Interfaces in Sci-Fi Movies
Sci-fi films hold sway over the coming times with their infinite raw prophecies. From artificial intelligence to virtual reality and beyond… the expectations are endless.
My heart has always carried an insane fervour for science-fiction movies like an eternal flame. Envisioning the face of technology in the future and how humans will use and interact with devices always thrills my mind. Free from all shackles of technological limitations, sci-fi movies portray the technology vision as extremely well usable, fast, always-on, with no waiting time for rebooting or loading, and forever available to interact with. Granting all laud and honor to these efficient human-machine interfaces, that frustrating notification showing how low your battery level is, no longer pops up! Do you require precise information about something? No worries, just ask your personal AI. Such is the glorious world of science fiction.
Since my early days working as a design lead, my heart had always eagerly held the diverting user interfaces in high esteem, alongside keeping up with designers, animators, and CG artists who come up with unbelievably awe-inspiring science-fiction concepts.
The mundane and functional use of computer interfaces in the real world purloins the user of all exhilaration. Let’s be real, absolutely no one in the history of mankind has ever shown any sort of zeal whatsoever in browsing webs, navigating through complex menus, or using apps on a small display. Everyone frowns at the iOS updates or when new versions of Zoom, Facebook, or ZBrush with all-new UI changes are rolling out. But these sci-fi movies are not tied to any constraints; user interfaces aren’t just valuable, they’re the dopest shit you could ever dream of!
Future for Interface Design and Technology
The first-ever GUI was designed for the NLS (oN-Line System) computer system in the 1960s. Since then, hardware has gotten much more advanced, allowing us to make GUIs as magnificent as they are today, or at least will be someday…
As technology and modern devices serve to intertwine with one another in order to integrate into our homes, workspaces, clothes, and accessories, the relationship that we have with them will no longer be dictated by utility, but by how well they fit into our lives. This is where we feel that design for film, experiences, games, apps and device technology really begins to converge.
In Disneys’ Boba Fett (2022) episode where the Mandalorian fixes an old broken N1-Naboo starship and flies around the planet with warp speed out-maneuvering X-wings into oblivion, the N1 cockpit design depicts how far we have reached in spaceship display designs. From showing old X-wing cockpits in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), an early concept by Ralph McQuarrie, with large rainbow color buttons to a simple intuitive interface design and elegant controls. Our way of foretelling the interfaces in spacecraft of the era to come has mightily upgraded in the last 60+ years of sci-fi filmmaking, from Star Trek (1966) to modern movies like The Martian (2015) and The Avengers (2012).
I still vividly reminisce about the time when I witnessed the concept artwork by Syd Mead for the Blade Runner (1982) movie for the first time, years ago. The great Syd Mead incorporated his unique blend of futurism and believability — the visual language of science fiction would never have been the same without him. His vision for the future urban lifestyle, cities and flying ships of Blade Runner at that time was beyond comprehension, galvanizing the next generations of digital artists. In that epoch of sci-fi film-making, there was no concept of touch screens or panels, colorful interfaces, smart IoT devices like we have today and yet, concept designers showed us the future through spaceship cockpits, touch panels with the latest map application interface, or 3D city views.
Great concept artists or “Futurists”, like Syd Mead, Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Frank Frazetta, Ralph McQuarrie, and many others’ visions for future spacecraft still resonate in new modern movie spacecraft and interface designs. We even see the impact of their work to inspire new industrial designs for smart devices, modern electric cars like Canoo, Tesla and even cockpit designs for SpaceX-Dragon spacecraft. The concept artwork visualized by them is still studied by graphic designers, architects, and industrial designers today.
From Science-Fiction to Reality
The here and now marks a significant moment in history as we are currently living to espy those technologies which were only perceived to be true in science-fiction movies — the dreams have now turned into reality. Below are the technologies are shown by sci-fi movies or series in chronological order, as they came into being with the first ones being ready and available and the last on the research stage.
3D Gestures
Coming home from a tiresome day at work on a bleak, winter night, all we want is to just bury ourselves beneath a pile of warm blankets and at a single wave of our hands, magically switch on the lights or turn on the TV. Using 3D gestures can prove to be quite confusing if you are foreign to the language; however, they can also be very effective in, for example, controlling a building. Your gestures withal, can be remarkably subtle and not invasive during conversing with other people.
The first science fiction movie to welcome these 3D gestures is “Minority Report (2002)” could not even fathom such a futuristic approach and now various devices such as Leap Motion or Kinect capture motion in 3D. However, the captured area is currently not very large and doesn’t allow us to detect gestures in an entire building with enough accuracy. Nevertheless, it will definitely come in the days to come to control at least some tasks in buildings.
Voice Commands
One of the classic sci-fi movies that use voice command as a device manipulator is “The Blade Runner (1982).” A decade ago, you could only ever dream of a world where a device would operate itself solely on the directive of your voice; where you need not even touch a remote controller. Today, Cortana, Google Now, Siri, and Alexa wield the sceptre as these voice assistants are now available in every modern smartphone and have been deemed extremely useful especially while multitasking e.g driving.
Virtual or Artificial Assistant
Remember how we all envied Robert Downey Jr for not only playing Tony Stark in “Iron Man (2008)” but also having such an amiable virtual assistant, Jarvis? Well, drink away your worries for the 21st century already beholds the wonders of Google Now and even though Siri, Alexa, and Cortana are not yet on a par with Jarvis, their ultimate goal is surely to assist users in their day to day affairs through speech interaction as well as have physical or writing abilities similar to humans.
Facial Recognition
With the arrival of face recognition in the latest iPhone X and FaceID feature in 2018, you will now be at complete ease with this automatic authorization.
Although movies such as “Iron Man (2008)” portray highly advanced features of facial and body recognition, for instance, doors opening without keys, the coming centuries may surely soon witness its maturity all controlled by AI.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality is a user interface that offers users a sensational experience of moving and interacting similar to the real world. Immersion is one of the highlighted perks of this technology in comparison to 2D screen. By using the classic head movements for the view and arms movements for objects manipulations which are more instinctive, you are far more efficient. Just ask your teenager about VR in video gaming and watch them talk about it with such thrill and precision!
At the present, these technologies work with an adapted headsets like Oculus, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, etc. It is also available with motion detectors to detect body movements. Awesome as it may seem, VR still remains bothersome due to the latency and poor screen quality.
“Ready Player One”(2018) shows an exaggeration of the virtual reality system and the achievement of this technology perfectly.
Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality
From a technical outlook, these two technologies are parallel to one another with the exception of a slight difference. Augmented reality projects data on the user field of view about what is currently insight in order to amplify their capabilities by providing important information about the surroundings. Iron Man HUD is one solid example.
Mixed reality, on the contrary, is a blend of augmented reality and virtual reality. Just like advertisements, it projects virtual images into reality. A recent movie showing mixed reality in action is Blade Runner 2049 (2017) since it traverses the case of a mixed reality almost impossible to differentiate from reality with the AI companion called JOI.
Nervous Control
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, this technology was evidently used to control arm prosthesis in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)” when Luke Skywalker, ensuing a battle with Dark Vader, gets a synthetic arm. This interface is plugged into the flesh body and detects the nervous signals to reproduce the movement of a missing limb. Thanks to the science of today, we are now enabled to introduce this robotic arm to our planet as well.
This human-machine interface bears far more power and potential albeit, it is akin to nervous control. The erstwhile innovation detects the electric signals between existing nerves in limbs to understand what movement the user would like to do whereas the neuronal control is directly listening to the brain; you can now create custom signals with your myriad of unabating thoughts.
An exceptional example of neuronal control is “Avatar (2009)” where Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) dominates over an alien body using his brain.
Robots
A robot travels beyond the simplicities of the user interface since it is a platform capable of human movements. Since human beings are inclined towards more empathy for animated beings, their interaction with robots could plunge far deeper than with inanimate objects especially if the robots can mirror facial expressions.
The Netflix series “Altered Carbon (2018)” illustrates how artificial intelligence has a building as its body. Owning and managing a hotel on its own, it constructs a humanoid body on the fly to interact with clients. Although this type of robot is still only true in science-fiction, companies like Boston Dynamics are adamant about creating such robots.
Conclusion
UI’s depiction in these sci-fi movies is gradually taking form in the real world. It is merely up to the concept of digital artists to saunter farther into the Imaginarium to evoke advancement. Designers seek inspiration from the objects that surround us — textures, colors, environments, screenshots on the dribble, google searches. We observe, bookmark them, pin them on Pinterest, make a photo, or scan them. If you need to design some awesome unimaginable new interfaces just go to Netflix, open the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genre and pick a movie for inspiration. While you’re relaxing you will get an idea for the perfect design you need to make. Remember, in order to have a brilliant idea, you need to keep an open mind, be creative!
