Oh hey I run this, originally I was just collecting the fui designs for reference when trying to make my own as a desktop (https://github.com/seenaburns/dex-ui), but since then I've kept it going.
This is an incredible and timely resource for me. I'm currently building a spaceship cockpit for my young sons. I'm a former EE, so I've got the blinky LEDs, switches, LCDs, keypads, and other physical UI components covered, but I'd love to add a sophisticated GUI component. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a coder. Do you know if any sci-fi GUIs are available as Android apps for tablets? I have 3 Kindle Fire tablets that I would love to turn into dedicated GUI touchscreens for the cockpit.
For someone who wants an in-depth look at sci-fi interfaces from a designer's perspective, https://scifiinterfaces.wordpress.com/ and the corresponding book [1] are pretty good resources. The book was even featured on YC's Winter (Summer?) reading list.
There's an overarching theme here of thin neon lines and white text on black background. Its interesting to me that despite the popularity of this in movies as the default "futuristic" computer interface, it rarely seems to make its way into actual software and especially web/app UI. One exception i can think of is the Bloomberg terminal.
I find this odd because its easier on the eyes and looks better. I would honestly prefer "night mode" for pretty much all software (ms office, the whole internet, etc). Gmail black theme looks great but the actually emails are still white background / black font...
Im not really a hacker... Does anyone know good "night mode" software or settings? There is one in windows 10 but it only applies to settings windows and not the file browser or much anything else.
The standard answer here will be to have Flux, but that doesn't really accomplish what you are looking for.
I think once you start setting OLED on the desktop, you'll begin to see more work being done in this area.
I am also a huge fan of dark backgrounds; under the right circumstances. It can make you really focus in on specific content if the interface is minimalistic in its approach.
I know this doesn't apply to your needs, however OSX/macOS has the ability to "Invert Display Color" and I use it all the time for precisely the use case you described.
I remember the days when all the flash websites looked like this. With all the pixel fonts of 8 px height.
http://www.2advanced.com/ Was one of my favorites! (I can't even see it now as the flash is blocked by Chrome)
I actually miss that style, good thing it still exists in movies. Oblivion had also very nice GUI's. But Gmunk has a lot of other great work!
I like the style too. I couldn't use the 2advanced site, because, while it loaded after I accepted Flash (Firefox), everything was tiny on my high-resolution screen, and zooming did nothing.
I am almost certain that I would hate using the Minority Report interface, as it was depicted in the film. If Tom Cruise's character actually had to use that every day, his deltoids would be the size of bowling balls.
And I'm sure his manager loves to see exactly what he's doing from 100m away.
If you stuck that UI into a pair of VR-AR goggles, and replaced the huge gorilla-arm movements with barely-visible finger twitches, I might consider it.
These are great 'low tech' interfaces. Now if you want a great 'advanced' interface think anything in the Cyberpunk genre, hard to beat direct brain interactions. Who needs clumsy words and floating pictures :)
>The greatest UI in the history of films cannot be captured visually: it is the UI in Spike Jonze's "Her".
No, that was the absolute worst UI in the history of films. Spoken words simply cannot carry remotely as much information as visually-seen images. Haven't you ever heard the saying "a picture is worth 1000 words"?
Let me give a modern-day example: at a typical Panera Bread restaurant right now, you can order a sandwich either by talking to some teenager at the counter, or by using the touchscreen kiosk. Panera lets you customize sandwiches heavily, by changing the bread, adding cheeses, changing/adding toppings, etc. So I walk into a Panera and would like to order a tuna sandwich but I want to see all the different options and make it completely customized. They have probably 20 different kinds of bread alone, not to mention all the other options. So which do you think is more efficient, having some teenager rattle off 20 kinds of bread, or looking at them on a screen? And how do I know what these breads are anyway? How long is it going to take for some teenager to tell me what all those things are, and maybe show me samples, compared to just looking at some photos on the screen? How about just verifying the order? With the teenager, how long will it take him to read off the entire order to me, and what is the possibility that the information will be received incorrectly because I can't hear him that well, he speaks with an accent or lisp, there's too much noise, or he just misspeaks or skips something? With a screen, I can see the order printed out exactly.
I have an almost fetish for retro and retro sci-fi interfaces.
I stumbled into this really gorgeous, simplistic terminal like design. I was so inspired by it I decided to re-create the style in HTML+CSS. Once I did that I had another spark, and decided to make it a working faux terminal. And then I had the idea that maybe I could turn it into a small little game. You discover this machine, like you dialed into it randomly one day, and have to navigate yourself around, discover the story through reading logs, and hack into other machines to progress through the levels.
I'm an engineer through and through; it was odd to be so inspired by a design that I went off to make a game :P
More recently I've been obsessed with the Alien: Isolation interface, which is showcased on the OP (https://68.media.tumblr.com/ea49aeb0e1a6961a7dc1b3ed02ebca85...). It's given me yet another hankering to ... do something. Not sure what yet, but it's just such an inspiring design.
I think it would be great for the eyes cause you are forced to exercise your depth perception rather than stare at a flat screen. Would even be better than an e-ink monitor[http://www.dasung.com/].
I wish those e-ink monitors didn't look so much like children's toys- I'd love to pick one up.
In 20 years, I think we'll look back at LCD/OLED monitors like how we currently look back at CRT/pre-CRT monitors, and wonder how on earth we stared at bright configurations of tiny lights for 10+ hours a day.
Fun fact: there were no computers involved in the making of 2001. They were too expensive at the time. All of the monitors in the movie were actually back-projected film screens. All of the wiredframe 3D models were literally wire models, painted white, filmed and then projected on the screen.
Using back-projected screens meant 2001 had flat screens which still look modern today --as opposed to the bulbous CRT monitors used in Blade a Runner and Alien.
Creating fake sci fi interfaces for movies, a very cool concept. It's inspiring to know that whatever makes you happy there is potentially a job doing it.
[+] [-] __sb__|9 years ago|reply
My personal favorite is probably still Oblivion http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX but if these are too over the top science fiction, The Bourne Identity's is pretty fun too http://coleran.com/gallery-category/fui/#the-bourne-identity
[+] [-] pogo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] halwa|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Make-So-Interaction-Lessons-Science/d...
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ishtanbul|9 years ago|reply
I find this odd because its easier on the eyes and looks better. I would honestly prefer "night mode" for pretty much all software (ms office, the whole internet, etc). Gmail black theme looks great but the actually emails are still white background / black font...
Im not really a hacker... Does anyone know good "night mode" software or settings? There is one in windows 10 but it only applies to settings windows and not the file browser or much anything else.
[+] [-] ChikkaChiChi|9 years ago|reply
I think once you start setting OLED on the desktop, you'll begin to see more work being done in this area.
I am also a huge fan of dark backgrounds; under the right circumstances. It can make you really focus in on specific content if the interface is minimalistic in its approach.
[+] [-] hbosch|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonkiddy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arizhel|9 years ago|reply
Computing was a lot easier on the eyes back in the days of green text on black backgrounds.
[+] [-] ioulian|9 years ago|reply
I actually miss that style, good thing it still exists in movies. Oblivion had also very nice GUI's. But Gmunk has a lot of other great work!
http://www.gmunk.com/OBLIVION-GFX
[+] [-] leephillips|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inputcoffee|9 years ago|reply
The second greatest, though, is quite visual: the interface in Minority Report.
I wish I could find the interviews with the UI engineers who talked about the influences that went into it.
[+] [-] logfromblammo|9 years ago|reply
And I'm sure his manager loves to see exactly what he's doing from 100m away.
If you stuck that UI into a pair of VR-AR goggles, and replaced the huge gorilla-arm movements with barely-visible finger twitches, I might consider it.
[+] [-] ferentchak|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arizhel|9 years ago|reply
No, that was the absolute worst UI in the history of films. Spoken words simply cannot carry remotely as much information as visually-seen images. Haven't you ever heard the saying "a picture is worth 1000 words"?
Let me give a modern-day example: at a typical Panera Bread restaurant right now, you can order a sandwich either by talking to some teenager at the counter, or by using the touchscreen kiosk. Panera lets you customize sandwiches heavily, by changing the bread, adding cheeses, changing/adding toppings, etc. So I walk into a Panera and would like to order a tuna sandwich but I want to see all the different options and make it completely customized. They have probably 20 different kinds of bread alone, not to mention all the other options. So which do you think is more efficient, having some teenager rattle off 20 kinds of bread, or looking at them on a screen? And how do I know what these breads are anyway? How long is it going to take for some teenager to tell me what all those things are, and maybe show me samples, compared to just looking at some photos on the screen? How about just verifying the order? With the teenager, how long will it take him to read off the entire order to me, and what is the possibility that the information will be received incorrectly because I can't hear him that well, he speaks with an accent or lisp, there's too much noise, or he just misspeaks or skips something? With a screen, I can see the order printed out exactly.
[+] [-] fpgaminer|9 years ago|reply
I stumbled into this really gorgeous, simplistic terminal like design. I was so inspired by it I decided to re-create the style in HTML+CSS. Once I did that I had another spark, and decided to make it a working faux terminal. And then I had the idea that maybe I could turn it into a small little game. You discover this machine, like you dialed into it randomly one day, and have to navigate yourself around, discover the story through reading logs, and hack into other machines to progress through the levels.
It looked like this: http://imgur.com/a/pBOtP
I'm an engineer through and through; it was odd to be so inspired by a design that I went off to make a game :P
More recently I've been obsessed with the Alien: Isolation interface, which is showcased on the OP (https://68.media.tumblr.com/ea49aeb0e1a6961a7dc1b3ed02ebca85...). It's given me yet another hankering to ... do something. Not sure what yet, but it's just such an inspiring design.
[+] [-] thesuitonym|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://store.steampowered.com/app/303940/CAPSULE/
[+] [-] L_Rahman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abledon|9 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/nHmLhRx7Oyw?t=1m50s
I think it would be great for the eyes cause you are forced to exercise your depth perception rather than stare at a flat screen. Would even be better than an e-ink monitor[http://www.dasung.com/].
[+] [-] vanilla_nut|9 years ago|reply
In 20 years, I think we'll look back at LCD/OLED monitors like how we currently look back at CRT/pre-CRT monitors, and wonder how on earth we stared at bright configurations of tiny lights for 10+ hours a day.
Transflexive LCDs are, in my opinion, the future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_d.... I can't wait until phones/watches/laptops start using these. My eyes will be very happy when that day comes.
[+] [-] dexterbt1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rosalinekarr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] broskoski|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otto_ortega|9 years ago|reply
I love the fonts used on Sci-Fi movies, like the ones showed in those GUIs, but it is pretty difficult to find such fonts.
[+] [-] htk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|9 years ago|reply
It was borrowed by Pixar for The Incredibles.
[+] [-] corysama|9 years ago|reply
Using back-projected screens meant 2001 had flat screens which still look modern today --as opposed to the bulbous CRT monitors used in Blade a Runner and Alien.
[+] [-] wonderwonder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otempomores|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwaivers|9 years ago|reply