Our last 3D file browsing system is from much later and in a different format. It appears in the TV series Community, season 6, episode 2, “Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care”. Thanks to the scifiinterfaces reader known by the handle djempirical for this recommendation.
Community is a TV sitcom rather than a film, with short, 25-minute episodes. The setting is a small Colorado USA community college at the time of broadcast, the years 2009 to 2015, where the characters are staff and students. The series is usually described as a cult classic rather than mainstream, with lots of geeky references and shout outs (it’s very quotable). While there are plot arcs across seasons, the episodes are largely standalone. I didn’t know anything about Community when I watched this particular episode but still enjoyed it.
There are significant differences in presentation and style from our earlier films. Community is made and set twenty years later, and so both characters and audience are assumed to be familiar with personal computers, smart phones, the Internet; and to at least have some idea of what virtual reality is. The earlier films treated computer systems with respect or even awe, while here the new technology is a target to make fun of.
The characters in Community use technology, but it is not usually central to the story, unlike for example The IT Crowd or Silicon Valley. This episode is one of the exceptions. Another is episode 5.8, “App Development and Condiments”, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in social media.
This particular episode has two plotlines, only one of which involves computers and interfaces. The easily influenced Dean of Greendale Community College has spent $5,000 (US) on a new virtual reality system called a “VirtuGood 6500”. (That the characters consider this expensive shows how much technology has changed in twenty years. Old timers like myself who remember the price tags on those elegant SGI 3D workstations mutter about kids today not knowing how good they have it.) College administrator Francesca and teacher Jeff first try to persuade Dean Pelton to locate the serial number of the system within the virtual reality world, which they need to return the system for a refund. When that fails, they must try to persuade the Dean to leave VR and return to the real world.
Note to those unfamiliar with the show: Though the Dean has a full name, in the show and amongst the fandom, he is known as “the Dean,” and so we’ll be referring to him as such.
VirtuGood 6500 Virtual Reality World
The first scene with the new virtual reality system shows the Dean entering virtual reality for the first time.
He wears gloves and a very large headset, which are wired to a small computer worn in the middle of the back.
The Dean’s first experience of virtual reality. He is watching his hands rezz up. Community (2016)
There is a ring around the body at waist level, sliding vertically along guide posts. It is not just a barrier to protect against falling off the platform, because the Dean is wearing a seatbelt-style harness that connects him to the ring. He stands, in socks not shoes, on a smooth plastic platform base.
Jeff and Francesca read the instructions and watch the Dean. Community (2016)
While he is fiddling with straps and cables, Francesca and Jeff are reading the instructions in a 20 cm thick binder. The instructions for a new user are “When entering virtual reality you should calibrate the system by looking at your own hands, then turning them over and looking at the backs of them with a sense of wonder.” This is the first of several references to Disclosure and other earlier films.
Externally, the VR system indicates it is active by lighting up red LEDs around the front edge of the headset and around the waist ring. Internally, the system rezzes up the background from grayscale to color, and then rezzes up the hands of the avatar.
Neither the avatar nor the world are photorealistic, but since this is 2015, the graphics are much better than any similar system from the 1990s would be — even when made on a sitcom budget, rather than a feature film.
The Dean, represented by his blue avatar, arrives in the virtual world. Community (2016)
The ground plane is a polished hexagonal grid and the sky is an abstract purple pattern. Classical pillars are scattered around the landscape. A pterosaur flies overhead for no obvious reason, perhaps a reference to the old W Industries Dactyl Nightmare VR game.
Finding the serial number
The sequence we’re interested in happens just after the Dean’s initial forays into setting the timezone and clock, both of which require a complicated full-body gestural interface. Meanwhile, Francesca is reading the gigantic manual and finds that they can’t return the system for a refund without the serial number, which is stored within the virtual world.
Francesca and Jeff know that the Dean won’t want to return the VR system, so ask him to look for the file without revealing why they want it. The conversation highlights how bizarre the metaphors of this virtual world are:
Jeff
Go to…settings.
Dean
Is that in the volcano or the cobbler’s workshop?
Jeff
It’s a monastery.
The Dean turns his body around, which he can do because all the cables are connected to the computer on his back, not to the platform. He “walks” and then “runs” in place like a mime artist, body weight supported by the harness and waist ring. Since there aren’t any sensors attached to his legs or feet, there must be cameras or pressure sensors in the base. The avatar of the Dean runs across the landscape to the Settings monastery.
The Dean reaches the monastery. Community (2016)
The gates automatically open as he approaches. Inside, there is a checkerboard floor rather than hexagons, more pillars around the walls, and a central pool of green water.
The Dean enters the interior of the monastery. Community (2016)
At the far wall is a Disclosure–style filing cabinet, but this one is gigantic. It is so big that the Dean actually has to climb up to the drawer he wants.
The Dean climbs the filing cabinet to find a particular drawer. Community (2016)
At least these cabinets have permanent labels, unlike Disclosure’s. Inside are, again, Disclosure-style individual files.
The Dean opens one drawer in the filing cabinet. Community (2016)
The Dean finds the serial number file and holds it up. Jeff asks him to print it “by dragging it to the accessories and peripherals castle and planting it in the printer garden”. But the Dean has guessed the real reason why Francesca and Jeff want the file, so instead throws the file into the air and tries to delete it. He first makes a pushing gesture, palm out, which casts a beam at the file while he shouts “Delete”.
The Dean shoots a ray at the document. Community (2016)
In response the system pops up a giant text panel and also speaks the response in a slightly artificial voice, saying, “Selected”.
Dean Pelton receives system feedback that is text and speech, rather than graphical. Community (2016)
Since the file wasn’t deleted, we can assume that it can’t process voice input. He next mimes holding a bow and pulling an arrow back. A virtual bow and arrow appear, which he uses to shoot the file.
The Dean shoots an arrow at the document. Community (2016)
The arrow doesn’t do what he wants either, sorting the file. Finally he jumps into the air, catches the file, and drops to the ground. He then holds the file underwater, using both hands, in the central fountain. The file appears to struggle slightly and bubbles appear.
The Dean holds the serial number document under water. Community (2016)
The bubbles stop, the file sinks and disappears, and the system responds “DELETED”.
The Dean has foiled the plan to return the system for a refund, and he stays in virtual reality. Francesca sends Jeff to appeal directly to “the architect” (a shout-out to The Matrix), local VR designer and manufacturer Elroy. There’s more quotable dialogue here, such as this description of a task which we didn’t see:
“In order to copy a file, you have to throw a fireball at it. Then absorb the fire, then drop the flaming file into a crystal lake, then take out both copies and throw them into the side of a mountain.”
Jeff is unsuccessful and returns to Greendale, but Elroy is sufficiently moved to change his mind. Elroy visits Greendale with his own VR system, a more compact and apparently wireless headset and gloves, and enters the virtual world himself, demonstrating that this is also a multi-user system.
Elroy, after summoning a storm and growing to giant size, intimidates the Dean Pelton. Community (2016)
Elroy distracts the Dean in the virtual world, giving Jeff in the real world the opportunity to disconnect him. Elroy refunds the $5,000 and takes the VirtuGood 6500 away since we never see it again. The Dean is apparently cured of his VR addiction, although a closing shot does show him experimenting with one of those cardboard headsets for a phone.
Tagged: 3D rendering, ALL CAPS, HUD, Virtual Reality, addiction, architecture, avatar, big label, blue, direct manipulation, disposal, doorway, failure, furniture, gestural interface, gray, green, grid, hand, identification number, interaction, laser, mental models, mnemonic load, monster, navigating, plastic, point to select, poking fun, purple, sans serif, sense making, storage, touch, touch gesture, voice feedback, weapon, workflow
Analysis
In this episode, virtual reality and the 3D file system are deliberately portrayed as ridiculous for comedic effect. This doesn’t make it unworthy of analysis. For example, there’s this throw away line from Francesca to Jeff after the Dean has been in virtual reality for a few hours:
“He joked about wanting a pee jar earlier, and it’s gradually becoming less of a joke.”
It’s funny but also raises a real issue. Players of online computer games may do so for marathon sessions lasting many hours, and there are stories about the truly dedicated using bottles and buckets rather than getting up and leaving to use a toilet. What will virtual reality participants wearing headsets and gloves do? Wear space-suit style tubing? This is something that the serious VR literature rarely discusses, even when predicting how much time we’ll all be spending in virtual reality in the future.
How believable is the interface?
The VirtuGood 6500 is very believable for 2015. The headset is too large, perhaps because the props maker needed the extra space to keep the glowing lights and any batteries away from the actor’s face. Otherwise the headset and gloves are standard for VR, and using a backpack computer is an excellent design, removing the problem of entanglement as the user moves around.
On first viewing, I assumed that the supporting waist ring and smooth platform base were entirely fictional and built to keep costs down. Then while researching this review I found the Virtuix Omni, a VR treadmill where the user is supported by a waist level ring and walks or runs in place on a smooth surface. The only difference is that the Omni requires special shoes.
The virtual world, or at least the filing system, are also believable. The 3D graphics are well within the capabilities of a 2015 PC. The gestures we see are clear and easily distinguishable from one another. The mapping of gestures to actions may be silly, but not technically difficult.
How well does the interface inform the narrative of the story?
The 3D file browsing interface works very well within the narrative since the objective of this plotline is to make fun of it. The virtual world is full of bizarre visual elements such as the pillars that don’t support anything. The gestures performed by users are dramatic and completely mismatched with the intended tasks.
This particular system was deliberately designed to be bad, but poorly designed visual metaphors and difficult to discover gestural interfaces are not unknown in the real world. It’s a useful reminder that virtual reality systems will not automatically be easier and more intuitive to use simply because they more closely mimic the real world or are more immersive.
How well does the interface equip the character to achieve their goals?
This is another awful file browser. Even the Dean, a virtual reality enthusiast, is thwarted in his first two attempts to delete a file.
However it does succeed in the broader goal of making the user feel good. The Dean enjoys virtual reality and the sensation of power so much that he refuses to leave. It’s usually not recommended for mass market software but there is satisfaction in mastering an obscure interface that other people can’t.
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.
There is a voice-activated help system, which will summon a virtual “Angel” assistant.
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.
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
Communications
Operations
System Control
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.
And finally we come to the often-promised cyberspace search sequence, my favourite interface in the film. It starts at 36:30 and continues, with brief interruptions to the outside world, to 41:00. I’ll admit there are good reasons not to watch the entire film, but if you are interested in interface design, this will be five minutes well spent. Included here are the relevant clips, lightly edited to focus on the user interfaces.
Johnny and Jane have broken into a neighbourhood computer shop, which in 2021 will have virtual reality gear just as today even the smallest retailer has computer mice. Johnny clears miscellaneous parts off a table and then sits down, donning a headset and datagloves.
Headset
Headsets haven’t really changed much since 1995 when this film was made. Barring some breakthrough in neural interfaces, they remain the best way to block off the real world and immerse a user into the virtual world of the computer. It’s mildly confusing to a current day audience to hear Johnny ask for “eyephones”, which in 1995 was the name of a particular VR headset rather than the popular “iPhone” of today.
Throughout this cyberspace sequence the virtual reality system Johnny uses gives vocal feedback, usually just confirming what has happened or repeating information visible in cyberspace. Johnny will also use voice commands himself. Jane seemingly can’t hear this feedback, as she has no idea what is happening other than what Johnny tells her. No earbuds or headphones are visible, but nearly all headsets then and now incorporate audio output as well as visual display so presumably sound is the function of the silver bulges at the back of the headset.
Dataglove
Datagloves are less common today. These track the position and orientation of the hands as they move, in this particular case to the bending of individual fingers. In 1995 this was done with magnetic or ultrasonic trackers on each hand and various fibre optic or potentiometer bend sensors on the finger joints, all built into a rather bulky glove. Today this can be done passively by a video camera, for example the Microsoft Kinect or Leap Motion Controller. With these technologies it’s not even necessary to paint dots on the fingers, which unlike faces have convenient gaps in between the points of interest.
Johnny mostly keeps his arms horizontal just above the table surface, but we will occasionally see him reach up. As chapter 5 of Make It So points out, trying to operate a vertical touch screen or gesture interface for any length of time is exhausting, and the same would be true if the VR system required him to frequently lift his hands and arms above the conventional keyboard height.
System status
There is also a system status display on the table.
Various indicators light up as Johnny gets ready. It would be helpful if this were mirrored to the headset, so Johnny could at least see which components are working or not without removing it.
My first impression was that the grid on the table might be some kind of optical tracking aid. Then I remembered that this is a worktable, and protective table mats with a grid pattern printed on them are sold in craft and hardware shops. Not everything in the future needs to be advanced technology.
Voice feedback
As Johnny performs his various actions in cyberspace, another synthesized voice gives him constant feedback, most often telling him which actions and objects have been selected. I suggest this is for new users, who may be confused about exactly what they can and cannot do in virtual reality. (Of course, it is also very useful for telling us the audience what is happening.) Johnny himself is not a new VR users, but since this is a system assembled straight out of the box he gets the default setting. Over time a voice constantly telling you what you’ve done probably becomes irritating, which is why earlier systems were not so chatty.
The tracker
We see a second person in cyberspace during this sequence, although only briefly. This is the Pharmakom tracker, who is trying to locate Johnny and Jane for the Yakuza.
He too wears a headset and gloves, but also has a one piece earphone and microphone. He uses this not for voice commands, but for a phone connection to Shinji, the Yakuza leader in a car.
He is standing in front of a lectern type display.
This shows a street map, with the red cross hairs presumably the location being examined. Current day VR systems often mirror what the headset is showing to a more conventional display as this is very useful in testing and debugging. Note also the rows of unmarked buttons on either side. I’ll discuss these and similar buttons below.
Having him stand is an interesting choice. The advantage of standing in VR is that it allows the participant to bend and turn more freely, using body motion as an input as well as hands and head. The disadvantages are that this is more tiring, and that with the headset blocking the real world, it’s very easy to bump into things. The first commercial VR game, “Dactyl Nightmare” by W Industries, had a waist-high padded fence around the player to stop them falling over or walking too far and breaking the cables.
Here the tracker is risking a painful bruised knee. Perhaps he is a standing desk enthusiast who believes the other health benefits make it worthwhile.
The Curious Unmarked Buttons…
A recurring hardware interface in Johnny Mnemonic is the grid of unmarked buttons. There were two in the upload hotel suite, the image grabber, and the fax machine. And here the lectern display used by the tracker has more of the same.
I can’t recall any others like this, with one exception: the Pixar animated short “Lifted”, which has a vast array of unmarked identical switches. But that was a deliberate caricature, making fun of terribly designed and confusing interfaces.
Research tells us that labelled buttons and keys are the best for learning and use, from computers and phones to their software equivalents on modern touchscreen phones. Even the buttons on consumer remote controls are marked, however cryptic the symbols may be. The only unmarked buttons in current day regular use are those used around the edges of displays for ATMs and in aircraft cockpits. Here the meaning of these “soft buttons” will be shown by the text or graphic displayed nearby.
Image by the author
But this isn’t possible for the unmarked buttons in Johnny Mnemonic, which either don’t have screens or don’t have buttons next to the screen.
…Are a platform for virtual buttons
Perhaps the buttons on the lectern are unmarked because they’re intended for use in cyberspace. If the computer system generating the virtual reality is aware of the lectern’s location in relation to the user, it could generate labels within the virtual reality that the user would perceive as exactly where the physical buttons are. The buttons would then provide actual tactile feedback for location and when pressed.
The C-57D is a military vessel with much of its technology feeling like that of a naval vessel.
Lt. Farman navigates the ship towards Altair.
The navigator, called an astrogator, sits at a station on the bridge facing a large armillary. He has a binocular scope into which he can peer to see outside the ship. Within easy reach to the left is a table-top panel of concentrically arranged buttons. To his right is a similar panel. Directly in front of him, beyond the scope, is a massive armillary that is the centerpiece of the bridge.
A model of United Planets Cruiser C-57D sits at the center of the ship’s armillary.
A model of the C-57D sits at the center of a transparent globe, which rotates in turn inside of another transparent globe. The surface of the interior globe is detailed with a graduated ring around its equator, semi-meridians extending from the poles, and a number of other colorful graduations. The outer, stationary globe has markings on the surface, which seem to describe stars and major constellations as dots and lines.
The utility of the armillary is somewhat questionable. From a relatively fixed position like the Earth, the celestial sphere doesnt change. But while astronavigating, the celestial sphere would change. Even though Altair is a relatively close to Earth, the change in position of the stars on the celestial sphere would likely be significant to correct positioning. So, for this to be useful, the markings on the outer sphere should be dynamic. Of course in the short sequence we see the armillary in use, we would not see the markings change, but there are no visual cues that it is dynamic in this way.
Additionally it should be noted that the biggest and most important things with which Lt. Farman would be concerned, i.e. the star Altair and planet Altair IV, are not represented in the display at all and represents a major failing of the design.
The crew makes it safely through decelleration.
One of the movie’s technology conceits is that deceleration from light speed is a shaky business. To protect the crew during this phase of travel, they stand atop deceleration stations. These small cylindrical pedestals have matching extensions from the ceiling that look vaguely like circular ventilation grills. Ten seconds before deceleration, the lights dim, a beeper sounds ten times, and the crew members step onto the pedestals. They fade from view in a beam of fuzzy aquamarine light. They fade back into view as the blue light disappears. During the period when the crew has passed from view, one would expect the ship to be shaking violently as discussed, but this doesn’t happen. Nonetheless, as the crew steps out of the station, a few are holding their necks as if in pain.
