When Will We Have Tony Stark’s 3-D Computer Interface?

If you have NOT been hiding under a rock and HAVE been following the adventures of Tony Stark in “Iron Man”, “Iron Man 2”, and now “The Avengers”, you cannot help but have noticed the really cool interactive 3-dimensional user interface Stark uses to interact with virtually all computers.

Sometimes his 3-D interface is a holographic projection and sometime it’s just a touch-screen based display; in all cases, Stark casually swipes and sweeps things around and even tosses whole files and design concepts into a virtual waste basket.

We have seen clumsy attempts at creating 3-D interfaces in the movies in the past, including films like “Johnny Mnemonic” and “Minority Report”. Clearly the cost and capability of including these kinds of special effects in films are improving and we should hope to see more interactive 3-D interfaces in future movies.

But what about real life? When will we get to use this kind of technology for real? Don’t even get started on 4-G cell phone technology. That stuff sucks. The interfaces are tiny little screens (which, yes, Tony Stark occasionally uses — as when he takes over the computer display at a Senate hearing in “Iron Man 2”). The problem with my ‘Droid, however, is that I am constantly cleaning the glass plate so that it doesn’t mistake a casual finger swipe for an attempt to turn on all my apps.

A real 3-D interface will come off the device and interact with you in the air. We have seen various demos of this kind of technology (they call it “Virtual Space” or “Virtual Spaces”). If you have a spare hour you can watch this video featuring computer scientist Daniel Keefe. About 30 minutes into the presentation you see some examples of the elaborate contraptions he and his team work with to create real 3-D interfaces.

Unfortunately, Tony Stark still seems to be a few years ahead of today’s technologists. And while that’s okay for now, our appetites are being whetted. We really do want this kind of technology, and the sooner the better.

A good 3-D interface requires sophisticated motion-capture technology. The interface has to be responsive to fairly sophisticated human movement. Of course, there is the Kinect from Microsoft, and as this video demonstrates engineers have set up a Kinect to control Windows 7:

Unfortunately, Tony Stark would gag at this. His cell phone is capable of doing more. We really still trapped in the touch screen era. To give you an idea of just how old this technology is, I was watching viable touch screen demos run on UNIX Workstations in 1990 — that is 22 years ago. Touch screen technology is certainly really nice but when it comes down it, it’s a terrible human-computer interface.

I almost laughed out loud when I saw Tony Stark conjure up a virtual/holographic “ergonomically designed” keyboard. I hate those things. But the point is that with Stark’s advanced technology we could literally design our own computer interfaces, tailor them to our needs, and build virtual spaces the like of which we can only imagine right now.

My prediction is that within about 5 years some realistic but crude full-spectrum interactive interfaces will come to market. They won’t be cheap but they will combine voice-command interactive interfaces with some sort of motion-capture interfaces. I suppose the only real question about what comes next is whether they will be able to include holograms in the first generation of full-spectrum UI or whether they’ll have to stay trapped in the Touch Screen Zone.

By the way — if you want to read some reviews on “The Avengers” written by fans (rather than professional reviewers), check out my review of “The Avengers” in our SF-Fandom forums or head over to Communizine and read SciFi Guy’s review of “The Avengers”.