature they got rid off a while back and replaced with something much simpler? https://www.macrumors.com/guide/haptic-touch-vs-3d-touch-whats-the-difference/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/haptic-touch-vs-3d-touch-wha... (I'm just ranting.)
  - tadfisher 3y ago
    I believe that was the result of a patent lawsuit brought by a company called Immersion, who developed several haptic technologies during the first wave of VR tech in the early-mid 1990s. Why they couldn't work out a licensing deal is anyone's guess; even Nintendo pays those royalties.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  No, they did log a patent to do that but they never implemented tactile ridges etc. I guess the tech is not ready
tolien 3y ago
They made that explicit in Voyager. In Year of Hell, Tuvok switches his consoles to a tactile interface after being blinded by an exploding torpedo and continues as tactical officer using that.

ggeorgovassilis 3y ago

I made a super-star-trek port (playable online): https://github.com/ggeorgovassilis/superstartrek https://github.com/ggeorgovassilis/superstartrek

rkagerer 3y ago

I love the Okudagrams sequence during the closing credits of Season 3 of Picard. Less relatedly, I'm only on episode 3 but for an old Trekkie like myself this season is the gift I wished so hard for and never thought could ever possibly come true. Thank you Paramount!

wanda 3y ago

I remember installing a Windows XP LCARS theme, back when I was watching Star Trek every day as soon as I got back from college – and I remember strongly regretting the decision immediately. Needless to say, it looked kinda cool, but not quite right for obvious reasons, and the actual experience of using it was... not great. To borrow an expression from House MD, it wasn't a unicorn, it was a donkey with a plunger taped to its forehead. I settled on making myself an LCARS new tab web page instead. That was pretty cool, I've often given thought to remaking it... but I'd probably get sidetracked too heavily from my actual work and end up an insomniac with an LCARS Linux distro and a very full inbox. Aside: I really miss the Windows Classic look. I know you can sort of get it back in Windows 10 but I'm not on Windows these days, I just miss how Windows 98/2000/XP looked and behaved... well, maybe behaved is a bad word. Aside 2: It appears the author of this simulation has made a few of these LCARS simulations https://www.mewho.com/ https://www.mewho.com/

jeegsy 3y ago

This is really cool. Loved this season, well its the only one i've watched. Does anyone know a way to launch a webpage as a screensaver?