Extreme Graphical Representation: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[File:laptop-skin-cyber-space-164-p 3172.jpg|frame|That's not a laptop skin. It's a WINDOW into CYBERSPACE!]]

 

 

The opposite of [[Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future]] is Extreme Graphical Representation, where every operation that takes place in the computer is represented by flashy, often "futuristic" animations on the screen. These fantastic light shows have no connection to whatever might be taking place, and real computer professionals invariably find them impractical and implausible. I mean really, does anyone seriously think that a computer has to flash a picture of each fingerprint in the database on its screen while it's searching for a match?

 

See also: [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]], [[The Aesthetics of Technology]], [[Beeping Computers]], [[Billions of Buttons]]

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

 

** Additionally interesting example as this takes place when the 14.4 kbps modem was standard, although one computer is said to have a 28.8 kbps modem. This means all these cool graphics were streamed across a 14.4 kbps connection on computers with processors slower than 100 [[M Hz]] and with less than four MB of RAM.

* Used quite noticeably in the 2007 ''[[Transformers]]'' film—apparently, if you take a sound file of a signal broadcast by a Transformer, open in in Audacity, and zoom in really close to the waveform, you can see Cybertronian glyphs.

* ''[[District 9]]'' features alien vehicles controlled via a holographic panel, as demonstrated towards the end of the movie. But then, it's ''alien'' technology; you shouldn't expect them to be using any kind of real-world OS.

** The lead alien {{spoiler|uses a bunch of human computer components to build a temporary diagnostic system for his ship}}, but it also seems emulate the alien OS. With little apparent success, since it's actually supposed run its display as a hologram. But hey, he makes it work somehow.

*** [[Wil Wheaton]] says that he assigned meanings and functions to the buttons on his LCARS touchscreen. (He ''is'' [[One of Us]].) Years later, when the Enterprise-D set was on tour and open to the public, he was able to sit down at his (character's) console and remember most of the commands he'd invented.

**** The LCARS is an actual interface standard, and people have even written DOS frontends that use it. And also an entire separate distribution of Linux (for the non-Linux-users, that's like a whole different version of Windows), which is not going to just be a "skin" for a Windows-like interface, but will actually implement the real LCARS interface (with touch-screens!). The fake TV future is here!

**** How about a ''fully functional LCARS tricorder app'' for Android? The one concession to Rule of Cool is a somewhat useless mode displaying pictures of the sun and proton/electron output over the past 64 days. (Search for "tricorder" on market.android.com.)

* "[[Lampshade Hanging|Information]]: In the second episode of ''[[Blake's 7|Blakes Seven]]'', the computer Zen initially does not have any sort of display. When he realizes that "your species requires a visual reference point," he begins flashing lights on one wall in time to his speech."

** For the matter, the hard drive activity light. While useful back when computers really only did one thing at a time and unreliable, modern computers and their software tend to always be doing something - usually completely unrelated to what the user is doing.

*** They are now again quite useful for solid state disk, due to the lack of auditory feedback. Otherwise, you just wouldn't ''know'' when it's the disk that slows your system to a crawl.

** One third-party program for managing a proprietary archive format<ref>a program that opened and created files used only by one very specific piece of software</ref> demonstrated why this is so common: when told to create a new file, it would not display anything. Not even a little window saying "Creating file". It would only display a message upon ''completing'' the file. Some users of the software thought it was broken or had stalled, when in fact the file was large enough that the operation wasn't done instantly. In other words, the program worked perfectly, but some thought it was broken, because of lack of feedback, meaningless or otherwise.

* Parodied by [[Stephen Colbert]], who described defragmenting your hard drive: "A program where your computer moves a bunch of rectangles around to make you feel better." Tragically, Vista's defragger has lost the colored rectangles, and 7's didn't bring them back.