LCARS and Starfleet Computer Interfaces
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- The Main Computer of a Federation Starship is a powerful thing and this video specifically looks into the interface systems of the 23rd and 24th centuries as well as the evolution of Duotronics to Isolinear. Fun sounding stuff, I know.
Music from bensound.com, purple-planet.com and freesfx.co.uk
Star Trek Online developed by Cryptic Studios and Perfect World.
Star Trek, Star Trek Enterprise/Voyager/Deep Space Nine/Discovery/Lower Decks/Picard/Prodigy and The Next Generation are all owned and distributed by CBS.
Star Trek Films are owned and distributed by Paramount Pictures
Image stills are from Trekcore
This Video is for critical purposes with commentary.
We couldn't talk about Star Trek computers without mentioning Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who voiced those computers for nearly every episode from TOS to the reboot.
I think she also made a voice recording of every English phonic so she can keep voicing the computers post-mortem.
@Marchail P. Jones
Yes. STTOS S01/E19
"Tomorrow is Yesterday."
The Enterprise's computers had been upgraded along with other maintenance & repairs during a routine visit to the planet Signet XIV . SIGNET XIV is a planet dominated by women. They felt the Enterprise computers lacked "personality", so they gave it one.
Female, of course 💋
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
I miss LCARS in Star Trek 😔
My mind sometimes wanders during these videos with ST Online interiors playing in the background. I can't un-see how everyone is a miniature figure in the normal sized sets from the shows and films.
Fun fact, if you look at the console in front of Scotty smiling by the warp core as ship leaves space dock in Star Trek 6 , you will notice its an LCARS console in front of him from TNG but 50 years early since they used the TNG engine room set.
I 💙 Ric! 🖖🏻
"Keep it simple, keep it dumb, or else you'll end up under Skynet's thumb."
KISS PRINCIPLE......
Keep
It
Simple,
Stupid!
💋
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
I wonder if extraterrestrials will see this video and get very confused at our technological development before they realize it’s based on fiction.
Galaxy Quest?
This was a story plot in Star Trek Voyager .
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
@@vylbird8014 similar idea but this video has screenshots from decades old TOS to Discovery, so I imagine aliens would be even more confused by what appears to be unnatural development of computer interface technology.
for a look at sentient ships check out gene Roddenberry's Andromeda
"Coffee, black. - Make it yourself!"
The whole “programmable matter” interfaces just make no sense to me. How do you even know what your doing? Unless there’s some kind of Neural interface going on it would seem to be a step backwards from LCARS.
It's interesting how some people actually believe that the fictitious LCARS should be a model for future user interfaces, when in any mockup they create, it turns out to be a very difficult to use system that would in reality be a very bad interface for not only a starship, but a starship that experiences emergencies and combat on a regular basis. There is a reason that jet fighters and NASA spacecraft still have all those individual buttons and switches: they are difficult to learn, but in an emergency, your body just remembers where the buttons are and can react instantly. Menus are easier to learn but are prone to slow responses and errors as there is a huge cognitive load needed to interpret the menus, navigate, re-interpret the new context menus, etc, possibly several times if the necessary controls are deep in the hierarchy.. By the time you get where you need to be, the enemy has fired several shots and your ship is destroyed...
Industrial systems have used touch screens for 35 years.
Their is a distinction between combat critical interfaces and normal control interfaces. Industrial interfaces are reprogrammed for specific equipment - combat interfaces are not.
Graphical interfaces have been shown to be more effective and safer than discrete switches (particularly when access from multiple locations is required).
Go on any modern oceanliner bridge, it looks more like Star Trek than a NASA shuttle. Everything is done by computer, they still have the individual buttons yes but they're on a touchscreen which can be used to display other things, just like LCARS. Now, I'm not saying LCARS would be good IRL but everything will be computerised eventually. The reason why jets and NASA craft have those switches is because they were designed decades ago, more modern jets have moved to computerised systems anyways.
@@allangibson2408 I'm not saying touch interfaces are no good, but modal GUI design where touch buttons and displays change with context are not great for situations where a user under stress might need to use them. Take modern vehicle infotainment systems where yes, there are great features like customizable displays starting to become available, but things that are commonly used like climate and radio controls that used to be easily activated with a touch of a button or turn of a knob so that you don't have to take your eyes off the road now need you to navigate through menus and modal displays just to find the control which takes driver attention off the road.. Worse, even where there are dedicated controls on screen, in many cases it now takes many taps of the control to turn up or down the volume or temperature or fan setting or holding down a control which takes your hand off the steering wheel for extended periods where in the past, it was possible to simply turn a dial or slide a knob. Such controls certainly *could* be implemented with touch controls, but modern UI design for vehicles seems to be mainly an afterthought, cramming a menu or modal display in after the bean counters have decided that the dedicated button or switch that used to be there now costs too much money and can be taken out because "you can just add it to the touch screen"..
I think digital touch displays can be made very usable, but unfortunately, I feel many of them have gone down the wrong path, and Sci fi media is a more than a bit to blame: LCARS and other TV and movie UIs were specifically created to give the illusion of being futuristic and high tech and have visual impact for movie storytelling but never intended to be a model for real life UI design..
There have been advances in making electronically controlled dynamic friction surfaces, where the perceived friction of a certain surface can be controlled by a program.
These would be much less of a concern if the bridge had enough seating for more than three officers. Every time the ship wobbles half the crew fall over.
No notice that the view screen is holographic? It maintains 3D images.
Goauld vs Borg who do you think what win??
Borg 🤖
Their personal shields adapt to energy weapons after just 2-3 shots. The sheer volume of their numbers would allow Borg drones to overwhelm & assimilate the Goa'Uld warriors. ⚠️ Remember, all it takes is one touch from a single Borg nonoprobe to begin the conversion process.
"Don't let them touch you!!"
.
From there, assimilation multiplies exponentially 🧮
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
If you take the first Star Trek series and look at the computer's function, we have better computers now. I just thought for years, Star Trek technology went more into space travel, and not computers. Seriously, the fictional computers were lame.
Please can you make a video about the sonic School driver from Doctor Who thank you and love long and prosper
"school driver" ... Autocorrect from ****?
@@hanelyp1 "Screwdriver."
Richard Daystrom is white now, didn’t you know?
And then there's Moriarty: the instance of a supposedly non-sentient ship's computer generating what at least appears to be a true AI out of thin air.
Moriarty isn't true AI imo, he's self-aware, yes, but he's still bound by his core programming to be Moriarty. He doesn't progress beyond that, when we meet him again he's still pretty much the same dude and thinks in the same way. True AI would have done away with the pretense and expanded beyond its initial programming.
Just like neurons
@@bipolarminddroppings You could say that about just about any human being you'll ever meet.
Not really. If you ignore that the writers don't care about consistency in their technology, all it means is that the computer treated the instruction as a search, trawled the database, and stitched together something from existing code.
Crew says: "Computer, make an antagonist that would be a suitable challenge for Data's intellectual ability."
Computer hears: "Find me the most dangerous artificial intelligence framework from your classified military technology, merge it with the character creation routine from this holonovel, and give it access to ship functions."
@@vylbird8014 Yeah, but the computer should have had restrctions on request when inside a holodeck program. Like an obvious one being that you can reroute control into the holodeck without authorization of the Captain and at least one other high ranting officer.
What's interesting is the dividing line between what the computer core holds on each ship vs what is stored in say, Memory Alpha. Because on many occasions we see our heroes have to open a comm link with the Federation databases to pull up information they don't have on hand, or wait for the comm lag back to Federation archives because of how far they are out from Federation space.....I don't think it's anything that's been clearly defined, but driven by plot.
this would of been the case in the earlier eras when the whole data could not be stored on a ship or proper sub-space coms were not almost instant they are not still but they are not delayed by as much as they would of been in the earlier eras thus the need for the com link to be used as a relay was not needed in the over all data transfer it could be used as a simple receiving device
Starfleet can make their two different space age super computers backwards compatible and yet Apple won't even keep the same charging port between two devices.
Forget Apple, they have financial reasons, but my problem is PHP, an open source language, that isn't backward compatible.
@@cmdrtianyilin8107 Financial reasons doesn't make it not scummy :D
@@samwill7259 I know, right? They also implemented parts pairing, so anytime I replace the display, the entire phone locks out, as if they want us to buy their stuff and become dependent on them.
That's why I don't really use smartphone that much.
@@samwill7259 I have no objections to business practices that explicitly target stupid people.
@@CoralCopperHead So you don't mind it targeting you? Good to know I guess.
Still like the LCARS-Interface. Timeless after all this years.
I recently noticed Pi-Hole has a LCARS theme buried in it... it looks entertaining.
used to run lcars on my phone its a full system theme
I always found weird the "encoded" nature of LCARS, but then i saw a bunch of ferengi trying to steal a ship and not understanding the interface, which is genius considering every ship has all the info of the federation in them
So this is what ACARS (aircraft computer systems used today), evolves into in a few centuries. Also, let's not forget the EMH which is "sentient", and though not integrated into the ship's main computer system and before the mobile emitter, was locked within the confines of sickbay.
The mobile emitter is not standard equipment. It's unique on Voyager, and cannot be reproduced. The EMH is independent though, running on a dedicated computer in sick bay - presumably because it is an emergency system, and must function even if there is damage elsewhere in the ship.
ACARS is an aircraft/ground data communications system (Arinc Communication Addressing and Reporting System). It doesn't control the aircraft systems.
@@vylbird8014 The Doctor's mobile emitter is a product of 29th. Century technology 🖲️
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
@@wrorchestra1 I wonder if all of the starships have ADS-B out.
@@TonyP9279 they must have something similar. They used it in The Wounded when they were tracking the USS Phoenix.
Regarding the computer unable to create sentience... what about Moriarty? While he was created by a verbal command, that wouldn't be "outside influence" as that's the method used for creating most on-the-spot (at least) holographic characters. The Moriarty hologram was even smart enough to devise some method for taking control of the Enterprise itself while still bound within the holodeck. While all of that encompasses the same computer system, it would suggest Moriarty broke past the limits of it's programing to interact with systems that should not have been available to him.
My hunch is that Cmdr Data kept copies of his design documents and other info that would be needed to repair him if he were to be severely damaged in the main computer.
So, when the computer was creating an opponent for Data, it basically made a holographic copy of his intelligence matrix or whatever and tweaked the values until it resembled the personality of Moriarty.
So technically it's still working within its bounds, but this particular computer had info on making true/smart AI, and used it when it seemed relevant to a user request.
It is theoretically possible for a sophisticated but static system of automation to build something more dynamic than itself. In the instance you provide, the Enterprise D computer system was instructed to create a scenario that would intellectually challenge Data-as-Holmes; all it really had to do was extrapolate from the full text corpuses of Arthur Conan Doyle and Noonien Soong
being self-aware is not the same as being sentient and there are different levels of sentience. Moriarty was aware of what he was, that doesn't mean he was alive or true AI. True AI would havemoved beyond the bounds of its initial programming, Moriarty never did that, he continued to be the same person with the same personality and same flaws because he couldn't exceed his programming. Voyager's EMH, now we're talking true AI that is sentient and alive, able to adapt and expand beyond his initial programming, to grow and to change.
Moriarty is one of the earlier holodeck episodes. The federation didn't have safety protocols yet. that's why the computer gave him access to the ship systems imo.
@@bipolarminddroppings lol most humans don’t move beyond their initial programming
USS Pegasus was lost 2358
Enterprise C in 2344
So LCARS was or had to been implemented by 2350s...minimum. USS Raven was wrecked 2350....so LCARS tng style is at least 10 years old...by TNG
I think a good collective name for computers such as the ones in the 24th century of Star Trek is "TI" systems. Technological Intelligent systems: while they have the ability to interact with the crew and work on voice command, up to and including running an entire ship in an emergency, they still have to go by their base programming and are in no way creative. They may have a limited self awareness as well as a self preservation protocol, but those are still based on programming that can be countermanded or overridden by the crew or captain. They can sort through thousands or millions of programmed protocols or scenarios to deal with issue, but they cannot create their own or even combine tactics or technologies under its control. They should also not have the ability to fire deadly weapons (as opposed to automatic safety features like stun beams or internal force fields or even lowering the oxygen level to take out hostile forces) without direct command.
This all goes back to why would humans want to create a true AI in the first place: why make something that could either replace you or become your worst enemy? Also, why use technology to do things that humans are best at - being creative. Let the computers do the math and the calculations and control automated factories and run dangerous missions - from current deep space exploration to mining and chemical and atomic plants that humans are not safe in. Let humans control the systems and create ideas and new science and technology and arts and music and things like that. Computers are good for what they do, humans are good at what we do (sometimes, anyway). Together, we'd both be more inventive and safer and hopefully have a brighter future.
We aren't far away from the kind of voice controlled computers they have in Star Trek and we're certainly nowhere near creating true AGI yet. most modern planes and ships can run themselves almost completely without human intervention, a lot of the time the human is just there to take over in case of failure. The captain on the last cruise ship I worked on was always joking about how he could run his bridge alone at this point and that his XO should be nicer to him incase he gives the job to his PC instead, the ship can literally pilot itself from place to place and could easily do the manoeuvres that are currently "human only" by law.
It's hilarious that aeroplanes can in theory take-off, fly across the globe and land without a human ever touching the dials. ships can literally undock, sail across the ocean and dock at the other end without a human but Tesla can barely get a car to drive 100 miles without swerving into pedestrians. That's why it seems like this kind of tech is a long way off when really it's not.
Cars are a much harder case to solve for automation than ships and planes and honestly, in 20 years, commanding military ships will be pretty much just like Star Trek, voice commands and input consoles. Most of the ships I've worked on already have computer consoles and joysticks instead of even the little digital wheel they used to use for steering after they got rid of the whacking great big wheels and they already have some basic voice commands.
Nah... aint reading that....
@@Marin3r101 Very well contributed, thank you for adding to the discussion.
In terms of interfaces, I'm honestly still bothered by the fact that the federation doesn't utilize holodeck tech at least as auxiliary/supplementary interface systems. Imagine the wealth of adaptability and imagination available on the holodeck applied on the bridge for instance. Everyone's chair adapts to fit them perfectly when they take over a station. New panels and other sections of equipment can appear when an operator sits down, not restricted to actually being physically mounted, to allow the person to operate the way they do best. For instance, tom paris could have his physical knobs and switches, but then they'd fade out of existence when he steps away.
I can understand why they don't, I wouldn't want to be fighting the Borg when suddenly the bridge turns into a mid 20th century detective holonovel with a mind of its own and no safety protocols.
In my headcanon, this is where starship technology was headed in another 100 or 200 years after the TNG era: Holo-emitters everywhere fully integrated with the ship, able to support holographic crewmen, display unique environments and create new interfaces anywhere as needed. Essentially, the interior of the ship would be one big holodeck, and walking through the ship would be like walking through a completely malleable virtual world. By this time the bugs that plagued earlier generations of holodecks would have been largely dealt with, so running such a large simulation for years at a time would be no big deal.
Isolinear storage and Duotronic storage (let's ignore the fact the chips that do the processing are also the storage method...) are a bit like two different storage mediums we have now, HDD and SSD, work on very different principles but because we made them both, they use the same storage formatting (NTFS usually these days) and data formats and thus you can just take data from one and drop it on the other.
On the Disco thing, the last thing you want in an emergency is a ship that can refuse to do what you tell it...
Isolinear chips feel like a combination of the CPU and RAM most of the time when in a computer core but we also see them used for storage of personal data. AI on a ship is a bad idea on a federation ship atleast, since it'll need rights and the ship is considered federation property.
👨🏻🚀 "Open the pod bay doors, Hal."
🔴 "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."
😳
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
ISO chips probably work similar to that of FPGAs, where they can be reprogrammed to function as whatever. Whether if a chip is primarily for storing data or handling neural networks, etc..
Their glass appearance may also suggest that it uses optical computing.
With the Multitronic Cores, we don't actually know if they were abandoned right after the AI incident, just that that particular project was ended for them.
What I'd assume is that Multitronic was a planned upgrade, just that the Isolinear ones were superior and it was chosen as the next major upgrade for ships rather than the less capable multitronic.
At least it wasn't based on a shit system like Apple/Mac 💩
~~Live Long & Prosper 🖖🏻👽🛸✨
🌌🔭
Bio-Neural gel-packs: Why do you hate us?
Because they never showed any advantage over more conventional technology. The only time they were ever mentioned in the series was when they broke down or when the crew expressed concern that they were impossible to replace or replicate.
I blame Neelix
Anne McCaffery (Dragonriders of Pern) wrote a series of novels (The Ship Who Sang) about ships run by human brains. People with severely-restricting disabilities are offered the opportunity to have their brains permanently removed and integrated into a starship, with the ship essentially becoming their new body.
That's really cool!
Christopher Paolini did the same thing with To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.
LCARS reminds me of window managers used by some Linux users lol
Have you do video of Profesor Daystrum?......The man was a genius.
At least Starfleet doesn't use Windows to run their ships...
With the ease an Iconian infection took over the Enterprise-D computer, are you sure?
@@hanelyp1 Ease? If Enterprise D ran Windows, the Iconian Infection would've destroyed the ship faster than Laforge could troubleshoot the problems, so yeah, I'm sure
the pakleds arent dumb. they actually devloped hyper advanced cybernetic infusion ecosystems that the borg dream of. the only problem is that the mainframe runs windows vista
"Computer! Activate auto destruct sequence!!!"😱
"Wait what?"🛸
2:44 Ow. RIP headphone users. (There's a rather gnarly crackle/pop, probably caused by YT's compression)
star trek lcars in 1980s in Star Trek movies in for enterprise A. touch screens for controls make a lot sense that still not look dated compared to earlier control layouts.
I always imagined LCARS works on some kind of basic language, where different buttons need to be combined to yield a specific action (like keyboard shortcuts; ALT-F4 or CTRL-X mean nothing by themselves, but you can learn what they do and how/when to use them). Star Fleet officers would learn how these combinations work and could then apply them universally across all stations and screens, regardless of language.
I imagine this design could actually be a lot less overwhelming or confusing, once properly learned. Any Starfleet officer could just walk-up to a familiar panel, press the desired sequence and get a result. We see this a lot; an officer presses three buttons (or one button three times) at a panel and finds out what the trouble is on the whole deck. With the interfaces we have now, it would take us more time, we would have to press more buttons (which would also be much smaller) and we would have to figure out what to press. We've all had that struggle of finding our way around on another person's messy desktop, or working with their differing mouse sensitivity or different keyboard.
You didn't mention the bio circuitry of ships like Voyager?
Still entirely reliant on Garbage In, Garbage Out.
See, here's the thing that everybody I've ever heard comment on the M5 gets wrong, and not just a little wrong, but disastrously wrong - the M5 was not a failure, it was an unqualified success. The system did *exactly* what it was supposed to do. It ran an emulation of a human mind. If one takes a perfectly functioning modern-day computer, attaches effectors to it, and loads and runs a program on it that tells it to move about randomly and flail it's effectors (waldoes, say) indiscriminately, resulting in the destruction of both surrounding property and the machine itself, does one blame the hardware? No. One immediately insists on a look at the program code. Had the M5 been given *Kirk's* engrams for the code, we'd have gotten a *very* different outcome for that exercise set. But it was handed code that required human-level insanity and *ran it correctly*. So, well, in fact, that the wrap-up of the episode stated that the machine had gone catatonic and would require (and by implication was hoped it would *respond* to) human-oriented mental therapy! That's a success, any way you look at it. Daystrom himself would have fared no better as a starship commander than his machine did.
I agree. In the case of Moriarty, if I am remembering correctly, the computer was asked to create an opponent that could beat Data. So, lol, the computer created a sentient program because that's what was needed to carry out it's instruction.
@@poisoncheeto9956 Um. Roight. No. A non-sentient computer system does not create a sentient subprogram. Not gonna happen. Not in less than, say decades at minimum without a fantastic string of luck. Because the only way to do that for a non-sentient system would be an evolutionary approach, and that requires fantastic amounts of time. And don;t get me started on Data (Pinocchio In Space), The Borg (created by D&D munchkin GMs who never got over their 13 years old selves ("for next week, I'll just make a bigger dragon!")) And "Q" (Oh, we need to talk about god in this one, so let's make one). TNG and forward, the franchise had, for all practical purposes, ZERO understanding of science and technology. The writer's room wasn't quite as bad a "Lost in Space" (the original), but it was close.
The thing about the M5 was that you had to have the sentient mind existing in the first place, because you have to copy from somewhere. Daystrom didn't write his own code. He copied it. Evolution wrote it. Data was wave-the-wand level of magic, with no place in a serious science-fiction universe. Technology says that if you can make one, the enterpreneurs (bless their black, flabby little hearts) will make as many more as they can sell at a profit. There would have been Datas ("New! "Improved!" "Tastier!") everywhere. And they would have been outlawed a week later. Herbert may not have gotten much right, but the Butlerian Jihad? Dead on.
@@ncblee Bro, I have no idea what you're talking about. I am referring to an episode of ST:TNG called, "Elementary dear Data." You should watch it. But take your meds before you do.
Holy shit, a real life unironic trekkie stereotype! Man you must be fun at parties
@@poisoncheeto9956 In contrast, I not only *do* know what you're talking about, but I know *more* than what you're talking about. I know the actual technological base that they're "speculating" from (if we may use the term so loosely). But a Trek "fan" so blatantly anti-intellectual? Sad, dude, sad. Crack a book once in a while.
I love LCARS. I even have the total interface LCARS theme for Android. It's a shame more in not available for computers in general but I guess not all having touch interfaces means they might not be compatible.
Speaking as someone who works in IT, I have to say that LCARS is a complete failure of a user interface, regardless of what is happening behind the scenes. We're regularly shown huge blocks of text and expected to believe that it makes sense to the user just by a glance. Nope, just nope, not everyone has a reading speed of Cmdr Data. I understand, from a production perspective, why they chose that look, but they could have at least *asked* a UX person what would be believable.
At least the computer interface of the original series made sense. The big computers from that era involved a lot of flashing lights, buttons, and switches.
Mike Okuda is a UI/UX person. Where do you think the iPhone and iPad came from? People laughed at the iPhone came out. Not so much when the iPad came out. I worked at Apple Inc. during that time and Okudagrams is what inspired the iOS interfaces and the most definitely the look of the iPad; after the PADD from ST:TNG. I also made props on Star Trek:TNG. Mike is the reason we have our sleek interfaces for our touch interfaces.
@@mematron We all know that the padds influenced modern touchscreen devices. But it was the hardware, not the software that did that. You can't expect me to look at the mess that is an LCARS display and think, "oh yeah, it looks just like an Apple OS."
Miss licars from tng era new shows forgot about this simple thing
You missed how easily starfleet computers can be invaded and infected.
must not have used nord vpn
🖖
So very interesting but I just have one question. Can it hide my browser history from the wife?
I use Lcars themes on my iPhone and iPad
would love it if there was a plugin to make phones display something styled on Lcars
There are at least for android phones, however that's a paid thing in the Google Pay store.
Unfortunately I think computers have been vastly underdeveloped in Trek. For example, we already have "isolinear rods" that are glass memory of 10tb. In the same "slate" format we have entire smartphones which, more interestingly, could form a kind of distributed computing system on a Starship. And we've still got 200 years to go.
You could also categorise our current computers as Von Neumann machines, since he conceived the basic architecture that we still use to this day. Even though we have made advances in processing, memory and display systems, the underlying science behind 21st century is computers is essentially unchanged.
As if Roddenberry would have foreseen how AI would develop. ChatGPT is like the ship computer. Not able to adapt, no own goals etc., but answering requests of the user.
Pffff, should have just gone with Linux :)
rumor has it.... that even in the 25th century.... somewhere in a basement on earth..... somebody is still trying to compile gentoo on a i486 cpu because thats what minimum requirements said
To me as a programmer... i see it as a multi-generational hardware and user interface that correctly ties the hardware and software changes together, whether that was intended or not is up for debate.... But discounting ENT and DIS and SNW I get the following pattern...
- From fan series Axanar 4 years war era (2240ish) and Cage/Menagerie through (2250ish) original series TOS (2270ish) we see the late mono-tronic to early duo-tronic interfaces.
- From the Enterprise A refit from ST VI era (late 2280ish), through Enterprise B and Enterprise C (mid 2345ish), we are looking at very late duo-tronic to early hybrid duo-tronic/iso-linear very early proto LCARS Green/Blue interface.
- From Raven and early Galaxy Project era ships (late 2345ish) made up through TNG season 1 (2363ish) looking at the iso-linear LCARS Green/Partial Multi-color interface.
- From TNG season 2 (2364) through DS9 (2375ish) we are looking at the late iso-linear LCARS Gold interface..
- From Voyager (2370ish) through to some point after Voyager end plus Sovereign era (figure 2390ish at guess) we are looking at the early bio-neural gel pack LCARS Multi-color interface.
- From some point after Sovereign era (2390ish) up through Picard (2402ish) we are looking at the late bio-neural gel pack LCARS Multi-color interface and curved displays.
- Way in the future by the 26th century they abandon LCARS and go into TCARS... which eventually also gets abandoned for the programmable matter interfaces of the 32nd century.
According to the TNG Technical Manual the computer cores on the Enterprise-D (and presumably most if not all Starfleet ships of that era) were capable of processing data at faster than light speeds. These speeds were (I think) around warp factor 3.
I am not a huge fan of the “Holo-LCARS” or the programmable matter. These have a cheaper feel to them and more like an after thought. Too bad we couldn't see more of TCARS like in the Relativety layout.
Martinez Richard Walker Daniel Thomas Kevin
Hey CI,
You show a number of starship interiors in your video. What game or games did you use for these?
And are there any Star Trek games that let you walk around inside your ship, and let you sit in the pilot seat while you fly your ship, sleep in your bed in your cabin, etc?
What about the TCARS - Temporal Computer Access and Retrieval System used aboard the Time Ships Aeon and Relativity?
Good stuff as always Rick.
I loved the little tidbit where you used the DS9 shrinking episode for that pic! It was an informative video but... I will always say it. NuTrek added nothing to it with things like floating holographic displays. It is about as generic hollywood scifi as you can get but then so are all of Kurtzmans designs. Just trash.
Don’t forget the most crucial part of the interface screens, they all have a stick of dynamite behind them to blow up when the ship is damaged
I always used to call LCARS Windows For Starships.
I'm willing to bet that Starfleet computers run on Linux. Stuff is rock solid stable and is the go to in our world for stuff that needs to handle massive amounts of data with almost constant uptime.
When has startet the using of the stardate? And a little "offtopic": wich datesystem was usinge before our day system?
I wonder if LCARS would be practical to use on a real life PC?
❤️👍
the lcars of star trek tng wasnt created by Okuda?
Harris Sarah Lewis Ruth Hernandez Donna
Doesn't the OS make the upgrades easy, not the hardware???
Brown William Jones Scott Robinson Jason
Im very sure that the Duotronic systems fits a lot the actual quantic computers we have in estethic , so i would consider that as cannon.
And the Binars generation of Minuet should be mentioned as well
Lee Ruth White Dorothy Garcia Lisa
If you have the time I'd love to hear an explanation of star dates.
I used LCARS on my tablet
I don’t care. I just want to press buttons
And they can run Doom.
At the time Star Trek was filmed, Duotronic would make it seem like it was an advanced technology for computers. Multitronic would follow the same logic, however, dual processors, multi cored processors, and systems that run so much faster than what was ever considered back in Star Trek's original series has shown that even Isolinear may find it's equivalent in today's technology, hundreds of years before it was expected.
Soon, computer systems will have programmable computer chips that are replaceable in seconds.
Wait, aren't those thumbdrives?
Looks like TNG is not as advanced as we expected.
Those who designed C++ should watch Star Trek and LEARN from LCARS how to design FUCKING BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY.
Where do you get these animations of the starship interiors from?
Star Trek Online, a free to play MMO game. Story is free, but there are lots if in game real money transactions.
algorithm comment
6:44 I prefer the Æon/Trinity Designations myself, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and SI (Satisfactory Intelligence)
I found this really fascinating to watch and actually hope you delve more into the Star Trek lore regarding computer sciences. If the lore is there could you do an in-depth video about starfleet’s Duotronic and Isolinear systems?
Zora is danger to herded. She needs a psychiatric to help her function 😂
Excellent video about the computers of Star Trek. Thank you... 👏
I prefer to watch the original series while eating jolly ranchers
Brilliantly made video. The detail here is wonderful. Love it.
A storage unit of "Quads". After they just made the jump of "Duo"tronic systems?
Maybe it is a measure derived from a unit in the Duotronic system? Like 1 Quad = "that duotronic unit, squared"?
I believe a quad is stated to one quadrillion bytes of information (~1 million gigabytes) in some book or spinoff game. So, a lot of data.
In practical terms, a quad is just a unit they used because if they picked some real unit like gigabytes, it would be entirely possible that real world tech would exceed these capabilities before the franchise lost cultural relevance.
For an example of that happening, look at satilight phones, which arguably already do what the TOS eras communicators were shown to do on screen
@@lucky-segfault good sci-fi does that. You either have to pick real units that are so far beyond what we're already at that you don't have to worry, like say transfer rates of zetabytes per second or just invent your own units that you never really quantify. It's why I love that TNG invented the comm badge, they could have kept the handheld ones but made them smaller or sleeker but by the late 80's we already had mobile phones and they knew it wouldn't be long before the real thing was as good as the sci-fi one. It's been like 40 years since the comm badge was first seen in Star Trek and we're nowhere close to having that kind of technology, hell my phone can barely call the right number when I use voice dialing, let alone instantly connect me with any person or room I want...
You could actually argue that modern smart phones are way better than TOS communicators. They're like a tricorder, communicator and information access point all wrapped up in one. The TOS communicator could get you a line to the ship or other members of the crew, that's it.
@@bipolarminddroppings Dr McCoy does use the communicator for a tricorder uplink to the ship, in Miri ! But yes usually it’s just voice. What stands out more to me though is how the PADDs can’t do video calls or take pictures - they put down the PADD to take a call on a monitor, or grab a holocam.
@@bipolarminddroppings There are bluetooth speaker/microphone combos that are functioning, accurate, wearable replicas of the commbadge that can interface with iOS and Android devices. Also, when you use voice dialing, do you say a name or a number?
It was a deliberate problem to avoid the issue of zeerust. If you used real-world units, there's a chance that future technological advancements would render the script a joke in a few decades.
Think of a sci-fi series from the 60s bragging that their robot's brain can carry out millions of calculations per second.
Solution: Quads. What's a quad? Don't know, don't care, but gigaquads must be impressive!
Lcars is iconic. The star trek look
tricotronic toy. yes I remember😀
Did you forget to mention that the 24th Century Federation computers can in fact generate and run fully sentient AIs?
IE, Professor James Moriarty (generated by the Enterprise-D computer due to a carelessly chosen command), Countess Regina Barthalomew (modified by Moriarty to achieve sentience), and all the EMH Mk 1s (emergent property of a long-running AI). And possibly the EMH Mk 2-4, as well as the LMH.
Given their poor reliability record though, it's no great surprise that the technology is only used for entertainment. Data was one of five models based on his design - of the rest, one went psycho, one was of questionable sanity, one was an intellectually-limited prototype, and one suffered irreparable system failure shortly after activation. The Doctor suffered multiple serious faults, one of which required partial memory erasure to correct, and another was only ever fixed with a temporary workaround. It's a running joke how many rampaging computers Kirk took on, all but one of which he was able to defeat by talking them into self-destruction.
Not to mention that some species in the Delta Quadrant screwed up so hard with AI research they managed to create the Borg.
The Federation probably could make a ship operating entirely on AI with minimal or no living crew... but they tried that once already, and know how stupid an idea it is to put something so unpredictable in charge of a ship.
@@vylbird8014 I'm pretty sure the Borg are not the result of AI Research run amok. I think they are better characterized by cybernetics research run amok with a cult-like attitude.
Data's family issues are not relevant to this conversation. I didn't mention him at all.
Kirk's menagerie of rogue AIs also bares little relevance to this exchange, I didn't bring them up. But yes, there are a lot of them. Lower Decks poked fun at that.
No, the holodeck does not routinely run fully sentient AIs for entertainment. At least not since after S1 of TNG. Moriarty was created as a fully sentient smart AI in S2 and was considered an anomaly. Holodeck characters were explored in Voyager and seem to be at the mercy of the author for complexity. I would characterize them as NPCs running on an expandable neural network. If they run long enough, they can theoretically achieve sentience, but Voyager's crew was surprised when Fairhaven actually did it en mass. This is supported by TNG "Ship in a Bottle" (?) where Moriarty admitted to altering the program of his romantic partner to achieve the full sentience he was accidentally given. I seem to recall some dialogue from TNG S1 indicating that the holodeck was a new experimental technology. Which could explain the frequent malfunctions and mishaps.
And yes, The Doctor did have a number of malfunctions. It's implied that this due to lack of qualified maintenance combined with the long run-time. The memory deletion you mentioned was a failed workaround for an issue that was permanently addressed by allowing him to work through the decision and consequences under friendly supervision. Essentially treating him like an organic sentient.
It was implied that the other EMH Mk1s similarly achieved Full Sentience while working as laborers when one recommended The Doctor's holo-novel to another at the end of VOY "Author, Author".
W00t for topic!
First
I'd say that the Enterprise (NCC-1701-A) and similar late 23rd century systems would be an early incarnation of the LCARS system just without the isolinear components, think of like those systems running on Windows 10, while the TNG ones ran in Windows 11 and thus the earlier ships could run mostly if not totally on Duotronics, while the later ships needed the improvements of the isolinear systems to run.
What cable is used to connect to screens? Hdmi?
wireless i guess
Detcord.
cabled tights
According to some unofficial sources, the operating systems mentioned in this video are actually based on Debian/Ubuntu Linux though it does seem strange that they would be based on Linux
You really gotta stop including the New shows in these.... they are not star trek. They are pretty bad as far as story telling goes.....
dose the Federation have a version of the internet between member planets?
You know what? It's a fascinating question. Mass Effect has Extranet, Elite Dangerous has Galnet, so Star Trek must have something similar, init?
@@cmdrtianyilin8107 it just seems like one of those sort of things that would continue to evolve, and not just vanish like this
@@Nx--7567 I'm wondering, if an interstellar version of an Internet exist, it must require some serious planetary infrastructures, like we have a huge submarine cable landing station in Shanghai. Also, interstellar internet connection structures and processes would be much complex,like different IP address style (Like we have IP version 4 and 6, so an interstellar IP address might be IP version 8 or 12).
I actually like the Elite Dangerous version of Galnet where Data are being stored in ships computer and pilots physically carry those data around the station.
@@cmdrtianyilin8107 that is an intriguing idea, especially with a civilization that has limited FTL communication
@@cmdrtianyilin8107 I also wonder if this more limited version of communication between computers in the Federation might be due to cyber security considerations?