This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Unusual User Interface: From YKTTW
Eric DVH: Removed the following: “There's an element of history and perhaps Evolving Trope to this too. Once upon a time the VR headset that lets you enter a 3D realm was considered amazingly futuristic, now it's painfully cliche, even with the twist that it can cause real wounds when damage is taken inside the game. Perhaps one day we'll see a user interface controlled entirely by facial tics as the norm.”
I disagree. Maybe a huge, clunky helmet with eye-straining 160·120 displays and 16Hz headtracking is cliché, but a light goggle or spectacle-sized HMD with dual 1080p screens (or no screens, using retinal projectors) and 120Hz ultrasonic tracking is coming closer and closer to reasonable prices each day. Good HMDs are an enormous improvement over a freestanding screen for tons of current applications. Also, facial tics are already pretty common solutions for crippled people, the next big thing is currently brain-computer interfaces.
Earnest: You have a point, but as these interfaces become more available they become less unusual, so they would slowly "fall out" of this trope in favor of the next weird interface. Maybe reword it differently with an emphasis on how approaching any of these interfaces in Real Life moves them out of "unusual"?
Blink Dawg: the [[Chobits]] mention reminded me; should there be a separate Turn The Robot On page?
