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Hackers (1995)

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Our third film is from 1995, directed by Iain Softley.

Hackers is about a group of teenage computer hackers, of the ethical / playful type who are driven by curiosity and cause no harm — well, not to anyone who doesn’t deserve it. One of these hackers breaks into the “Gibson” computer system of a high profile company and partially downloads what he thinks is an unimportant file as proof of his success. However this file is actually a disguised worm program, created by the company’s own chief of computer security to defraud the company of millions of dollars. The security chief tries to frame the hackers for various computer crimes to cover his tracks, so the hackers must break back into the system to download the full worm program and reveal the true culprit.

The film was made in the time before Facebook when it was common to have an online identity, or at least an online handle (nick), distinct from the real world. Our teenage hacker protagonists are:

  • Crash Override, real name Dade.
  • Acid Burn, real name Kate.
  • Cereal Killer, Lord Nikon, and Phantom Phreak, real names not given.
  • Joey, the most junior, who doesn’t have a handle yet.

As hackers they don’t have a corporate budget, so use a variety of personal computers rather than the expensive SGI workstations we saw in the previous films. And since it’s the 1990s, their network connections are made with modems over the analog phone system and important files will fit on 1.44 megabyte floppy disks. 

The Gibson, though, is described as “big iron”, a corporate supercomputer. Again this was the 1990s when a supercomputer would be a single very big and very expensive computer, not thousands of PC CPUs and GPUs jammed into racks as in the early 21st C. A befitting such an advanced piece of technology it has a three dimensional file browsing interface which is on display both times the Gibson is hacked.

First run

The first hack starts at about 24 minutes. Junior hacker Joey  has been challenged by his friends to break into something important such as a Gibson. The scene starts with Joey sitting in front of his Macintosh personal computer and reviewing a list of what appear to be logon or network names and phone numbers. The camera flies through a stylised cyberspace representation of the computer network, the city streets, then the physical rooms of the target company (which we will learn is Ellingson Minerals), and finally past a computer operator sitting at a desk in the server room and into the 3D file system. This single “shot” actually switches a few times between the digital and real worlds, a stylistic choice repeated throughout the film. Although never named in the film this file system is the “City of Text” according to the closing credits.

Joey looks down on the City of Text. Hackers (1995)

The file system is represented as a virtual cityscape of skyscraper-like blocks. The ground plane looks like a printed circuit board with purple traces (lines). The towers are simple box shapes, all the same size, as if constructed from blue tinted glass or acrylic plastic. Each of the four sides and the top shows a column of text in white lettering, apparently the names of directories or files. Because the tower sides are transparent the reverse facing text on the far sides is also visible, cluttering the display.

This 3D file system is the most dynamic of those in this review. Joey flies among the towers rather than walking, with exaggerated banking and tilting as he turns and dives. At ground level we can see some simple line graphics at the left as well as text.

Joey flies through the City of Text, banking as he changes direction. Hackers (1995)

The city of text is even busier due to animation effects. Highlight bars move up and down the text lists on some panes. Occasionally a list is cleared and redrawn top to bottom, while others cycle between two sets of text. White pulses flow along the purple ground lanes and fly between the towers. These animations do not seem to be interface elements. They could be an indicator of overall activity with more pulses per second meaning more data being accessed, like the blinking LED on your Ethernet port or disk drive. Or they could be a screensaver, as it was important on the CRT displays of the 1990s to not display a static image for long periods as it would “burn in” and become permanent.

Next there is a very important camera move, at least for analysing the user interface. So far the presentation has been fullscreen and obviously artificial. Now the camera pulls back slightly to show that this City of Text is what Joey is seeing on the screen of his Macintosh computer. Other shots later in the film will make it clear that this is truly interactive, he is the one controlling the viewpoint.

Joey looks at a particular list of directories/files on one face of a skyscraper. Hackers (1995)

I’ll discuss how this might work later in the analysis section. For now it’s enough to remember that this is a true file browser, the 3D equivalent of the Macintosh Finder or Windows File Explorer.

While Joey is exploring, we cut to the company server room. This unusual activity has triggered an alarm so the computer operator telephones the company security chief at home. At this stage we don’t know that he’s evil, but he does demand to be addressed by his hacker handle “The Plague” which doesn’t inspire confidence. (The alarm itself shows that a superuser / root / administrator account is in use by displaying the password for everyone to see on a giant screen. But we’re not going to talk about that.) 

Joey wants to prove he has hacked the Gibson by downloading a file, but by the ethics of the group it shouldn’t be something valuable. He selects what he thinks will be harmless, the garbage or trash directory on a particular tower. It’s not very clear but there is another column of text to the right which is dimmed out.

Joey selects the GARBAGE directory and a list of contents appears. Hackers (1995)

There’s a triangle to the right of the GARBAGE label indicating that it is a directory, and when selected a second column of text shows the files within it. When Joey selects one of these the system displays what today would be called a Live Tile in Windows, or File Preview in the Mac Finder. But in this advanced system it’s an elaborate animation of graphics and mathematical notation.

Joey decides this is the file he wants and starts a download. Since he’s dialled in through an old analog phone modem, this is a slow process and will eventually be interrupted when Joey’s mother switches his Macintosh off to force him to get some sleep.

Joey looks at the animation representing the file he has chosen. Hackers (1995)

Physical View

Back in the server room of Ellingson Minerals and while Joey is still searching, the security chief AKA “The Plague” arrives. And here we clearly see that there is also a physical 3D representation of the file system.

The Plague makes a dramatic entrance into the physical City of Text. Hackers (1995)

Just like the virtual display it is made up of rectangular towers made of blue tinted glass or plastic, arranged on a grid pattern like city skyscrapers. Each is about 3 metres high and about 50cm wide and deep. Again matching the virtual display, there is white text on all the visible sides, being updated and highlighted. However there is one noticeable difference, the bottom of each tower is solid black.

What are the towers for? Hackers is from 1995, when hard drives and networked file servers were shoebox- to pizza-box-sized, so one or two would fit into the base of each tower. The physical displays could be just blinkenlights, an impressive but not particularly useful visual display, but in a later shot there’s a technician in the background looking at one of the towers and making notes on a pad, so they are intended to show something useful. My assumption is that each tower displays information about the actual files being stored inside, mirroring the virtual city of text shown online.

When he reaches the operator’s desk, The Plague switches the big wall display to the same 3D virtual file system.

The Plague on the left and the night shift operator watch what Joey is doing on a giant wall screen. Hackers (1995)

He uses an “echo terminal” command to see exactly what Joey is doing, so sees the same garbage directory and that the file is being copied. We’ll later learn that this seemingly harmless file is actually the worm program created by The Plague, and that discovering it had been copied was a severe shock. Here he arranges for the phone connection to be traced and Joey questioned by his government friends in the US Secret Service (which at the time was responsible for investigating some computer security incidents and crimes), setting in motion the main plot elements.

Second run

After various twists and turns our teenage hackers are resolved to hack into the Gibson again to obtain a full copy of the worm program which will prove their innocence. But they also know that The Plague knows they know about the worm, Ellingson Minerals is alerted, and the US Secret Service are watching them. This second hacking run starts at about 1 hour 20 minutes.

The first step is to evade the secret service agents by a combination of rollerblading and hacking the traffic lights. (Scenes like this are why I enjoy the film so much.) Four of our laptop-wielding hackers dial in through public phone booths. The plan is that Crash will look for the file while Acid, Nikon, and Joey will distract the security systems, and they are expecting additional hacker help from around the world.

We see a repeat of the earlier shot flying through the streets and building into the City of Text, although this time on Crash’s Macintosh Powerbook.

Crash enters the City of Text. Hackers (1995)

It seems busier with many more pulses travelling back and forth between towers, presumably because this is during a workday.

The other three start launching malware attacks on the Gibson. Since the hacking attempt has been anticipated, The Plague is in the building and arrives almost immediately.

The Plague walks through the physical City of Text as the attack begins. Hackers (1995)

The physical tower display now shows a couple of blocks with red sides. This could indicate the presence of malware, or just that those sections of the file system are imposing a heavy CPU or IO load due to the malware attacks.

This time The Plague is assisted by a full team of technicians. He primarily uses a “System Command Shell” within a larger display that presumably shows processor and memory usage. It’s not the file system, but has a similar design style and is too cool not to show:

The Plague views system operations on a giant screen, components under attack highlighted in red on the right. Hackers (1995)

Most of the shots show the malware effects and The Plague responding, but Crash is searching for the worm. His City of Text towers show various “garbage” directories highlighted in purple, one after the other.

Crash checks the first garbage directory, in purple. Other possible matches in cyan on towers to the right. Hackers (1995)

What’s happening here? Most likely Crash has typed in a search wildcard string and the file browser is showing the matching files and folders.

Why are there multiple garbage directories? Our desktop GUIs always show a single trashcan, but under the hood there is more than one. A multiuser system needs at least one per user, because otherwise files deleted by Very Important People working with Very Sensitive Information would be visible, or at least the file names visible, to everyone else. Portable storage devices, floppy disks in Hackers and USB drives today, need their own trashcan because the user might still expect to be able to undelete files even if it has been moved to another computer. For the same reason a networked drive needs its own trashcan that isn’t stored on the connecting computer. So Crash really does have to search for the right garbage directory in this giant system.

As hackers from around the world join in, the malware effects intensify. More tower faces, both physical and digital, are red. The entire color palette of the City of Text becomes darker.

Crash flies through the City of Text, a skyscraper under siege. Hackers (1995)

This could be an automatic effect when the Gibson system performance drops below some threshold, or activated by the security team as the digital equivalent of traffic cones around a door. Anyone familiar with the normal appearance of the City of Text can see at a glance that something is wrong and, presumably, that they should log out or at least not try to do anything important.

Crash finds the right file and starts downloading, but The Plague hasn’t been fully distracted and uses his System Command Shell to disconnect Crash’s laptop entirely. Rather than log back in, Crash tells Joey to download the worm and gives him the full path to the correct garbage directory, which for the curious is root/.workspace/.garbage (the periods are significant, meaning these names should not normally be displayed to non-technical users).

We don’t see how Joey enters this into the file browser but there is no reason it should be difficult. Macintosh Finder windows have a clickable text search box, and both the Ubuntu Desktop Shell and Microsoft Windows start screen will automatically start searching for files and folders that match any typed text.

Joey downloads the worm, this time all of it. The combined malware attacks crash The Gibson. Unfortunately the secret service agents arrive just in time to arrest them, but all ends well with The Plague being exposed and arrested and our hacker protagonists released.

Analysis

How believable is the interface?

The City of Text has two key differences from the other 3D file browsers we’ve seen so far.

  1.  It must operate over a network connection, specifically over a phone modem connection, which in the 1990s would be much slower than any Ethernet LAN.
  2. This 3D view is being rendered on personal computers, not specialised 3D workstations. 

Despite these constraints, the City of Text remains reasonably plausible.

Would the City of Text require more bandwidth than was available? What effect would we expect from a slow network connection? It’s a problem when copying files, upload or download, but much less so for browsing a file system. The information being passed from the Gibson to the 3D file browser is just a list of names in each directory and a minimal set of attributes for each, not the file contents. In 1995 2D file browsers on personal computers were already showing icons, small raster images, for each file which took up more memory than the file names. The City of Text doesn’t, so the file data would certainly fit in the bandwidth available.

The flying viewpoint doesn’t require much bandwidth either. There is no avatar or other representation of the user, just an abstract viewpoint. Only 9 numbers are needed to describe where you are and what you’re looking at in 3D space, and predictive techniques developed for games and simulations can reduce the network bandwidth required even more.

Networked file systems and file browsers already existed in 1995, for example FTP and Gopher, although with pure text interfaces rather than 3D or even 2D graphics. The only missing component would be the 3D viewpoint coordinates.

PCs in the 1990s, especially laptops, rarely had any kind of 3D graphics acceleration and would not have been able to run the Jurassic Park or Disclosure 3D file browsers. The City of Text, though, is much less technically demanding even though it displays many more file and folder names.

Notice that there is no hidden surface removal, where the front sides of a 3D object hide those that are further away. There’s no lighting, with everything rendered in flat colors that don’t depend on the direction of the sun or other light sources, and no shadows. There are no images or textures, just straight lines and plain text. And finally everything is laid out on an axis-aligned grid; meaning all the graphics are straight up/down, left/right, or forwards/back; and all the towers and text are the same size. Similar shortcuts were used in 1990s PC games and demo scene animations, such as the original Doom in which players could look from side to side but not up or down.

I’m not saying that the City of Text on a 1990s PC or laptop would be easy, especially on Joey’s Macintosh LC, but it is plausible.

Alas the worm animation shown when that particular file is selected is not possible. We see fractal graphics and mathematical notation in 3D, and it’s a full screen image rather than a simple file icon. Whether it’s a pre-rendered animation or being generated on the fly there’s way too much to push through a modem connection, even though at the time “full screen” meant a lot less pixels than now in the 21st C.

The physical towers were also not possible. Three metre high flat screen displays didn’t exist in 1995, and I don’t see how that many projectors could be installed in the ceiling without interfering with each other.

How well does the interface inform the narrative of the story?

Hackers is a film all about computers and the people who work with them, and therefore must solve the problem (which still exists today) of making what is happening visible and understandable to a non-technical audience. Director Iain Softley said he wanted a metaphorical representation of how the characters perceived the digital world, not a realistic one. Some scenes use stylised 2D graphics and compositing to create a psychedelic look, while the 3D file browser is meant to be a virtual equivalent to the physical city of New York where Hackers is set. At least for some viewers, myself included, it works.

The worm animation also works well. Joey is looking for an interesting file, a trophy, and the animation makes it clear that this is indeed an extraordinary file without needing to show the code.

The physical towers, though, are rather silly. The City of Text is meant to be metaphorical, a mental landscape created by hackers, so we don’t need a physical version.

How well does the interface equip the character to achieve their goals?

The City of Text is very well suited to the character goals, because they are exploring the digital world. Looking cool and having fun are what’s important, not being efficient.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a rollerblading lesson before the next review…

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/Currently streaming on:

Disclosure (1994)

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Our next 3D file browsing system is from the 1994 film Disclosure. Thanks to site reader Patrick H Lauke for the suggestion.

Like Jurassic Park, Disclosure is based on a Michael Crichton novel, although this time without any dinosaurs. (Would-be scriptwriters should compare the relative success of these two films when planning a study program.) The plot of the film is corporate infighting within Digicom, manufacturer of high tech CD-ROM drives—it was the 1990s—and also virtual reality systems. Tom Sanders, executive in charge of the CD-ROM production line, is being set up to take the blame for manufacturing failures that are really the fault of cost-cutting measures by rival executive Meredith Johnson.

The Corridor: Hardware Interface

The virtual reality system is introduced at about 40 minutes, using the narrative device of a product demonstration within the company to explain to the attendees what it does. The scene is nicely done, conveying all the important points we need to know in two minutes. (To be clear, some of the images used here come from a later scene in the film, but it’s the same system in both.)

The process of entangling yourself with the necessary hardware and software is quite distinct from interacting with the VR itself, so let’s discuss these separately, starting with the physical interface.

Tom wearing VR headset and one glove, being scanned. Disclosure (1994)

In Disclosure the virtual reality user wears a headset and one glove, all connected by cables to the computer system. Like most virtual reality systems, the headset is responsible for visual display, audio, and head movement tracking; the glove for hand movement and gesture tracking. 

There are two “laser scanners” on the walls. These are the planar blue lights, which scan the user’s body at startup. After that they track body motion, although since the user still has to wear a glove, the scanners presumably just track approximate body movement and orientation without fine detail.

Lastly, the user stands on a concave hexagonal plate covered in embedded white balls, which allows the user to “walk” on the spot.

Closeup of user standing on curved surface of white balls. Disclosure (1994)

Searching for Evidence

The scene we’re most interested in takes place later in the film, the evening before a vital presentation which will determine Tom’s future. He needs to search the company computer files for evidence against Meredith, but discovers that his normal account has been blocked from access.   He knows though that the virtual reality demonstrator is on display in a nearby hotel suite, and also knows about the demonstrator having unlimited access. He sneaks into the hotel suite to use The Corridor. Tom is under a certain amount of time pressure because a couple of company VIPs and their guests are downstairs in the hotel and might return at any time.

The first step for Tom is to launch the virtual reality system. This is done from an Indy workstation, using the regular Unix command line.

The command line to start the virtual reality system. Disclosure (1994)

Next he moves over to the VR space itself. He puts on the glove but not the headset, presses a key on the keyboard (of the VR computer, not the workstation), and stands still for a moment while he is scanned from top to bottom.

Real world Tom, wearing one VR glove, waits while the scanners map his body. Disclosure (1994)

On the left is the Indy workstation used to start the VR system. In the middle is the external monitor which will, in a moment, show the third person view of the VR user as seen earlier during the product demonstration.

Now that Tom has been scanned into the system, he puts on the headset and enters the virtual space.

The Corridor: Virtual Interface

“The Corridor,” as you’ve no doubt guessed, is a three dimensional file browsing program. It is so named because the user will walk down a corridor in a virtual building, the walls lined with “file cabinets” containing the actual computer files.

Three important aspects of The Corridor were mentioned during the product demonstration earlier in the film. They’ll help structure our tour of this interface, so let’s review them now, as they all come up in our discussion of the interfaces.

  1. There is a voice-activated help system, which will summon a virtual “Angel” assistant.
  2. Since the computers themselves are part of a multi-user network with shared storage, there can be more than one user “inside” The Corridor at a time.
    Users who do not have access to the virtual reality system will appear as wireframe body shapes with a 2D photo where the head should be.
  3. There are no access controls and so the virtual reality user, despite being a guest or demo account, has unlimited access to all the company files. This is spectacularly bad design, but necessary for the plot.

With those bits of system exposition complete, now we can switch to Tom’s own first person view of the virtual reality environment.

Virtual world Tom watches his hands rezzing up, right hand with glove. Disclosure (1994)

There isn’t a real background yet, just abstract streaks. The avatar hands are rezzing up, and note that the right hand wearing the glove has a different appearance to the left. This mimics the real world, so eases the transition for the user.

Overlaid on the virtual reality view is a Digicom label at the bottom and four corner brackets which are never explained, although they do resemble those used in cameras to indicate the preferred viewing area.

To the left is a small axis indicator, the three green lines labeled X, Y, and Z. These show up in many 3D applications because, silly though it sounds, it is easy in a 3D computer environment to lose track of directions or even which way is up. A common fix for the user being unable to see anything is just to turn 180 degrees around.

We then switch to a third person view of Tom’s avatar in the virtual world.

Tom is fully rezzed up, within cloud of visual static. Disclosure (1994)

This is an almost photographic-quality image. To remind the viewers that this is in the virtual world rather than real, the avatar follows the visual convention described in chapter 4 of Make It So for volumetric projections, with scan lines and occasional flickers. An interesting choice is that the avatar also wears a “headset”, but it is translucent so we can see the face.

Now that he’s in the virtual reality, Tom has one more action needed to enter The Corridor. He pushes a big button floating before him in space.

Tom presses one button on a floating control panel. Disclosure (1994)

This seems unnecessary, but we can assume that in the future of this platform, there will be more programs to choose from.

The Corridor rezzes up, the streaks assembling into wireframe components which then slide together as the surfaces are shaded. Tom doesn’t have to wait for the process to complete before he starts walking, which suggests that this is a Level Of Detail (LOD) implementation where parts of the building are not rendered in detail until the user is close enough for it to be worth doing.

Tom enters The Corridor. Nearby floor and walls are fully rendered, the more distant section is not complete. Disclosure (1994)

The architecture is classical, rendered with the slightly artificial-looking computer shading that is common in 3D computer environments because it needs much less computation than trying for full photorealism.

Instead of a corridor this is an entire multistory building. It is large and empty, and as Tom is walking bits of architecture reshape themselves, rather like the interior of Hogwarts in Harry Potter.

Although there are paintings on some of the walls, there aren’t any signs, labels, or even room numbers. Tom has to wander around looking for the files, at one point nearly “falling” off the edge of the floor down an internal air well. Finally he steps into one archway room entrance and file cabinets appear in the walls.

Tom enters a room full of cabinets. Disclosure (1994)

Unlike the classical architecture around him, these cabinets are very modern looking with glowing blue light lines. Tom has found what he is looking for, so now begins to manipulate files rather than browsing.

Virtual Filing Cabinets

The four nearest cabinets according to the titles above are

  1. Communications
  2. Operations
  3. System Control
  4. Research Data.

There are ten file drawers in each. The drawers are unmarked, but labels only appear when the user looks directly at it, so Tom has to move his head to centre each drawer in turn to find the one he wants.

Tom looks at one particular drawer to make the title appear. Disclosure (1994)

The fourth drawer Tom looks at is labeled “Malaysia”. He touches it with the gloved hand and it slides out from the wall.

Tom withdraws his hand as the drawer slides open. Disclosure (1994)

Inside are five “folders” which, again, are opened by touching. The folder slides up, and then three sheets, each looking like a printed document, slide up and fan out.

Axis indicator on left, pointing down. One document sliding up from a folder. Disclosure (1994)

Note the tilted axis indicator at the left. The Y axis, representing a line extending upwards from the top of Tom’s head, is now leaning towards the horizontal because Tom is looking down at the file drawer. In the shot below, both the folder and then the individual documents are moving up so Tom’s gaze is now back to more or less level.

Close up of three “pages” within a virtual document. Disclosure (1994)

At this point the film cuts away from Tom. Rival executive Meredith, having been foiled in her first attempt at discrediting Tom, has decided to cover her tracks by deleting all the incriminating files. Meredith enters her office and logs on to her Indy workstation. She is using a Command Line Interface (CLI) shell, not the standard SGI Unix shell but a custom Digicom program that also has a graphical menu. (Since it isn’t three dimensional it isn’t interesting enough to show here.)

Tom uses the gloved hand to push the sheets one by one to the side after scanning the content.

Tom scrolling through the pages of one folder by swiping with two fingers. Disclosure (1994)

Quick note: This is harder than it looks in virtual reality. In a 2D GUI moving the mouse over an interface element is obvious. In three dimensions the user also has to move their hand forwards or backwards to get their hand (or finger) in the right place, and unless there is some kind of haptic feedback it isn’t obvious to the user that they’ve made contact.

Tom now receives a nasty surprise.

The shot below shows Tom’s photorealistic avatar at the left, standing in front of the open file cabinet. The green shape on the right is the avatar of Meredith who is logged in to a regular workstation. Without the laser scanners and cameras her avatar is a generic wireframe female humanoid with a face photograph stuck on top. This is excellent design, making The Corridor usable across a range of different hardware capabilities.

Tom sees the Meredith avatar appear. Disclosure (1994)

Why does The Corridor system place her avatar here? A multiuser computer system, or even just a networked file server,  obviously has to know who is logged on. Unix systems in general and command line shells also track which directory the user is “in”, the current working directory. Meredith is using her CLI interface to delete files in a particular directory so The Corridor can position her avatar in the corresponding virtual reality location. Or rather, the avatar glides into position rather than suddenly popping into existence: Tom is only surprised because the documents blocked his virtual view.

Quick note: While this is plausible, there are technical complications. Command line users often open more than one shell at a time in different directories. In such a case, what would The Corridor do? Duplicate the wireframe avatar in each location? In the real world we can’t be in more than one place at a time, would doing so contradict the virtual reality metaphor?

There is an asymmetry here in that Tom knows Meredith is “in the system” but not vice versa. Meredith could in theory use CLI commands to find out who else is logged on and whether anyone was running The Corridor, but she would need to actively seek out that information and has no reason to do so. It didn’t occur to Tom either, but he doesn’t need to think about it,  the virtual reality environment conveys more information about the system by default.

We briefly cut away to Meredith confirming her CLI delete command. Tom sees this as the file drawer lid emitting beams of light which rotate down. These beams first erase the floating sheets, then the folders in the drawer. The drawer itself now has a red “DELETED” label and slides back into the wall.

Tom watches Meredith deleting the files in an open drawer. Disclosure (1994)

Tom steps further into the room. The same red labels appear on the other file drawers even though they are currently closed.

Tom watches Meredith deleting other, unopened, drawers. Disclosure (1994)

Talking to an Angel

Tom now switches to using the system voice interface, saying “Angel I need help” to bring up the virtual reality assistant. Like everything else we’ve seen in this VR system the “angel” rezzes up from a point cloud, although much more quickly than the architecture: people who need help tend to be more impatient and less interested in pausing to admire special effects.

The voice assistant as it appears within VR. Disclosure (1994)

Just in case the user is now looking in the wrong direction the angel also announces “Help is here” in a very natural sounding voice.

The angel is rendered with white robe, halo, harp, and rapidly beating wings. This is horribly clichéd, but a help system needs to be reassuring in appearance as well as function. An angel appearing as a winged flying serpent or wheel of fire would be more original and authentic (yes, really: ​​Biblically Accurate Angels) but users fleeing in terror would seriously impact the customer satisfaction scores.

Now Tom has a short but interesting conversation with the angel, beginning with a question:

  • Tom
  • Is there any way to stop these files from being deleted?
  • Angel
  • I’m sorry, you are not level five.
  • Tom
  • Angel, you’re supposed to protect the files!
  • Angel
  • Access control is restricted to level five.

Tom has made the mistake, as described in chapter 9 Anthropomorphism of the book, of ascribing more agency to this software program than it actually has. He thinks he is engaged in a conversational interface (chapter 6 Sonic Interfaces) with a fully autonomous system, which should therefore be interested in and care about the wellbeing of the entire system. Which it doesn’t, because this is just a limited-command voice interface to a guide.

Even though this is obviously scripted, rather than a genuine error I think this raises an interesting question for real world interface designers: do users expect that an interface with higher visual quality/fidelity will be more realistic in other aspects as well? If a voice interface assistant has a simple polyhedron with no attempt at photorealism (say, like Bit in Tron) or with zoomorphism (say, like the search bear in Until the End of the World) will users adjust their expectations for speech recognition downwards? I’m not aware of any research that might answer this question. Readers?

Despite Tom’s frustration, the angel has given an excellent answer – for a guide. A very simple help program would have recited the command(s) that could be used to protect files against deletion. Which would have frustrated Tom even more when he tried to use one and got some kind of permission denied error. This program has checked whether the user can actually use commands before responding.

This does contradict the earlier VR demonstration where we were told that the user had unlimited access. I would explain this as being “unlimited read access, not write”, but the presenter didn’t think it worthwhile to go into such detail for the mostly non-technical audience.

Tom is now aware that he is under even more time pressure as the Meredith avatar is still moving around the room. Realising his mistake, he uses the voice interface as a query language.

“Show me all communications with Malaysia.”
“Telephone or video?”
“Video.”

This brings up a more conventional looking GUI window because not everything in virtual reality needs to be three-dimensional. It’s always tempting for a 3D programmer to re-implement everything, but it’s also possible to embed 2D GUI applications into a virtual world.

Tom looks at a conventional 2D display of file icons inside VR. Disclosure (1994)

The window shows a thumbnail icon for each recorded video conference call. This isn’t very helpful, so Tom again decides that a voice query will be much faster than looking at each one in turn.

“Show me, uh, the last transmission involving Meredith.”

There’s a short 2D transition effect swapping the thumbnail icon display for the video call itself, which starts playing at just the right point for plot purposes.

Tom watches a previously recorded video call made by Meredith (right). Disclosure (1994)

While Tom is watching and listening, Meredith is still typing commands. The camera orbits around behind the video conference call window so we can see the Meredith avatar approach, which also shows us that this window is slightly three dimensional, the content floating a short distance in front of the frame. The film then cuts away briefly to show Meredith confirming her “kill all” command. The video conference recordings are deleted, including the one Tom is watching.

Tom is informed that Meredith (seen here in the background as a wireframe avatar) is deleting the video call. Disclosure (1994)

This is also the moment when the downstairs VIPs return to the hotel suite, so the scene ends with Tom managing to sneak out without being detected.

Virtual reality has saved the day for Tom. The documents and video conference calls have been deleted by Meredith, but he knows that they once existed and has a colleague retrieve the files he needs from the backup tapes. (Which is good writing: the majority of companies shown in film and TV never seem to have backups for files, no matter how vital.) Meredith doesn’t know that he knows, so he has the upper hand to expose her plot.

Analysis

How believable is the interface?

I won’t spend much time on the hardware, since our focus is on file browsing in three dimensions. From top to bottom, the virtual reality system starts as believable and becomes less so.

Hardware

The headset and glove look like real VR equipment, believable in 1994 and still so today. Having only one glove is unusual, and makes impossible some of the common gesture actions described in chapter 5 of Make It So, which require both hands.

The “laser scanners” that create the 3D geometry and texture maps for the 3D avatar and perform real time body tracking would more likely be cameras, but that would not sound as cool.

And lastly the walking platform apparently requires our user to stand on large marbles or ball bearings and stay balanced while wearing a headset. Uh…maybe…no. Apologetics fails me. To me it looks like it would be uncomfortable to walk on, almost like deterrent paving.

Software

The Corridor, unlike the 3D file browser used in Jurassic Park, is a special effect created for the film. It was a mostly-plausible, near future system in 1994, except for the photorealistic avatar. Usually this site doesn’t discuss historical context (the  “new criticism” stance), but I think in this case it helps to explain how this interface would have appeared to audiences almost two decades ago.

I’ll start with the 3D graphics of the virtual building. My initial impression was that The Corridor could have been created as an interactive program in 1994, but that was my memory compressing the decade. During the 1990s 3D computer graphics, both interactive and CGI, improved at a phenomenal rate. The virtual building would not have been interactive in 1994, was possible on the most powerful systems six years later in 2000, and looks rather old-fashioned compared to what the game consoles of the 21st C can achieve.

For the voice interface I made the opposite mistake. Voice interfaces on phones and home computing appliances have become common in the second decade of the 21st C, but in reality are much older. Apple Macintosh computers in 1994 had text-to-speech synthesis with natural sounding voices and limited vocabulary voice command recognition. (And without needing an Internet connection!) So the voice interface in the scene is believable.

The multi-user aspects of The Corridor were possible in 1994. The wireframe avatars for users not in virtual reality are unflattering or perhaps creepy, but not technically difficult. As a first iteration of a prototype system it’s a good attempt to span a range of hardware capabilities.

The virtual reality avatar, though, is not believable for the 1990s and would be difficult today. Photographs of the body, made during the startup scan, could be used as a texture map for the VR avatar. But live video of the face would be much more difficult, especially when the face is partly obscured by a headset.

How well does the interface inform the narrative of the story?

The virtual reality system in itself is useful to the overall narrative because it makes the Digicom company seem high tech. Even in 1994 CD-ROM drives weren’t very interesting.

The Corridor is essential to the tension of the scene where Tom uses it to find the files, because otherwise the scene would be much shorter and really boring. If we ignore the virtual reality these are the interface actions:

  • Tom reads an email.
  • Meredith deletes the folder containing those emails.
  • Tom finds a folder full of recorded video calls.
  • Tom watches one recorded video call.
  • Meredith deletes the folder containing the video calls.

Imagine how this would have looked if both were using a conventional 2D GUI, such as the Macintosh Finder or MS Windows Explorer. Double click, press and drag, double click…done.

The Corridor slows down Tom’s actions and makes them far more visible and understandable. Thanks to the virtual reality avatar we don’t have to watch an actor push a mouse around. We see him moving and swiping, be surprised and react; and the voice interface adds extra emotion and some useful exposition. It also helps with the plot, giving Tom awareness of what Meredith is doing without having to actively spy on her, or look at some kind of logs or recordings later on.

Meredith, though, can’t use the VR system because then she’d be aware of Tom as well. Using a conventional workstation visually distinguishes and separates Meredith from Tom in the scene.

So overall, though the “action” is pretty mundane, it’s crucial to the plot, and the VR interface helps make this interesting and more engaging.

How well does the interface equip the character to achieve their goals?

As described in the film itself, The Corridor is a prototype for demonstrating virtual reality. As a file browser it’s awful, but since Tom has lost all his normal privileges this is the only system available, and he does manage to eventually find the files he needs.

At the start of the scene, Tom spends quite some time wandering around a vast multi-storey building without a map, room numbers, or even coordinates overlaid on his virtual view. Which seems rather pointless because all the files are in one room anyway. As previously discussed for Johnny Mnemonic, walking or flying everywhere in your file system seems like a good idea at first, but often becomes tedious over time. Many actual and some fictional 3D worlds give users the ability to teleport directly to any desired location.

Then the file drawers in each cabinet have no labels either, so Tom has to look carefully at each one in turn. There is so much more the interface could be doing to help him with his task, and even help the users of the VR demo learn and explore its technology as well.

Contrast this with Meredith, who uses her command line interface and 2D GUI to go through files like a chainsaw.

Tom becomes much more efficient with the voice interface. Which is just as well, because if he hadn’t, Meredith would have deleted the video conference recordings while he was still staring at virtual filing cabinets. However neither the voice interface nor the corresponding file display need three dimensional graphics.

There is hope for version 2.0 of The Corridor, even restricting ourselves to 1994 capabilities. The first and most obvious is to copy 2D GUI file browsers, or the 3D file browser from Jurassic Park, and show the corresponding text name next to each graphical file or folder object. The voice interface is so good that it should be turned on by default without requiring the angel. And finally add some kind of map overlay with a you are here moving dot, like the maps that players in 3D games such as Doom could display with a keystroke.

Film making challenge: VR on screen

Virtual reality (or augmented reality systems such as Hololens) provide a better viewing experience for 3D graphics by creating the illusion of real three dimensional space rather than a 2D monitor. But it is always a first person view and unlike conventional 2D monitors nobody else can usually see what the VR user is seeing without a deliberate mirroring/debugging display. This is an important difference from other advanced or speculative technologies that film makers might choose to include. Showing a character wielding a laser pistol instead of a revolver or driving a hover car instead of a wheeled car hardly changes how to stage a scene, but VR does.

So, how can we show virtual reality in film?

There’s the first-person view corresponding to what the virtual reality user is seeing themselves. (Well, half of what they see since it’s not stereographic, but it’s cinema VR, so close enough.) This is like watching a screencast of someone else playing a first person computer game, the original active experience of the user becoming passive viewing by the audience. Most people can imagine themselves in the driving seat of a car and thus make sense of the turns and changes of speed in a first person car chase, but the film audience probably won’t be familiar with the VR system depicted and will therefore have trouble understanding what is happening. There’s also the problem that viewing someone else’s first-person view, shifting and changing in response to their movements rather than your own, can make people disoriented or nauseated.

A third-person view is better for showing the audience the character and the context in which they act. But not the diegetic real-world third-person view, which would be the character wearing a geeky headset and poking at invisible objects. As seen in Disclosure, the third person view should be within the virtual reality.

But in doing that, now there is a new problem: the avatar in virtual reality representing the real character. If the avatar is too simple the audience may not identify it with the real world character and it will be difficult to show body language and emotion. More realistic CGI avatars are increasingly expensive and risk falling into the Uncanny Valley. Since these films are science fiction rather than factual, the easy solution is to declare that virtual reality has achieved the goal of being entirely photorealistic and just film real actors and sets. Adding the occasional ripple or blur to the real world footage to remind the audience that it’s meant to be virtual reality, again as seen in Disclosure, is relatively cheap and quick.
So, solving all these problems results in the cinematic trope we can call Extradiegetic Avatars, which are third-person, highly-lifelike “renderings” of characters, with a telltale Hologram Projection Imperfection for audience readability, that may or may not be possible within the world of the film itself.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109635/Currently streaming on:

Brain Upload

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6

Once Johnny has installed his motion detector on the door, the brain upload can begin.

3. Building it

Johnny starts by opening his briefcase and removing various components, which he connects together into the complete upload system. Some of the parts are disguised, and the whole sequence is similar to an assassin in a thriller film assembling a gun out of harmless looking pieces.

jm-6-uploader-kit-a

It looks strange today to see a computer system with so many external devices connected by cables. We’ve become accustomed to one piece computing devices with integrated functionality, and keyboards, mice, cameras, printers, and headphones that connect wirelessly.

Cables and other connections are not always considered as interfaces, but “all parts of a thing which enable its use” is the definition according to Chris. In the early to mid 1990s most computer user were well aware of the potential for confusion and frustration in such interfaces. A personal computer could have connections to monitor, keyboard, mouse, modem, CD drive, and joystick – and every single device would use a different type of cable. USB, while not perfect, is one of the greatest ever improvements in user interfaces.

Why not go wireless? Wireless devices remove the need for a physical connection, but this means that anyone, not just you, could potentially connect. So instead of worrying about whether we have the right kind of cable, we now worry about the right kind of Bluetooth pairing and WiFi encryption password scheme. Mobile wireless devices also need their own batteries, which have to be charged. So wireless may seem visually cleaner, but comes with its own set of problems.

As of early 2016 we have two new standards, Lightning and USB-C, that are orientation-independent (only fifty years after audio cables), high bandwidth, and able to transmit power to peripherals as well. Perhaps by 2021 cables will have made a comeback as the usual way to connect devices.

2. Explaining it

Johnny explains the process to the scientists. He needs them to begin the upload by pushing a button, helpfully labelled “start”, on the gadget that resembles an optical disk drive. There’s a big red button as well, which is not explained but would make an excellent “cancel” button.

jm-6-uploader-kit-b

It would be simpler if Johnny just did this himself. But we will shortly discover that the upload process is apparently very painful. If Johnny had his hands near the system, he might involuntarily push another button or disturb a cable. So for them, having a single, easily differentiated button to press minimizes their chance of messing it up.

1. Making codes

He also sticks a small black disk on the hotel room’s silver remote control. The small disk is evidently is a wireless controller or camera of some kind. The scientists must watch the upload progress counter, and as it approaches the end, use this modified remote to grab three frames from the TV display, which will become the “access code” for the data. (More on this below.)

jm-6-uploader-kit-x

None of the buttons on this remote have markings or labels, but neither Johnny nor the scientist who will be using it are bothered. Perhaps this hotel chain tries to please every possible guest by not favouring any particular language? But even in that case, I’d expect there to be some kind of symbols on the buttons and a multilingual manual to explain the meaning of each. Maybe Johnny spends so much time in hotel suites that he has memorised the button layout?

Short of a mind reading remote that can translate any button press into “what the user intended”, I have to admit this is a terrible interface.

(There is a label on the black disk, but I have no idea what it means or even which script that is. Anyone?)

0. Go go go

Johnny plugs in his implant, puts on a headset with more cables, and bites down on a mouthguard. He’s ready.

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The scientist pushes the start button and the upload begins. Johnny sees the data stream in his headset as a flood of graphics and text.

jm-7-uploading-a

Why does he need the headset when there is a direct cable connection to the implant? The movie doesn’t make it explicit. It could be related to the images used as the access code. (More on this below.) Perhaps the images need to be processed by the recipient’s own optic nerve system for more reliable storage?

Still, in the spirit of apologetics we should try to find a better explanation than “an opportunity for 1995 cutting edge computer generated graphics.” Perhaps it is a very flashy progress indicator? Older computer systems had blinking lights on disk drives to indicate activity, copied on some of today’s USB sticks. Current-day file upload or download GUIs have progress bars. As processing and graphics capabilities increase, it will be possible for software to display thumbnails or previews of the actual data being transferred without slowing down.

Unfortunately there is an argument against this, which is that the obvious upload progress indicator is a numeric display counting gigabytes down to zero, and it makes a fast chirping sound as a sonic indicator as well. The counter shows the data flowing at gigabytes per second, the entire upload lasting about a minute. There’s also the problem that it’s not Johnny who is interested in knowing whether the upload is scientific data rather than, say, a video collection; but the scientists, and they can’t see it.

jm-7-uploading-b

As the counter drops below one hundred, the scientist points the remote with black disk at the TV display, currently showing a cartoon, and presses the middle button. The image from the TV appears overlaid on the data stream to Johnny. This is a little odd, because Johnny assured the scientists that he wouldn’t know what the access codes were himself. Maybe these brief flashes are not enough time for him to remember these particular images among the gigabytes of visual content. But the way they’re shown to us, I’ll bet you can remember them when they come up again later in the plot.

jm-7-uploading-d

Two more images are grabbed before the counter stops. When the upload finishes, the three images are printed out. (In the original film this is shown upside down, so I have rotated the image.)

jm-7-uploading-f-rotated

Tagged: 

So what are the images for? The script isn’t clear. I suggest that the images are being used as the equivalents of very large random numbers for whatever cryptography scheme protects the data against unauthorised access. Some current day systems use the timing of key presses and mouse movements as a source of randomness because humans simply can’t move their fingers with microsecond precision. Here, the human element makes it impossible to predict exactly which frame is chosen.

Humans also find images much easier to recognise than hundred digit numbers. Anyone who has seen the printout will be able to say whether a particular image is part of the access code or not with a high degree of confidence. In computer systems today, Secure Shell, or ssh, is a widely used encrypted terminal program for secure access to servers. Recent versions of ssh have a ‘randomart’ capability which shows a small ASCII icon generated from the current cryptographic key to everyone who logs on. If this ASCII icon appears different, this alerts everyone that the server key has been changed.

There’s one potential usability problem with the whole “pick three random images” mechanism. The last frame was grabbed when the counter was very close to zero. What would have happened if he had been too slow and missed altogether? Wouldn’t it be more reliable to have the upload system automatically grab the images rather than rely on a human? Chris suggests that maybe it secretly did grab three images that could have used without human input, but privileged the human input since it was more reliably random.

Quick aside: You may be asking, if images would be so wonderful, why aren’t we using them in this way already? It’s because our current security systems need not just very large random numbers, but very large random numbers with particular mathematical properties such as being prime. But let’s cut Johnny Mnemonic some slack,  saying that by 2021 we may have new algorithms.

OK, back to the plot.

-1. Sharing the codes

The access codes are to be faxed from Beijing to Newark, although this gets interrupted by the Yakuza intruders. This is yet another device with unmarked buttons.

jm-7-uploading-g

This device makes the same beeps and screeches as a 1990s analog fax machine. Since we’ll later learn that all the fax messages and phone calls are stored digitally in cyberspace, this must be a skeuomorphism, the old familiar audio tones now serving just as progress indicators.

As with other audio output, the tones allow the user to know that the transmission is proceeding and when it ends without having to pay full attention to the device. On the other hand, there is potential for confusion here as the digital upload is (presumably) much faster. Most current day computer systems could upload three photos, even in high resolution, well before the sequence of tones would complete. Users would most likely wait longer than actually necessary before moving on to their next task.

-2. Washing up

During the upload Johnny clenches his fists and bites his mouthguard. When the upload finishes, he retreats to the bathroom in considerable pain. At one point blood flows from his nose, and he swipes his hand over the tap to wash it down the drain. The bathroom announces that the water temperature is 17 degrees. We’ll come back to this later.

jm-8-bathroom-tap

As Make It So emphasises in the chapter on brain interfaces, there is nothing in our current knowledge to suggest that writing or reading memories to or from a human brain would be painful. On the other hand, we know that information in the brain isthe shape of the neurons in the brain. Who knows what side effects will happen as those neurons are disconnected and reconnected as they need to be? We don’t know, so can’t really say whether it would hurt or not.

-3. Escaping the Yakuza

As mentioned in a prior post, while he is in the bathroom, the motion detector Johnny installed on the hotel door isn’t very effective and the Yakuza break in, kill everyone else, and acquire the second of the three access code images. Johnny escapes with the first image and flies to Newark, North America. 

Internet 2021

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The opening shot of Johnny Mnemonic is a brightly coloured 3D graphical environment. It looks like an abstract cityscape, with buildings arranged in rectangular grid and various 3D icons or avatars flying around. Text identifies this as the Internet of 2021, now cyberspace.

Internet 2021 display

Strictly speaking this shot is not an interface. It is a visualization from the point of view of a calendar wake up reminder, which flies through cyberspace, then down a cable, to appear on a wall mounted screen in Johnny’s hotel suite. However, we will see later on that this is exactly the same graphical representation used by humans. As the very first scene of the film, it is important in establishing what the Internet looks like in this future world. It’s therefore worth discussing the “look” employed here, even though there isn’t any interaction.

Cyberspace is usually equated with 3D graphics and virtual reality in particular. Yet when you look into what is necessary to implement cyberspace, the graphics really aren’t that important.

MUDs and MOOs: ASCII Cyberspace

People have been building cyberspaces since the 1980s in the form of MUDs and MOOs. At first sight these look like old style games such as Adventure or Zork. To explore a MUD/MOO, you log on remotely using a terminal program. Every command and response is pure text, so typing “go north” might result in “You are in a church.” The difference between MUD/MOOs and Zork is that these are dynamic multiuser virtual worlds, not solitary-player games. Other people share the world with you and move through it, adventuring, building, or just chatting. Everyone has an avatar and every place has an appearance, but expressed in text as if you were reading a book.

guest>>@go #1914
Castle entrance
A cold and dark gatehouse, with moss-covered crumbling walls. A passage gives entry to the forbidding depths of Castle Aargh. You hear a strange bubbling sound and an occasional chuckle.

Obvious exits:
path to Castle Aargh (#1871)
enter to Bridge (#1916)

Most impressive of all, these are virtual worlds with built-in editing capabilities. All the “graphics” are plain text, and all the interactions, rules, and behaviours are programmed in a scripting language. The command line interface allows the equivalent of Emacs or VI to run, so the world and everything in it can be modified in real time by the participants. You don’t even have to restart the program. Here a character creates a new location within a MOO, to the “south” of the existing Town Square:

laranzu>>@dig MyNewHome
laranzu>> @describe here as “A large and spacious cave full of computers”
laranzu>> @dig north to Town Square

The simplicity of the text interfaces leads people to think these are simple systems. They’re not. These cyberspaces have many of the legal complexities found in the real world. Can individuals be excluded from particular places? What can be done about abusive speech? How offensive can your public appearance be? Who is allowed to create new buildings, or modify existing ones? Is attacking an avatar a crime? Many 3D virtual reality system builders never progress that far, stopping when the graphics look good and the program rarely crashes. If you’re interested in cyberspace interface design, a long running textual cyberspace such as LambdaMOO or DragonMUD holds a wealth of experience about how to deal with all these messy human issues.

So why all the graphics?

So it turns out MUDs and MOOs are a rich, sprawling, complex cyberspace in text. Why then, in 1995, did we expect cyberspace to require 3D graphics anyway?

The 1980s saw two dimensional graphical user interfaces become well known with the Macintosh, and by the 1990s they were everywhere. The 1990s also saw high end 3D graphics systems becoming more common, the most prominent being from Silicon Graphics. It was clear that as prices came down personal computers would soon have similar capabilities.

At the time of Johnny Mnemonic, the world wide web had brought the Internet into everyday life. If web browsers with 2D GUIs were superior to the command line interfaces of telnet, FTP, and Gopher, surely a 3D cyberspace would be even better? Predictions of a 3D Internet were common in books such as Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold and magazines such as Wired at the time. VRML, the Virtual Reality Markup/Modeling Language, was created in 1995 with the expectation that it would become the foundation for cyberspace, just as HTML had been the foundation of the world wide web.

Twenty years later, we know this didn’t happen. The solution to the unthinkable complexity of cyberspace was a return to the command line interface in the form of a Google search box.

Abstract or symbolic interfaces such as text command lines may look more intimidating or complicated than graphical systems. But if the graphical interface isn’t powerful enough to meet their needs, users will take the time to learn how the more complicated system works. And we’ll see later on that the cyberspace of Johnny Mnemonic is not purely graphical and does allow symbolic interaction.

Bike interfaces

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There is one display on the bike to discuss, some audio features, and a whole lot of things missing.

image00

The bike display is a small screen near the front of the handlebars that displays a limited set of information to Jack as he’s riding.  It is seen used as a radar system.  The display is circular, with main content in the middle, a turquoise sweep, and a turquoise ring just inside the bezel. We never see Jack touch the screen, but we do see him work a small, unlabeled knob at the bottom left of the bike’s plates.  It is not obvious what this knob does, but Jack does fiddle with it.

While riding, the bike beeps loud enough for Jack to be able to listen to and understand changes in the screen’s status.  At slower speed and at a stop, the beeping is quieter, as if the bike adjusted the sound level to shout over the wind-noise at speed.  On screen, pulsing red dots representing targets.  After he stops, Jack removes his goggles to look at the screen, but we see him occasionally glance down at the screen while riding with goggles on.  It appears like the radar is legible in either case.

After most of the bike-related events in Oblivion, Jack gets the bike back when it has been ridden.  At one point we see an alternate display that shows large letters that says “Fuel Low”.  At that point the turquoise ring has only a sliver of thickness left.

There are several things that riders of modern motorcycles would expect to be included in a dashboard display, such as a speedometer and temperature gauge. But, we see neither an indication of speed nor some sense of whether the engine is getting too hot.  Similarly, we see no indication of running lights. Where are these things? How are they not needed?

image01

Basically useable…

Yes, the bike’s display shows very basic information that Jack needs for short range exploration and riding.  Jack is able to tell by the loud beeps which direction he should be going, and whether he’s on the right track.  These tones appear to change based on distance to target (hot/cold), with the screen acting as the directional finder.  He only needs to glance down at the display to confirm what the audio feedback is telling him and get a map view of the terrain.

…But is it enough?

This bike would not be road legal today, as it has only the most basic information Jack needs to go exploring: Where to head, and how much fuel he has left. There’s a lot missing.

The most obvious missing piece is the distance to go.  The beacon shows up on orbital scans, so Vika should have an approximate location and distance to go off of.  Jack would then know how long it would take to get there, and whether he had enough fuel for the trip.

He’s also missing a good terrain view in front of him.  On a bike, he isn’t able to traverse just anywhere.  A map and terrain display would let him plan out a route that the bike could handle, instead of guessing and hoping he doesn’t run into a sheer cliff.

Given that Jack is exploring far away from civilization, medical help, the Bubbleship, or even some kind of storage area for first aid or food would be useful.  A bike like this should also have some sort of safety gear.  Jack appears to dislike things like helmets or bulky armor, so the bike should have some indication of built-in safety systems like a deployable, wrap-around airbag.

Given the presence of Scavs, the bike should also have some kind of anti-theft mechanism on it. A lock that only allows Jack to operate the bike, or automatic locking of the wheels would make it difficult for the Scavs to steal it and use the TET technology inside.  Instead, we see that the bike is stolen after Jack descends into the cave, leaving Jack stranded.

To improve the wayfinding, the TET, Vika, or Jack could plot a general course that is relatively safe, fuel efficient, and on the way to the target for the bike.  The bike could then use Jack’s already-present communications system to guide Jack along the route using purely auditory feedback and artificial surround sound (or real surround sound if the earbud is advanced enough).

Why Waste Jack?

Jack is probably expensive in time and material to create, and giving him some protection would save the TET resources.  Even if the TET didn’t care about its crews, it should care about valuable technology that can be used against it.

Aside from the safety factor, which is probably due to the TET’s underlying lack of care about individual Jacks, Jack’s bike is able to navigate him where he needs to go and get him back.  The bike’s radar works even at full speed to point Jack in the right direction thanks to noise-adjusted audio feedback.  Only the addition of some simple anti-theft devices would make the bike more effective for both Jack and the TET.

The bike is not a good example for real-world bikes of the future, but does help set Oblivion in a world where the “employer” doesn’t care about the “employee” beyond their basic ability to get the job done.

COURSE OPTION ANALYSIS

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When Ibanez and Barcalow enter the atmosphere in the escape pod, we see a brief, shaky glimpse of the COURSE OPTION ANALYSIS interface. In the screen grab below, you can see it has a large, yellow, all-caps label at the top. The middle shows the TERRAIN PROFILE. This consists of a real-time, topography map as a grid of screen-green dots that produce a shaded relief map.

STARSHIP_TROOPERS_landing_trim

On the right is a column of text that includes:

  • The title, i.e., TERRAIN PROFILE
  • The location data: Planet P, Scylla Charybdis (which I don’t think is mentioned in the film, but a fun detail. Is this the star system?)
  • Coordinates in 3D: XCOORD, YCOORD, and ELEVATION. (Sadly these don’t appear to change, despite the implied precision of 5 decimal places)
  • Three unknown variables: NOMINAL, R DIST, HAZARD Q (these also don’t change)

The lowest part of the block reads that the SITE ASSESSMENT (at 74.28%, which—does it need to be said at this point—also does not change.)

Two inscrutable green blobs extend out past the left and bottom white line that borders this box. (Seriously what the glob are these meant to be?)

At the bottom is SCAN M and PLACE wrapped in the same purple “NV” wrappers seen throughout the Federation spaceship interfaces. At the bottom is an array of inscrutable numbers in white.

Since that animated gif is a little crazy to stare at, have this serene, still screen cap to reference for the remainder of the article.

vlcsnap-2014-12-11-00h47m37s145

 

Design

Three things to note in the analysis.

1. Yes, fuigetry

I’ll declare everything on the bottom to be filler unless someone out there can pull some apologetics to make sense of it. But even if an array of numbers was ever meant to be helpful, an emergency landing sequence does not appear to be the time. If it needs to be said, emergency interfaces should include only the information needed to manage the crisis.

2. The visual style of the topography

I have before blasted the floating pollen displays of Prometheus for not describing the topography well, but the escape pod display works while using similar pointillist tactics. Why does this work when the floating pollen does not? First, note that the points here are in a grid. This makes the relationship of adjacent points easy to understand. The randomness of the Promethean displays confounds this. Second, note the angle of the “light” in the scene, which appears to come from the horizon directly ahead of the ship. This creates a strong shaded relief effect, a tried and true method of conveying the shape of a terrain.

3. How does this interface even help?

Let’s get this out of the way: What’s Ibanez’ goal here? To land the pod safely. Agreed? Agreed.

Certainly the terrain view is helpful to understand the terrain in the flight path, especially in low visibility. But similar to the prior interface in this pod, there is no signal to indicate how the ship’s position and path relate to it. Are these hills kilometers below (not a problem) or meters (take some real care there, Ibanez.) This interface should have some indication of the pod. (Show me me.)

Additionally, if any of the peaks pose threats, she can avoid them tactically, but adjusting long before they’re a problem will probably help more than veering once she’s right upon them. Best is to show the optimal path, and highlight any threats that would explain the path. Doing so in color (presuming pilots who can see it) would make the information instantly recognizable.

Finally the big label quantifies a “site assessment,” which seems to relay some important information about the landing location. Presumably pilots know what this number represents (process indicator? structural integrity? deviation from an ideal landing strip? danger from bugs?) but putting it here does not help her. So what? If this is a warning, why doesn’t it look like one? Or is there another landing site that she can get to with a better assessment? Why isn’t it helping her find that by default? If this is the best site, why bother her with the number at all? Or the label at all? She can’t do anything with this information, and it takes up a majority of the screen. Better is just to get that noise off the screen along with all the fuigetry. Replace it with a marker for where the ideal landing site is, its distance, and update it live if her path makes that original site no longer viable.

landing_comp

Of course it must be said that this would work better as a HUD which would avoid splitting her attention from the viewport, but HUDs or augmented reality aren’t really a thing in the diegesis.

Narratively

The next scene shows them crashing through the side of a mountain, so despite this more helpful design, better for the scene might be to design a warning mode that reads SAFE SITE: NOT FOUND. SEARCHING… and let that blink manically while real-time, failing site assessments blink all over the terrain map. Then the next scene makes much more sense as they skip off a hill and into a mountain.

Starnav

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5

STARNAV

To travel to Jupiter, navigator Zander must engage the Star Drive, a faster than light travel mechanism. Sadly, we only see the output screens and not his input mechanism.

Captain Deladier tells Ibanez, "Steady as she goes, Number 2. Prepare for warp."
She dutifully replies, "Yes m’am."
Deladier turns to Barcalow and tells him, "Number 1, design for Jupiter orbit."

In response, he turns to his interface. We hear some soft bleeping as he does something off screen, and then we see his display. It’s a plan view of the Solar system with orbits of the planets described with blue circles. A slow-blink yellow legend at the top reads DESIGNATING INTRASYSTEM ORBITAL, with a purple highlight ring around Earth. As he accesses "STARNAV" (below) the display zooms slowly in to frame just Jupiter and Earth.

StarshipT-STARNAV07

STARNAV

As the zoom starts, a small box in the lower right hand corner displays a still image of Mars with a label LOCAL PRESET. In the lower left hand corner text reads STARNAV-0031 / ATLAS, MARS. After a moment these disappear replaced with STARNAV-3490 / ATLAS, NEPTUNE, STARNAV-149.58 / ATLAS URANUS, STARNAV-498.48 / ATLAS, SATURN, and finally STARNAV-4910.43 / ATLAS JUPITER. The Jupiter information blinks furiously for a bit confirming a selection just as the zoom completes, and DESIGNATING INTRASYSTEM ORBIT is replaced with the simpler legend COURSE. Jupiter has a yellow/orange ring focus in on it as part of the confirmation.

Some things that may be obvious, but ought to be said:

  1. How about "Destination" instead of "Local preset"? The latter is an implementation model. The former matches the navigator’s goals.
  2. Serial options are a waste here. Why force him to move through each one, read it to see if that’s the right one, and then move on? Wouldn’t an eight-part selection menu be much, much faster?
  3. The serial presentation is made worse in that the list is in some arbitrary order. It’s not alphabetical: MNUSJ? It’s not distance-order either. He starts at 4, he jumps to 8, 7, and 6 before reaching 5, which is Jupiter. Better for most default navigation purposes would be distance order. Sure, that would have meant only one stop between Earth and Jupiter. If you really needed more stops for the time, start at Mercury.

    4. planets_iau (1)

  4. What are those numbers after "STARNAV-"? It’s not planet size, since Uranus and Neptune should be similar, as should Saturn and Jupiter. And it’s not distance, since Jupiter has the largest number but is not the fathest out. Of course it could be some arbitrary file number, but it’s really unclear why the navigator would need to know this when using the screen. If a number had to be there, perhaps a ranking like Sol-V Best would be to get rid of any information that didn’t help him with the microinteraction.
  5. How about showing the course when the system has determined the course?
  6. NUI would be better. When he looks at that first screen, he should be able to touch Jupiter or its orbit ring.
  7. Agentive would be best. For instance, if the system monitors the conversation on the bridge, when it heard "design for Jupiter," it could prepare that course, and let the navigator confirm it.

StarshipT-STARNAV08

Sneakily agentive?

Regular readers of my writing know that agentive tech is a favorite of mine, but in this case there is some clue that this is actually what happened. Note that the zoom to frame Earth and Jupiter happens at the same time as he’s selecting Jupiter. How did it know ahead of time that he wanted Jupiter? He hadn’t selected it yet. How did it know to go and frame these two planets? Should he select first and this zoom happen afterward? Did it actually listen to Deladier and start heading there anyway?

No.

It would be prescient if this throwaway interface was some secret agentive thing, but sadly, given that the rest of the interfaces in the film are ofttimes goofy, powered controls, it’s quite likely that the cause and effect were mashed together to save time.

STARNAV fuigetry

Though I can’t quite make sense of them (and they don’t change in the sequence), for the sake of completeness, I should list the tabs that fill the top and bottom of the screen, in case its meaning becomes clear later. Along the top they have green tab strokes, and read from left to right POS, ROLL, LINE, NOR, PIVOT, LAY. Tabs at the bottom have orange and purple strokes and read SCAN M, PLACE, ANALYZE, PREF, DIAG-1 on the first row. The second row reads SERIAL [fitting -Ed.], CHART, DECODE, OVER-M, and DIAG-2.

The bug VP

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7

StarshipT_030

In biology class, the (unnamed) professor points her walking stick (she’s blind) at a volumetric projector. The tip flashes for a second, and a volumetric display comes to life. It illustrates for the class what one of the bugs looks like. The projection device is a cylinder with a large lens atop a rolling base. A large black plug connects it to the wall.

The display of the arachnid appears floating in midair, a highly saturated screen-green wireframe that spins. It has very slight projection rays at the cylinder and a "waver" of a scan line that slowly rises up the display. When it initially illuminates, the channels are offset and only unify after a second.

STARSHIP_TROOPERS_vdisplay

StarshipT_029

The top and bottom of the projection are ringed with tick lines, and several tick lines runs vertically along the height of the bug for scale. A large, lavender label at the bottom identifies this as an ARACHNID WARRIOR CLASS. There is another lavendar key too small for us to read.The arachnid in the display is still, though the display slowly rotates around its y-axis clockwise from above. The instructor uses this as a backdrop for discussing arachnid evolution and "virtues."

After the display continues for 14 seconds, it shuts down automatically.

STARSHIP_TROOPERS_vdisplay2

Interaction

It’s nice that it can be activated with her walking stick, an item we can presume isn’t common, since she’s the only apparently blind character in the movie. It’s essentially gestural, though what a blind user needs with a flash for feedback is questionable. Maybe that signal is somehow for the students? What happens for sighted teachers? Do they need a walking stick? Or would a hand do? What’s the point of the flash then?

That it ends automatically seems pointlessly limited. Why wouldn’t it continue to spin until it’s dismissed? Maybe the way she activated it indicated it should only play for a short while, but it didn’t seem like that precise a gesture.

Of course it’s only one example of interaction, but there are so many other questions to answer. Are there different models that can be displayed? How would she select a different one? How would she zoom in and out? Can it display aimations? How would she control playback? There are quite a lot of unaddressed details for an imaginative designer to ponder.

Display

The display itself is more questionable.

Scale is tough to tell on it. How big is that thing? Students would have seen video of it for years, so maybe it’s not such an issue. But a human for scale in the display would have been more immediately recognizable. Or better yet, no scale: Show the thing at 1:1 in the space so its scale is immediately apparent to all the students. And more appropriately, terrifying.

And why the green wireframe? The bugs don’t look like that. If it was showing some important detail, like carapice density, maybe, but this looks pretty even. How about some realistic color instead? Do they think it would scare kids? (More than the “gee-whiz!” girl already is?)

And lastly there’s the title. Yes, having it rotate accomodates viewers in 360 degrees, but it only reads right for half the time. Copy it, flip it 180º on the y-axis, and stack it, and you’ve got the most important textual information readable at most any time from the display.

Better of course is more personal interaction, individual displays or augmented reality where a student can turn it to examine the arachnid themselves, control the zoom, or follow up on more information. (Wnat to know more?) But the school budget in the world of Starship Troopers was undoubtedly stripped to increase military budget (what a crappy world that would be amirite?), and this single mass display might be more cost effective.

Surface Scan

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0

fifthelement-025

Later in the scene General Staedert orders a “thermonucleatic imaging.” The planet swallows it up. Then Staedert orders an “upfront loading of a 120-ZR missile” and in response to the order, the planet takes a preparatory defensive stance, armoring up like a pillbug. The scanner screens reflect this with a monitoring display.

fifthelement-026

In contrast to the prior screen for the Gravity (?) Scan, these screens make some sense. They show:

  • A moving pattern on the surface of a sphere slowing down
  • clear Big Label indications when those variables hit an important threshold, which is in this case 0
  • A summary assessment, “ZERO SURFACE ACTIVITY”
  • A key on the left identifying what the colors and patterns mean
  • Some sciency scatter plots on the right

The majority of these would directly help someone monitoring the planet for its key variables.

fifthelement-027

Though these are useful, it would be even more useful if the system would help track these variables not just when they hit a threshold, but how they are trending. Waveforms like the type used in medical monitoring of the “MOVEMENT LOCK,” “DYNAMIC FLOW,” and “DATA S C A T” might help the operator see a bit into the future rather than respond after the fact.