‘Star Trek’ Fans Can Now Virtually Tour Every Starship Enterprise Bridge | Hacker News Reader

‘Star Trek’ Fans Can Now Virtually Tour Every Starship Enterprise Bridge

smithsonianmag.com

77 points165944709123 comments

On the Enterprise-D set, Worf's tactical console was lit with fluorescent tubes, instead of incandescent light bulbs, because it was so big. Because of this, the "touch screen" on it had a colder colour temperature than all the other consoles.

(Star Trek: Picard spoilers follow.)

When they re-created the bridge set for Picard, they could use actual display panels for the consoles, but they still made sure that the tactical console used a slightly colder colour temperature so that it matched the original set. I appreciated the attention to detail.

The last season was the best for reasons like this, I wish they had cranked up the nostalgia to 100% from season 1... It's why fans were watching in the first place, but it's like they only realised on season 3. Was this due to the change in showrunner alone? or is there more credit due?

Honestly, my guess is if they went for the full nostalgia trip right out of the gate, Stewart wouldn't have agreed to do the show. My recollection when thinking back on the interviews in advance of the show is it was clear Stewart bought in because of the opportunity to explore Picard in his older years while delving into his backstory, which fueled some of what we saw in season 1 and formed the backbone of season 2.

Stewart had a condition to agree to do S1, that it explicitly not be a TNG reunion show.

Worf's old console was backlit by neon, actually!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRlSQiYnDLI&t=154s

Direct link to the portal: https://roddenberry.x.io/

Yup. Also, desktop is recommended. Mobile site does not work well even in landscape.

Make sure to click the "Expand" button on the bridge views, otherwise the aspect ratio is awkwardly squashed.

Are there no controls to walk around?

Click "Enable Navigation" under the image of the bridge on the top left and eventually it'll switch over to an interactive 3D view where you can walk around.

This takes a little while because for some reason they're doing remote rendering and streaming rather than rending in the browser with WebGL.

I don't see that "Enable Navigation" button unless I block all Javascript for the site, but with Javascript blocked it obviously won't work.

"A little while" as in how long?

Re: the sibling comment, I had to switch the Chrome to see the button, but I don't know how patient I need to be, or what the interface is supposed to look like once it's ready.

Edit: ok, took a couple of minutes. That is way more awesome than the initial demo. The map even includes the ready room and conference room of the Enterprise D.

I've seen it take anywhere from thirty seconds to a few minutes-- probably depending on server load. And there's never any real feedback that anything's happening (a "you're in the queue" message or something like that would be really nice).

Once it's loaded, it'll change to a 3D flythrough of the selected bridge with a "Click anywhere to continue" message at the bottom. Clicking stops the flythrough and lets you move around (with fairly standard FPS controls).

This is so awesome. Two tangential thoughts looking at this:

- I wish there was a design system / stylesheet to build Star Trek styled interfaces. This one[0] is great but doesn't seem to be a full design system.

- This sounds like a perfect opportunity to showcase WebVR. Maybe someone from the Mozilla WebVR/WebXR teams would like to take a look at it?

[0]: https://lcars.computer/

The closest official thing would be: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek_Star_Fleet_Te...

It contains design guides, fonts, proper use of insignia, etc.

Awesome. I half expected the early TNG model to include the black pieces of construction paper they hastily taped to the glass consoles in the background to reduce glare from the set lights, now that would be authenticity

This reminds me of a forgotten Star Trek video game called Bridge Commander [1] released over 20 years ago that allowed you to play as a Starfleet captain from the first-person perspective of the captains chair. In the game you could free-look 360-degrees around the bridge and click on crewmen working at their stations to give them orders.

I always found this concept unique and it's a shame no game since has replicated it. I would think a modern version would be perfect for VR. It could even use footage from a real set with real actors captured with a 360-degree camera giving it the most "realistic graphics" of all time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Bridge_Commander

Image quality is really disappointing. Looks like OTOY didn't keep up with any of the last 5 years advancement in real-time raytracing and cloud streaming, despite being pioneers in both.

A word of warning: the descriptions of the bridges reveal each of the films' endings.

Would love this for Doctor Who tardis control rooms.

Man I love this !!! :)

Crying shame that so much work went into these recreations yet you can't (for now) visit them in VR. The sense of presence and scale adds so much.

I really wish that they'd open up another Star Trek experience like place, being on the bridge of the enterprise was quite neat.

now they just need to do it for more than just the enterprise.

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