I'd kill for a remake of "Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual"!

[The Rock]

For its time (1994), "Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual" was amazing. It was basically an interactive tour of the Enterprise-D. I mean, you couldn't actually walk around the ship in real time since the technology at the time didn't allow that. All you could do was just teleport to different points in a room to read and see videos of cool facts about, say, the main bridge for example. Also, you were only limited to the main places on the ship like the bridge, Ten Forward, the holodeck, transporter room, etc.

Imagine if they remade it today! Imagine being to explore EVERY single place on the ship. They could even have a VR mode for those with VR headsets.

It should be mentioned there was a free fan project that was shut down by CBS years ago called Stage 9 which was attempting to make a completely explorable Enterprise-D using the Unreal 4 engine. It wasn't even half finished when it got shut down but for what it was, it was pretty good. You even got to explore the never-seen main shuttle bay in the saucer section (unless you count the TNG episode "Cause and Effect"). I hope one day CBS makes an official version of it.

 

[USS Firefly]

For its time (1994), "Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive Technical Manual" was amazing. It was basically an interactive tour of the Enterprise-D. I mean, you couldn't actually walk around the ship in real time since the technology at the time didn't allow that. All you could do was just teleport to different points in a room to read and see videos of cool facts about, say, the main bridge for example. Also, you were only limited to the main places on the ship like the bridge, Ten Forward, the holodeck, transporter room, etc.

Imagine if they remade it today! Imagine being to explore EVERY single place on the ship. They could even have a VR mode for those with VR headsets.

It should be mentioned there was a free fan project that was shut down by CBS years ago called Stage 9 which was attempting to make a completely explorable Enterprise-D using the Unreal 4 engine. It wasn't even half finished when it got shut down but for what it was, it was pretty good. You even got to explore the unseen main shuttle bay on the saucer section (it was pretty impressive). I hope one day CBS makes an official version of it.

That would indeed be great!
And also visit DS9

 

[The Rock]

That would indeed be great!
And also visit DS9

Omg yes!

 

[David cgc]

The closest thing that's in the offing is the Roddenberry Archive, which allows you to walk around virtual recreations of several Star Trek ships (mostly just bridges, but several also have other explorable areas, including two versions of the -D). It's web-only now, though they've talked about having a downloadable version in the future. They've also show previews of a complete deck-by-deck explorable version of the refit Enterprise from the first three movies, and I wouldn't be surprised if other ships were on the drawing board.

 

[NCC-73515]

Captain's Chair did the same thing with various bridges.
There was also some software on a CD that came with the On Board the Enterprise D book that recreated some of the ITM locations.

 

[The Rock]

The closest thing that's in the offing is the Roddenberry Archive, which allows you to walk around virtual recreations of several Star Trek ships (mostly just bridges, but several also have other explorable areas, including two versions of the -D). It's web-only now, though they've talked about having a downloadable version in the future. They've also show previews of a complete deck-by-deck explorable version of the refit Enterprise from the first three movies, and I wouldn't be surprised if other ships were on the drawing board.

Lol I got a Meta Quest 3 recently and was disappointed that the Roddenberry Archive is only for Apple Vision Pros as of now (hence you mentioning it's web-only now). Here's hoping they make it downloadable in the future!

For the deck-by-deck explorable version of the refit Enterprise, you mean we're gonna be able to explore the entire ship?

Captain's Chair did the same thing with various bridges.
There was also some software on a CD that came with the On Board the Enterprise D book that recreated some of the ITM locations.

I looked up a vid just now of that CD and it looks cool but the people in the comments (from 7 years ago) said it was hard to get it running on modern computers. I don't even wanna try to get it running on Win 11 lol.

 

[David cgc]

Lol I got a Meta Quest 3 recently and was disappointed that the Roddenberry Archive is only for Apple Vision Pros as of now (hence you mentioning it's web-only now).

I haven't had the chance to use the AVP version, but my understanding is that most of the walking-around portions are still in the same windowed web-interface running off of their servers that you get on a desktop, and the "exclusive" part is a few stripped-down immersive environments that aren't as detailed or as explorable and rotatable AR ship models (which are now more-or-less in the desktop version, as well).

For the deck-by-deck explorable version of the refit Enterprise, you mean we're gonna be able to explore the entire ship?

Looks that way. We know they've started in on other rooms seen in the movies (the project had a head-start from acqui-hiring several fan projects), and their last sizzle-reel included a saucer-section cargo hold on the TMP Enterprise (starting at 6:33 on the video, if the direct link doesn't work).

 

[The Rock]

Looks that way. We know they've started in on other rooms seen in the movies (the project had a head-start from acqui-hiring several fan projects), and their last sizzle-reel included a saucer-section cargo hold on the TMP Enterprise (starting at 6:33 on the video, if the direct link doesn't work).

That's incredible. Especially because I'm guessing that means they will do the same for the Enterprise-D eventually and perhaps the other most popular ships.

 

[David cgc]

That's incredible. Especially because I'm guessing that means they will do the same for the Enterprise-D eventually and perhaps the other most popular ships.

The refit and the -D seem like far-and-away the best candidates, with the greatest amount of behind-the-scenes and authorized tie-in deckplan detail (and lack of ambiguity—looking at you, TOS-engineering-that-may-or-may-not-be-in-the-saucer). I'm not sure where you'd go after that. Maybe Voyager would be the next most likely one, given its popularity and the head start from the Elite Force game, but after that, it's just more and more extrapolation and invention. Maybe they'll just have miles of empty corridors and locked doors connecting the handful of rooms we saw (maybe with a fast-travel feature like the TNGTM had, where it plays a quick sped-up montage of going through endless corridors as you "walk" from one point of interest to the other).

I guess that's also assuming that Octane money never stops coming and the Roddenberry Archive can just hum along producing a virtual 1-to-1 model of the Star Trek universe one set at a time for years and years.

 

[The Rock]

The refit and the -D seem like far-and-away the best candidates, with the greatest amount of behind-the-scenes and authorized tie-in deckplan detail (and lack of ambiguity—looking at you, TOS-engineering-that-may-or-may-not-be-in-the-saucer). I'm not sure where you'd go after that. Maybe Voyager would be the next most likely one, given its popularity and the head start from the Elite Force game, but after that, it's just more and more extrapolation and invention. Maybe they'll just have miles of empty corridors and locked doors connecting the handful of rooms we saw (maybe with a fast-travel feature like the TNGTM had, where it plays a quick sped-up montage of going through endless corridors as you "walk" from one point of interest to the other).

I guess that's also assuming that Octane money never stops coming and the Roddenberry Archive can just hum along producing a virtual 1-to-1 model of the Star Trek universe one set at a time for years and years.

For the Enterprise-D, I wonder why CBS didn't just hire the Stage 9 creators to finish the project (instead of sending them a C&D). Oh what could've been. I would've gladly paid money for a fully explorable Enterprise-D!

 

[David cgc]

Remember those fan-projects that were acqui-hired by the Roddenberry Archives that I mentioned? One of them was Stage 9.

 

[fireproof78]

For the Enterprise-D, I wonder why CBS didn't just hire the Stage 9 creators to finish the project (instead of sending them a C&D). Oh what could've been. I would've gladly paid money for a fully explorable Enterprise-D!

Probably cost too much.


Who are we killing?

 

[Noname Given]

For the Enterprise-D, I wonder why CBS didn't just hire the Stage 9 creators to finish the project (instead of sending them a C&D). Oh what could've been. I would've gladly paid money for a fully explorable Enterprise-D!

Because you don't reward thieves with a license. Licensing is how the IP owners make money. Stage 9 should have approached Paramount CBS first.

 

[BillJ]

I'd kill for a modern Star Trek game that wasn't a mobile ripoff.

 

[daedalus5]

I think the Generations Game did a good job of letting you get to some of the Ent-D.... Elite Force 2 let ou do a full ship walk around and it was glorious. There was also a Mod for The Fallen that had you walk around the Defiant.

 

[NCC-73515]

EF1 and 2 only had parts of the ships, though the EF1 XP expanded it a bit

 

[The Rock]

Because you don't reward thieves with a license. Licensing is how the IP owners make money. Stage 9 should have approached Paramount CBS first.

How were they thieves? I always thought the Stage 9 makers weren't making any money off it.

 

[Noname Given]

How were they thieves? I always thought the Stage 9 makers weren't making any money off it.

That's not how IP works. If stage 9 did it strictly for themselves, and only passed the results between themselves and didn't make it publicly available, then yes no harm no foul.

But once it's out there for public consumption, it doesn't matter if they're not charging for it as it's a product out there that might compete with another company that wants to create a similar product for profit semicolon and as a result Paramount is possibly losing money because it lessons interest in licensing.

Yes, if they're not charging or making any money, there's a better chance that Paramount/CBS won't hit them with the lawsuit; but it doesn't change the fact that they are publicly releasing a product for public consumption that they own no licensing rights for, and that's illegal.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Because you don't reward thieves with a license. Licensing is how the IP owners make money. Stage 9 should have approached Paramount CBS first.

No, they should have finished it and dropped it into the wild, it's still easy to get hold of now and that'd still be the case if they finished it. Many, many fan projects suffer the same fate.

But a lot of these projects are more portfolio pieces, and I know some of the Stage 9 people worked on the Roddenberry Archive... so hopefully the makers got something worthwhile out of it.

 

[fireproof78]

Yes, if they're not charging or making any money, there's a better chance that Paramount/CBS won't hit them with the lawsuit; but it doesn't change the fact that they are publicly releasing a product for public consumption that they own no licensing rights for, and that's illegal.

Yes, indeed.

Approaching the copyright owner would be the thing to do if you want it to be available to the base in any meaningful way.

This pops to mind whenever I see copyright discussions:

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