I'm looking for a fake control panel app or website
October 13, 2020 6:14 PM   Subscribe

This is sort of a 15-year follow-up to this question, and most links are dead. Is there an app or website that simulates a control panel, whether it's Star Trek or air traffic control or a cockpit or just sci-fi screens?

I'm not finding quite I'm looking for in Google. Remember how some old games used to have a "boss is near" feature that you could click, and bring up fake graphs and spreadsheets? Something sort of like that, but more dynamic.

Thanks for your help!
posted by Flying Saucer to Computers & Internet (9 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
The second feature is a called a boss key if that helps with your searching. They've kind of went by the wayside on PCs with multitasking OSes that allow mapping of applications to a single shortcut key (or even accessory mouse buttons).
posted by Mitheral at 6:32 PM on October 13, 2020


Best answer: There's an LCARS simulator
posted by BungaDunga at 6:42 PM on October 13, 2020 [1 favorite]


Using Conky on Linux you can fill your desktop with cool and important looking information (time, date, weather, system info, news feeds, etc.). People seem to use it more for the artistic effect than for the display of information!
posted by jabah at 6:47 PM on October 13, 2020


(the Windows equivalent of conky is probably rainmeter)
posted by BungaDunga at 6:49 PM on October 13, 2020


Also, if you run the htop program in a full-screen terminal window you get something very busy and important looking.
posted by jabah at 6:57 PM on October 13, 2020 [2 favorites]


Some real ones:
AWS status dashboard: https://status.aws.amazon.com/
Facebook status: https://developers.facebook.com/status/dashboard/
Github status: https://www.githubstatus.com/
Slack status: https://status.slack.com/

If you're on Windows, the Performance tab of the detail view of the Task Manager is just Ctrl-Alt-Del and a couple of clicks away.

Googling "sample live dashboard" brings up some possibilities.
posted by at at 8:39 PM on October 13, 2020


The flight simulators will definitely give you a cockpit view. The Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) present a formidable screen of dials, switches and sliders.

The is a a whole industry of "dashboard" products for executives to get a curated, on-screen view of their business. Basically, you can get a customized screen with, say, the stock market in one box, weather, in a box, recent sales results in a box, etc.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:53 AM on October 14, 2020


Response by poster: BungaDunga that LCARS simulator is the sort of thing I've been looking for. Thank you!
posted by Flying Saucer at 7:39 PM on October 17, 2020


Similar, but not quite, is Hacker Typer.

Here's a Stargate Atlantis-themed computer UI simulator, it's more than a bit janky.

Another SG: Atlantis one.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:35 PM on October 17, 2020


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