I love how this power plant control room also features a wall schematic that echoes ST TOS! (more in post)
Of course, it's almost invariably the opposite. 😄
I.e., ST TOS stole the idea and used it in the engineering room, most commonly.
Many more examples of these control rooms here:
https://kottke.org/26/10/so-many-amazing-control-rooms
18 replies
What is cassette futurism? Also, what does ST TOS mean?
Cassette futurism is that retro beige plastic look. Severance is very cassette futurism, as a TV show example.
Your Outtie enjoys sci-fi television and once smiled while watching lights blink.
Oh, I love that style! What about ST TOS
Star Trek The Original Series
Those Old Scientists
The Obvious Selection
Mood!
And Star Trek: The Original Series
That explains why I can't see anything to do with Atari ST TOS.
Even though that diagram seems complicated, it really isn’t. If you ever get the chance to play around with a modern automation software in an actual power plant or a factory, you’ll be overwhelmed. The number of tanks, pipes, pumps, valves, flow meters, level indicators, pressure gauges, temperature sensors etc. is absolutely enormous. What you see on the wall would be just a high level overview. Often you would need to drill one or two levels deeper to find what you’re really looking for.
Although, old industrial facilities were very simple by modern standards, so maybe that diagram really did have everything.
I'll make you a deal-- I feel natural when it comes to the arts, philosophy, writing, history, logic puzzles, dancing, singing, and so forth, but try as I might, I've BARELY been able to learn electrical diagrams and flow diagrams across my life, so let me leave that expertise to you? 😅
(and don't we all kinda form silly team-ups like that amongst our friends & family? each with our silly strengths and weaknesses, in order to form a 'whole?')
I hope you liked the other pics in link... to me they were equally boss!
Thanks, I really enjoyed the other pictures too. Modern control rooms are just a bunch of displays and keyboards in a row. The old ones were all custom made, which gave them plenty of character.
Technical diagrams can be hard to read, and they probably aren’t going to get any simpler in the future as we keep on adding more layers of complexity to every factory and plant. Don’t know about electrical diagrams though, since I haven’t needed those very often.
I remember in the wake of my trying to understand circuit boards that I came across one that looked different. Upon closer inspection, it was actually multiple circuit boards all packed together, wafer-thin. Machine / robot-produced of course. That was in the 90's, I think. I don't know how someone might possibly un-encrypt / understand the exact set of those circuit planes without... some sort of special tools, I imagine.
Looks like I found inspiration for my next art project.
Count me curious.
I’ve been wanting to get back into Blender modeling and specifically something blocky like this but have been waiting to find the right thing that strikes me. I’ve been doing shading and compositing experiments with it for years, but I suck at the actual modeling side.
Once I have that put together, I plan on making a music video with the set for my album.
I mean, your prior work sounds rather fascinating.
Hope it all works out!
Here’s one of my previous experiments using a model exported from Beam.NG. It’s on transparency, so if you’re on a light background, you won’t see the checkerboard floor.
Bonus edit: one of the very first renders I ever did in 2010
I guess I like checkerboards