Exact Progress Bar: Difference between revisions
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== Anime and Manga ==
* Averted in ''[[
* ''[[Digimon Tamers]]'', which normally takes a tremendous amount of liberties with how computers and networks work, averts this at least once. Progress on a set of calculations is shown in the normal way a computer would display it...with a heavily chunked progress bar, the end segment blinking, and stuck at a certain percent. No estimated time is shown.
== Film ==
* In the ''[[Iron Man (
* Parodied in ''[[Office Space]]''. When Peter tries to leave before Lumbergh catches him, it appears that his progress bar will finish in time. Then it restarts... and restarts again... and again...
== Literature ==
* One of the ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'' novels has Sydney trying to upload a virus to a computer while pretending to be one of the spies for the Russian organization. Most of the tension of the scene is caused by the progress bar jumping back and slowing down at random, while the biggest threat to her cover is on her way to check the computer.
== Live-Action TV ==
* in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Willow has to try doing research without magic after her brush with "addiction". When a progress bar stops about halfway, she reaches her hand up to speed it along with magic, but then it suddenly finishes loading.
* Used and averted on [[Caprica]]. Several times characters get frustrated because a progress bar sticks at 95% or so before resuming and completing.
* Apparently not even [[Higher
== Video Games ==
* In ''[[Progress Quest]]'', each and every progress bar moves straight from 0% to 100%. However, they're not actually representing progress, they are just fixed video effects.
* Scan progress in the ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' games is always smooth, most likely because the scan data [[Fake Longevity|doesn't actually take quite that long]] to load. and maybe because its a fixed length animation that will always take ''that long to run''.
* Used hilariously in ''[[Modern Warfare]] 2''. On one mission you're tasked with defending a computer system as it downloads files, but the 'time remaining' jumps all over the place as the transfer rate fluctuates. It flits between seven seconds and ''nine hours'' in one extreme example - this is clearly a humorous 'replication' of the Microsoft file transfer progress bar - the worst known example of an actual progress bar.
** It gets more ridiculous in harder difficulties. In "recruit" (Easy) it's pretty close to the real version. In "Veteran" (Expert) it can reach up to several days <ref>counted in hours</ref> and work slowly downward from there (just to make fighting off a full army of guys who can kill you in a few shots that much harder).
* [[Product Placement]] in [[
* The first ''[[
== Web Comics ==
* Parodied in [http://xkcd.com/612/ this] ''[[
* Played straight and later lampshaded in ''[[
== Web Original ==
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== Western Animation ==
* Parodied in ''[[The Fairly
* In ''[[Futurama]]'', although the fake nose machine that also translates alien documents doesn't have a progress bar, it is stated that the exact process of translating a document could take anywhere from a few moments to a million years. The only way to tell when it's done? Two dings, though not like that... no, not like that either.
** On the other hand, downloading the entirety of a human being's personality into a robot is measurable with an exact progress bar and apparently only takes about one second, as seen when Fry dates a robot clone of Lucy Liu.
== Real Life ==
* Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" has a startup progress bar that moves at a constant rate, [https://web.archive.org/web/20070423022327/http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details#waitingforloginwindow using information about the duration of the previous system boot to determine how quickly it should move]. Though technically it isn't a progress bar at all since it doesn't indicate the progress of the current operation, but rather how long it took last time.
** 10.5 "Leopard" just tossed out this progress bar entirely, going straight from the gray Apple logo initially visible on boot to (after a couple of seconds) the login window.
* Some ATMs in Germany ("Postbank") show progress bars which move at a constant rate... And then, when they're full, start from the beginning. What's the purpose of a progress bar, when it doesn't give you any information at all?
** It does show that the system hasn't crashed. Without additional status text, though, it doesn't show the difference between "meaningful progress" and "stuck in an infinite loop".
* For the most part, one is more likely to see a [http://xkcd.com/612/ hideous inversion]. If copying a diverse enough set of files in Windows (XP and earlier in particular), it's not rare at all to see estimates of "5 seconds, 1 hour 34 minutes, [[Blatant Lies|0 seconds]], 1 hour 56 minutes", etc, even if the transfer is halfway done.
** Played straight in later versions of Windows with a much improved file copy dialog.
* When doing something which might take a long time, but where the exact amount of time to complete is unknown, a fake progress bar is often used to show that something is happening. Such progress bars often start out fast at the beginning, but will keep slowing down towards the end.
* Sometimes the progress bar ''is'' exact but misleading. Nautilus (a file manager for Linux systems) has a tendency to aggressively cache files when transferring a large amount of data. When copying from a fast device to a slower device, the progress bar will initially fill up rapidly, then slow down as the cache fills and becomes bottlenecked by the destination. Bonus points for when the progress bar fills up and disappears, but the transfer ''still'' isn't done (discovered when attempting to unmount the device) thanks to the write cache not being finished with its part.
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[[Category:Rule of Perception]]
[[Category:Magical Computer]]
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