
Science Fiction Interfaces - leephillips
http://sciencefictioninterfaces.tumblr.com/
======
__sb__
Oh hey I run this, originally I was just collecting the fui designs for
reference when trying to make my own as a desktop
([https://github.com/seenaburns/dex-ui](https://github.com/seenaburns/dex-
ui)), but since then I've kept it going.

My personal favorite is probably still Oblivion
[http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX](http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX) but if
these are too over the top science fiction, The Bourne Identity's is pretty
fun too [http://coleran.com/gallery-category/fui/#the-bourne-
identity](http://coleran.com/gallery-category/fui/#the-bourne-identity)

~~~
pogo
This is an incredible and timely resource for me. I'm currently building a
spaceship cockpit for my young sons. I'm a former EE, so I've got the blinky
LEDs, switches, LCDs, keypads, and other physical UI components covered, but
I'd love to add a sophisticated GUI component. Unfortunately, I'm not much of
a coder. Do you know if any sci-fi GUIs are available as Android apps for
tablets? I have 3 Kindle Fire tablets that I would love to turn into dedicated
GUI touchscreens for the cockpit.

~~~
hithereagain
You and your kids might enjoy piloting the ship using Artemis Spaceship Bridge
Simulator ([http://artemis.eochu.com/](http://artemis.eochu.com/))

~~~
pogo
Thanks for the tip! I just installed Artemis on 3 tablets and it's fantastic
for my purposes. And looking at the Artemis forums, there are a number of
people building Star Trek-like bridge consoles, similar to what I'm doing.
Except I'm aiming for more of a gritty Alien type of aesthetic.

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halwa
For someone who wants an in-depth look at sci-fi interfaces from a designer's
perspective,
[https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/](https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/)
and the corresponding book [1] are pretty good resources. The book was even
featured on YC's Winter (Summer?) reading list.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Make-So-Interaction-Lessons-
Science/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Make-So-Interaction-Lessons-
Science/dp/1933820985)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Huh, that's actually what I thought the link was; I'm subscribed to this link,
and it's definitely interesting.

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ishtanbul
There's an overarching theme here of thin neon lines and white text on black
background. Its interesting to me that despite the popularity of this in
movies as the default "futuristic" computer interface, it rarely seems to make
its way into actual software and especially web/app UI. One exception i can
think of is the Bloomberg terminal.

I find this odd because its easier on the eyes and looks better. I would
honestly prefer "night mode" for pretty much all software (ms office, the
whole internet, etc). Gmail black theme looks great but the actually emails
are still white background / black font...

Im not really a hacker... Does anyone know good "night mode" software or
settings? There is one in windows 10 but it only applies to settings windows
and not the file browser or much anything else.

~~~
jonkiddy
I know this doesn't apply to your needs, however OSX/macOS has the ability to
"Invert Display Color" and I use it all the time for precisely the use case
you described.

~~~
ishtanbul
some digging around I found Stylish [1] chrome extension which allows you to
select dark modes (and others) for many common websites. Unfortunately many of
the dark themes are really just dark grey, whereas I really prefer a deep inky
black. My pixel xl has an amoled display which makes night modes look stunning
because the pixels actually turn off with true black.

I used this app [2] to read hacker news and im delighted to find they have a
web interface as well which has a dark mode

[1] userstyles.org [2] hn.premii.com

~~~
bhauer
A while back I roughed up a dark theme for HN via a greasemonkey userscript,
as seen here: [http://i.imgur.com/PkwVEOD.png](http://i.imgur.com/PkwVEOD.png)
There are obviously some rough edges—no pun intended—such as around the voting
buttons.

Dark themes really are just way easier on the eyes. Combining the Windows 10
dark theme, the black theme in Office 2016, Firefox Developer Edition, plus a
bunch of dark themes for web sites yields a pretty good overall experience.

------
ioulian
I remember the days when all the flash websites looked like this. With all the
pixel fonts of 8 px height.
[http://www.2advanced.com/](http://www.2advanced.com/) Was one of my
favorites! (I can't even see it now as the flash is blocked by Chrome)

I actually miss that style, good thing it still exists in movies. Oblivion had
also very nice GUI's. But Gmunk has a lot of other great work!

[http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX](http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX)

~~~
leephillips
I like the style too. I couldn't use the 2advanced site, because, while it
loaded after I accepted Flash (Firefox), everything was tiny on my high-
resolution screen, and zooming did nothing.

~~~
nitrogen
If you navigate directly to the .swf file, it might be scaled to the full
browser window. That used to work for Homestar Runner about a decade ago.

~~~
leephillips
Thanks. Homestar - I loved that. Must visit again.

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inputcoffee
The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the
UI in Spike Jonze's "Her".

The second greatest, though, is quite visual: the interface in Minority
Report.

I wish I could find the interviews with the UI engineers who talked about the
influences that went into it.

~~~
logfromblammo
I am almost certain that I would hate using the Minority Report interface, as
it was depicted in the film. If Tom Cruise's character actually had to use
that every day, his deltoids would be the size of bowling balls.

And I'm sure his manager loves to see exactly what he's doing from 100m away.

If you stuck that UI into a pair of VR-AR goggles, and replaced the huge
gorilla-arm movements with barely-visible finger twitches, I might consider
it.

~~~
mwfunk
I've always felt the same way. Looks really cool, and probably a lot more
appropriate for a movie than what people would really use, but really awkward
and impractical for the tasks it's supposed to help accomplish.

It's sort of like having to swing a Wiimote to swing a sword in a game.
Initial novelty value is great, but after a while, if you could do the same
thing by simply pushing a button, why wouldn't you just push a button? No
matter how good the motion tracking is, if it's not the most efficient way to
accomplish the task, there's no point to it.

Aside from how cool it looks and the cinematic qualities that made it
appropriate for the movie, everything he used that UI for could have been done
much more efficiently with a mouse and keyboard-based UI.

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fpgaminer
I have an almost fetish for retro and retro sci-fi interfaces.

I stumbled into this really gorgeous, simplistic terminal like design. I was
so inspired by it I decided to re-create the style in HTML+CSS. Once I did
that I had another spark, and decided to make it a working faux terminal. And
then I had the idea that maybe I could turn it into a small little game. You
discover this machine, like you dialed into it randomly one day, and have to
navigate yourself around, discover the story through reading logs, and hack
into other machines to progress through the levels.

It looked like this: [http://imgur.com/a/pBOtP](http://imgur.com/a/pBOtP)

I'm an engineer through and through; it was odd to be so inspired by a design
that I went off to make a game :P

More recently I've been obsessed with the Alien: Isolation interface, which is
showcased on the OP
([https://68.media.tumblr.com/ea49aeb0e1a6961a7dc1b3ed02ebca85...](https://68.media.tumblr.com/ea49aeb0e1a6961a7dc1b3ed02ebca85/tumblr_nhvfpifsA61u2y46bo1_1280.jpg)).
It's given me yet another hankering to ... do something. Not sure what yet,
but it's just such an inspiring design.

~~~
L_Rahman
Do you have a tumblr/twitter/instagram where you share examples of this
aesthetic? I'm also a fan.

~~~
fpgaminer
No, but that's not a bad idea!

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abledon
My favourite sci-fi interface so far is the 'sand' interface in the superman
scene on Krypton. Russel Crowe uses it to blast light into a baby.

[https://youtu.be/nHmLhRx7Oyw?t=1m50s](https://youtu.be/nHmLhRx7Oyw?t=1m50s)

I think it would be great for the eyes cause you are forced to exercise your
depth perception rather than stare at a flat screen. Would even be better than
an e-ink monitor[[http://www.dasung.com/](http://www.dasung.com/)].

~~~
vanilla_nut
I wish those e-ink monitors didn't look so much like children's toys- I'd love
to pick one up.

In 20 years, I think we'll look back at LCD/OLED monitors like how we
currently look back at CRT/pre-CRT monitors, and wonder how on earth we stared
at bright configurations of tiny lights for 10+ hours a day.

Transflexive LCDs are, in my opinion, the future:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-
crystal_d...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-
crystal_display). I can't wait until phones/watches/laptops start using these.
My eyes will be very happy when that day comes.

~~~
corysama
The OLPC's Pixel-Qi screen (listed in that Wikipedia article) was fantastic
when in its black & white mode. It looked like e-ink and refreshed at 60Hz.
Apparently the company died in 2015 though :(

~~~
linuxkerneldev
> The OLPC's Pixel-Qi screen (listed in that Wikipedia article) was fantastic
> when in its black & white mode.

I'm sorry, but that's terribly inaccurate. I have a OLPC and the screen is
poor. It is grainy and has a mesh like appearance to it in both color and
transflective grayscale mode.

> It looked like e-ink and refreshed at 60Hz. Apparently the company died in
> 2015 though :(

The P-Qi screen refreshes fast, but it looks nothing like a kindle panel.

------
dexterbt1
I'm also following a similar blog:
[http://futureinterface.tumblr.com/](http://futureinterface.tumblr.com/)

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rosalinekarr
Now I know where I'm going to be getting my wallpapers from for the next few
months.

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broskoski
Related: [https://www.are.na/john-michael-boling/fictional-
interface](https://www.are.na/john-michael-boling/fictional-interface)

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otto_ortega
Does someone knows if there is an equivalent collection but for FONTS?

I love the fonts used on Sci-Fi movies, like the ones showed in those GUIs,
but it is pretty difficult to find such fonts.

~~~
htk
Take a look at:
[https://typesetinthefuture.com/](https://typesetinthefuture.com/)

~~~
otto_ortega
Thanks for sharing, yeah, that site has the concept I was talking about,
unfortunately it has a very few content, still good to know about it

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chiph
My favorite has always been the UI in 2001: A Space Odyssey, with it's use of
the EuroStile font on solid screen-filling colors.

It was borrowed by Pixar for The Incredibles.

~~~
corysama
Fun fact: there were no computers involved in the making of 2001. They were
too expensive at the time. All of the monitors in the movie were actually
back-projected film screens. All of the wiredframe 3D models were literally
wire models, painted white, filmed and then projected on the screen.

Using back-projected screens meant 2001 had flat screens which still look
modern today --as opposed to the bulbous CRT monitors used in Blade a Runner
and Alien.

~~~
chiph
Thanks. That also explains the difference between Star Trek TOS and the film
versions of Star Trek (which used CRTs).

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wonderwonder
Creating fake sci fi interfaces for movies, a very cool concept. It's
inspiring to know that whatever makes you happy there is potentially a job
doing it.

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otempomores
Movie Ui wants to overwhelm. Real Ui wants to limit to the bare minima.. While
having everything in reach.

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pwaivers
Cool.

