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Comment by camillomiller | Hacker News Reader

I love the Expanse. Yet I think that transparent displays only work in movies. What do we need the transparency for? I can’t find any UX reason that would make such a screen better than a regular superthin opaque display with maybe holographic features. Discuss :)

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We don't need them. They're popular because they allow to film the actor and the screen simultaneously.

My personal take: transparent displays are a lazy trick of film makers who overestimate the importance of characters in science fiction, and underestimate the importance of setting.

A proper real-world use of transparency would be Augmented Reality - i.e. overlaying contextual UIs on top of the real world the user sees through the glass/hologram.

>transparent displays are a lazy trick of film makers who overestimate the importance of characters in science fiction, and underestimate the importance of setting.

Characters are always more important than setting. You can tell a compelling story with a character alone in a room, but without any characters even an interesting setting has nothing to say.

Characters are always more important than setting.

Not among sci-fi fans. There are lots of classic and beloved scifi books that are all about the world and setting and technology where the characters are 2d cardboard cut outs that only exist as an excuse to move the story from set piece to set piece.

Yeah, but at least to me, they became unreadable as I grew to be able to recognize how much the 2d carboard is not unrealistic and empty. I like sci-fi, but when I encounter these, they annoy me.

Good sci-fi writers dont go lazy on characters and actually develop them.

Would you consider the characters of The Three Body Problem to be all that interesting? Yet it's widely considered to be a great novel. Not sure whether The Dark Forest or the third book do a better job with characters, but the plot and the ideas make the story.

I haven't read it, so I don't guess. It is unfair to judge quality of characters in book one did not read.

That's the mainstream view, yes. But honestly, in case of sci-fi, I mostly disagree.

Most literary genres are defined by the flavor of character exploration you do. Any character-focused story you want, you can find a genre for it. Science fiction is defined as speculative exploration of interactions between people and hypothetical advancements of science and technology. If you laser-focus on the characters, you lose what makes the genre interesting and distinct from all others.

That's not to say that characters aren't important. But, in the kind of sci-fi I like, technologies and societies and institutions become "characters" themselves, and need to be treated with equal importance.

Science fiction is full of character focused books, movies and what not. All solidly within science fiction category.

Sadly, "AR" looks rather cheap, even Star Trek Discovery (good budget, I think) tried it and it's a bit laughable.

> My personal take: transparent displays are a lazy trick of film makers who overestimate the importance of characters in science fiction, and underestimate the importance of setting.

Given that we are talking about extremely popular show, maybe they do actually know what they are doing.

Well, of course :). That's why studios generally don't listen to sci-fi fans like me. I want them to optimize for the genre fans, to maximize work depth and quality. They want to optimize for the widest possible audience, to maximize profits.

> A proper real-world use of transparency would be Augmented Reality - i.e. overlaying contextual UIs on top of the real world the user sees through the glass/hologram.

Ghost In The Shell does this very well, especially the series.

I was inspired by the transparent 3D displays. It looked like exactly what I'd want.

I can't think which episodes, but there's are a couple scenes where detective Miller is looking at his phone in 2D mode, and he says, "Go 3D." In one scene, he interacts with the 3D projection, reorienting it. In another scene, invoking the 3D display makes it possible for everyone in the room to discuss the projection.

I'd love to know how these effects were done. And, when can I have one of those phones?

Agreed. I get why they are used in media (cool factor), but in real world the loss of contrast for actual material on screen would be disaster enough to make it a nonstarter. And that is not even going into privacy implications...

Augmented reality use? Hold the terminal over some wiring and get an overlaid schematic?

That spy guy (I don't remember his name) in series 1 has this ability when he's re-wiring the airlock door interface panel in order to escape. He uses his AR ability a few times but I like how it's not overdone.

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