The thing that always fascinated me about LCARS and Star Trek interfaces was the labelling -- rather than a label that tells you what a button does, or whats being visualized on screen, you'll get a random-seeming number or an unlabeled chart.
Most of Starfleet Engineer training must be memorizing what those number labels mean...
I'll chalk that labeling scheme up to trying to look good for a shot but not needing to stand up to any real scrutiny, but I have often wondered how usable a LCARS-inspired interface would be and what would need to happen to make it usable.
I've seen demos like this for years, but never anything actually that useful made with the LCARS interface. It looks great, but I don't think it's actually useful for anything more than a dashboard. It goes make some great dashboards though.
The "canon" answer is that LCARS in addition to being extremely task-specific is alleged to be extremely user-specific and things are where a specific user expects them to be, laid out as that user expects to need them and different users would see very different layouts even for some of the same stations. (That implication is that they are extremely user-customized dashboards, so the design pattern resembling what today we call "dashboards" makes quite a bit of sense.)
Of course, given the technology at the time TNG was made, showing a lot of different user-specific LCARS panels was nearly impossible, which is why it is "alleged" more than canon fact in the TV shows.
I had the LCARS theme on my Nokia N770 like 15 years ago.
It wasn't purely a gimmick as it could be used to launch software, read news, play music etc. Very beautiful; too bad Nokia for well known reasons decided a few years later to stop developing devices running Linux, but that's another story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXBPjLdJnU
Interesting, this seems to be inspired by the LCARS interfaces seen in ST: Picard, rather than TNG. I do quite like the slight tweaks LCARS got in Picard.
On that note, for those who were put off by Picard, season 3 was actually quite good. Definitely worth a watch.
And if you haven't seen any of it, I would almost say reading the episode summaries for the first two seasons is enough. Some of those first two seasons was just catastrophically bad, even by Star Trek standards.
Even in season 3 it was dangerously cheesey at times. Also the plot was structurally awkward. They wanted to do a long story arc like DS9 but crammed it into too few episodes so it felt rushed and not like DS9, but then it also didn't have standalone episodes like TNG so it didn't feel like that either. But, to be fair, it's a new show so should be judged on its own but I don't believe the combination of pieces was greater than the sum in end, only less.
"Structurally awkward" is probably the best way to describe all three season arcs in Picard. The writers seemed to focus on "No tell, only show" plus "surprise twists" rather than character motivations so all three plots wound up feeling "upside down and backwards" in my opinion with key exposition infodumped in the end that I think would have been much better up front. They wouldn't have been "surprise twists" in that case, but that would have been for the better overall I think because you'd actually understand what all the various season villains were actually trying to accomplish.
"No tell, only show" is a common problem in a lot of "Prestige TV" right now, leading to so many episodes feeling oddly paced where things need entire scenes across multiple episodes that probably should have been a two minute conversation. So that is not entirely a Picard flaw given how much current TV seems to suffer from it. (It certainly comes from a good intention, coming from the adage "show don't tell" taken to a logical, but awful extreme.) But it stands out a lot more in Picard especially, I think, because you watch old TNG episodes and they did so much exposition/setup in just a carefully worded "Captain's Log" and in that context it seems (at least to me) so how obvious how much could the Picard TV show have used a few more "ex-Admiral's Log" moments to just speed up a lot of filler.
While I watched all of it, I was distracted watching youtube on the side, so I didn't pay close enough attention. The following criticism might not stand to scrutiny.
I didn't like S3 (just as I didn't like the previous two seasons). An endless violation of SF protocols (random retired people overruling a captain, the entire fleet parading around Earth), bad overreaching acting, resurrecting Data for the n-th time, unconnected story plots (Picard's son, the Changelings' revenge, Borgs), also Borgs who supposedly have Agnes as the new queen and should be friendly now.
After the excellent season 1, I'm putting all my hopes into SNW S2.
This comment has a bunch of spoilers in it. I've watched it so this hasn't changed anything for me, but I'm sure many here intent to watch it but haven't had the time yet. Reacting these spoilers may be a good idea.
> Borgs who supposedly have Agnes as the new queen and should be friendly now
Spoilers and tangents:
It's mentioned in only a throwaway line of dialog in S3 (by Captain Shaw) that those Borg were busy elsewhere. (Though we know not what or why.)
Allegedly, Agnes' Borg are the (Memory Alpha canon) Borg Coöperative, an offshoot of the Borg that play interesting roles in Memory Beta canon (several novels, Star Trek Online), though have a different origin from Memory Beta canon and different organization structure and don't properly connect to the VOY episodes hinting at such… This is all alleged as Picard's writers didn't actually give us enough text to that affect, it's all just subtext right now in Alpha canon plus making inferences from Beta canon (and trying not to get upset that they took one of the good, fun ideas from Beta canon and nearly broke it by doing it so poorly).
(The fun of the Borg Cooperative [in Beta canon] versus the Borg Collective is that the Borg Cooperative ultimately shows that the true assimilation threat in the Star Trek galaxy, while slower and "more peaceful", is truly the Federation, especially when its ideals gets into a culture's head and won't leave. The Collective is mostly defeated and will never assimilate all of the Federation, but the Federation certainly assimilated enough Borg to form its own faction of peaceful Federation allies.)
Did Discovery ever recover? I stopped after a few seasons but see some occasional references to events I haven't viewed yet in canon and later episodes.
I stopped after season 2, and I have not been compelled to look into further seasons.
For me, Discovery just misses the point and panders to the demands of a wider audience. The production value us excellent, very talented cast and likeable characters, but they carried the weak writing hard. The series emphasis on action and war was also punctuated mainly thanks to the characters rather than any semblance of Star Trek.
Unfortunately, this is the destiny of virtually everything, provided that the target is to maximise profit and maximising profit is equated to maximising volume and minimising risk.
Funny, now that I think about it, Quark wouldn't struggle to find a place in our society today at all. He would probably work at a big movie studio.
I think S3 of Discovery is when it finally figures out what it wants to be when it grows up. The time jump at the end of S2 and how it plays out in S3 were great ideas and really helped Discovery solve a bunch of lingering problems from S1 and S2. I loved S3 and S4 had a lot of good stuff including its ending few episodes was some of the best of Star Trek and I'm looking forward to S5 and a little sad that S5 is known to be its last, because I think that's the most interesting part of the Star Trek timeline right now and they've been cagey about whatever shows may next be in that part of the timeline.
Just look at it and use your logic. It's simply very basic geometry combined with a specific font. That's it. There's decorative stuff like the curved spine but the layout is very simple. The buttons are rectangular there's nothing super complex here that is very far from a basic flat design. I would say lcars is a precursor to flat design.
Don't let your thinking be flat where you can only come to conclusions that are data driven. Use your intuition and project the creative consequences yourself. LCARS is owned by paramount so it can't really be used as a UI theme anywhere else without permission.
But what if it could? Just imagine it, it's not that hard. Hacker news can be themed into lcars with largely zero change to the XY location of every element. Picture it with your minds eye.
edit: I ended up finding an example: https://www.thelcars.com/menu/. But everyone should be able to come to the same conclusion without data. It's so trivial that illegal fan made examples do exist.
Just to nerd out a bit, according to the ST: TNG Technical Manual written by Michael Okuda (co-designer of the original LCARS graphically) and Rich Sternbach, LCARS is also a tactile interface. Pressure sensitive, with force feedback, depth and resistance of the display can be varied slightly, creating ridges, variation in texture, which can complement the display. It's a fascinating idea.
Aren't apple's force/3d touch screens basically that, minus actually changing the interface geometry (but still having pretty sophisticated haptic feedback)?
I believe that was the result of a patent lawsuit brought by a company called Immersion, who developed several haptic technologies during the first wave of VR tech in the early-mid 1990s. Why they couldn't work out a licensing deal is anyone's guess; even Nintendo pays those royalties.
They made that explicit in Voyager. In Year of Hell, Tuvok switches his consoles to a tactile interface after being blinded by an exploding torpedo and continues as tactical officer using that.
One of my favourite Voyager episodes. While being an action two-parter, which I wouldn't normally care for over ethical/exploratory stories, they were careful to look at the practical and emotional implications of surviving in a battered starship with a skeleton crew throughout.
Tuvok and Seven becoming acquainted through her assistance with the consequences of his injury and sharing perspectives on their shipmates was fun.
Other scenarios like being trapped in a damaged turbolift, The Doctor struggling with the more utilitarian ethics of emergency medicine, all refreshing to see.
Living on "spiced up" rations while hiding in a nebula – that they can barely get out of afterwards – was another nice touch.
Actual combat was not the focus and I appreciated that.
In general the glimpse of Voyager as a story where state persists over time rather than reset each episode was compelling. It's not the only example of a kind of statefulness, but it reserves a place in my heart for Year of Hell, even though the actual time paradox A-plot is silly.
YoH and The Killing Game were both great, Worst Case Scenario and Learning Curve had a lot of potential but after the first couple of seasons they seemed to get bored of exploring the Maquis-Starfleet conflict other than Repression in S7.
> Tuvok and Seven becoming acquainted through her assistance with the consequences of his injury and sharing perspectives on their shipmates was fun.
> Other scenarios like being trapped in a damaged turbolift, The Doctor struggling with the more utilitarian ethics of emergency medicine, all refreshing to see.
> Living on "spiced up" rations while hiding in a nebula – that they can barely get out of afterwards – was another nice touch.
The collaborator versus resistance aspect of Chakotay and Paris on the timeship too.
> In general the glimpse of Voyager as a story where state persists over time rather than reset each episode was compelling.
Yeah, I have a lot of time for the perspective that the ship should have been in bits by Endgame.
I love the Okudagrams sequence during the closing credits of Season 3 of Picard.
Less relatedly, I'm only on episode 3 but for an old Trekkie like myself this season is the gift I wished so hard for and never thought could ever possibly come true. Thank you Paramount!
I remember installing a Windows XP LCARS theme, back when I was watching Star Trek every day as soon as I got back from college – and I remember strongly regretting the decision immediately.
Needless to say, it looked kinda cool, but not quite right for obvious reasons, and the actual experience of using it was... not great.
To borrow an expression from House MD, it wasn't a unicorn, it was a donkey with a plunger taped to its forehead.
I settled on making myself an LCARS new tab web page instead. That was pretty cool, I've often given thought to remaking it... but I'd probably get sidetracked too heavily from my actual work and end up an insomniac with an LCARS Linux distro and a very full inbox.
Aside: I really miss the Windows Classic look. I know you can sort of get it back in Windows 10 but I'm not on Windows these days, I just miss how Windows 98/2000/XP looked and behaved... well, maybe behaved is a bad word.
Aside 2: It appears the author of this simulation has made a few of these LCARS simulations
https://www.mewho.com/
48 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadMost of Starfleet Engineer training must be memorizing what those number labels mean...
Of course, given the technology at the time TNG was made, showing a lot of different user-specific LCARS panels was nearly impossible, which is why it is "alleged" more than canon fact in the TV shows.
And if you haven't seen any of it, I would almost say reading the episode summaries for the first two seasons is enough. Some of those first two seasons was just catastrophically bad, even by Star Trek standards.
"No tell, only show" is a common problem in a lot of "Prestige TV" right now, leading to so many episodes feeling oddly paced where things need entire scenes across multiple episodes that probably should have been a two minute conversation. So that is not entirely a Picard flaw given how much current TV seems to suffer from it. (It certainly comes from a good intention, coming from the adage "show don't tell" taken to a logical, but awful extreme.) But it stands out a lot more in Picard especially, I think, because you watch old TNG episodes and they did so much exposition/setup in just a carefully worded "Captain's Log" and in that context it seems (at least to me) so how obvious how much could the Picard TV show have used a few more "ex-Admiral's Log" moments to just speed up a lot of filler.
While I watched all of it, I was distracted watching youtube on the side, so I didn't pay close enough attention. The following criticism might not stand to scrutiny.
I didn't like S3 (just as I didn't like the previous two seasons). An endless violation of SF protocols (random retired people overruling a captain, the entire fleet parading around Earth), bad overreaching acting, resurrecting Data for the n-th time, unconnected story plots (Picard's son, the Changelings' revenge, Borgs), also Borgs who supposedly have Agnes as the new queen and should be friendly now.
After the excellent season 1, I'm putting all my hopes into SNW S2.
I had not bothered based on 2 seasons of Discovery and 3 episodes of Picard. I just went back to DS9.
Also, from the same source as OP:
https://www.mewho.com/trek/
Spoilers and tangents:
It's mentioned in only a throwaway line of dialog in S3 (by Captain Shaw) that those Borg were busy elsewhere. (Though we know not what or why.)
Allegedly, Agnes' Borg are the (Memory Alpha canon) Borg Coöperative, an offshoot of the Borg that play interesting roles in Memory Beta canon (several novels, Star Trek Online), though have a different origin from Memory Beta canon and different organization structure and don't properly connect to the VOY episodes hinting at such… This is all alleged as Picard's writers didn't actually give us enough text to that affect, it's all just subtext right now in Alpha canon plus making inferences from Beta canon (and trying not to get upset that they took one of the good, fun ideas from Beta canon and nearly broke it by doing it so poorly).
(The fun of the Borg Cooperative [in Beta canon] versus the Borg Collective is that the Borg Cooperative ultimately shows that the true assimilation threat in the Star Trek galaxy, while slower and "more peaceful", is truly the Federation, especially when its ideals gets into a culture's head and won't leave. The Collective is mostly defeated and will never assimilate all of the Federation, but the Federation certainly assimilated enough Borg to form its own faction of peaceful Federation allies.)
For me, Discovery just misses the point and panders to the demands of a wider audience. The production value us excellent, very talented cast and likeable characters, but they carried the weak writing hard. The series emphasis on action and war was also punctuated mainly thanks to the characters rather than any semblance of Star Trek.
Unfortunately, this is the destiny of virtually everything, provided that the target is to maximise profit and maximising profit is equated to maximising volume and minimising risk.
Funny, now that I think about it, Quark wouldn't struggle to find a place in our society today at all. He would probably work at a big movie studio.
Don't let your thinking be flat where you can only come to conclusions that are data driven. Use your intuition and project the creative consequences yourself. LCARS is owned by paramount so it can't really be used as a UI theme anywhere else without permission.
But what if it could? Just imagine it, it's not that hard. Hacker news can be themed into lcars with largely zero change to the XY location of every element. Picture it with your minds eye.
edit: I ended up finding an example: https://www.thelcars.com/menu/. But everyone should be able to come to the same conclusion without data. It's so trivial that illegal fan made examples do exist.
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/haptic-touch-vs-3d-touch-wha...
(I'm just ranting.)
Tuvok and Seven becoming acquainted through her assistance with the consequences of his injury and sharing perspectives on their shipmates was fun.
Other scenarios like being trapped in a damaged turbolift, The Doctor struggling with the more utilitarian ethics of emergency medicine, all refreshing to see.
Living on "spiced up" rations while hiding in a nebula – that they can barely get out of afterwards – was another nice touch.
Actual combat was not the focus and I appreciated that.
In general the glimpse of Voyager as a story where state persists over time rather than reset each episode was compelling. It's not the only example of a kind of statefulness, but it reserves a place in my heart for Year of Hell, even though the actual time paradox A-plot is silly.
> Tuvok and Seven becoming acquainted through her assistance with the consequences of his injury and sharing perspectives on their shipmates was fun.
> Other scenarios like being trapped in a damaged turbolift, The Doctor struggling with the more utilitarian ethics of emergency medicine, all refreshing to see.
> Living on "spiced up" rations while hiding in a nebula – that they can barely get out of afterwards – was another nice touch.
The collaborator versus resistance aspect of Chakotay and Paris on the timeship too.
> In general the glimpse of Voyager as a story where state persists over time rather than reset each episode was compelling.
Yeah, I have a lot of time for the perspective that the ship should have been in bits by Endgame.
Less relatedly, I'm only on episode 3 but for an old Trekkie like myself this season is the gift I wished so hard for and never thought could ever possibly come true. Thank you Paramount!
Needless to say, it looked kinda cool, but not quite right for obvious reasons, and the actual experience of using it was... not great.
To borrow an expression from House MD, it wasn't a unicorn, it was a donkey with a plunger taped to its forehead.
I settled on making myself an LCARS new tab web page instead. That was pretty cool, I've often given thought to remaking it... but I'd probably get sidetracked too heavily from my actual work and end up an insomniac with an LCARS Linux distro and a very full inbox.
Aside: I really miss the Windows Classic look. I know you can sort of get it back in Windows 10 but I'm not on Windows these days, I just miss how Windows 98/2000/XP looked and behaved... well, maybe behaved is a bad word.
Aside 2: It appears the author of this simulation has made a few of these LCARS simulations https://www.mewho.com/