vista Windows Vista pre-production graphics & visualizations

[Ian W]

I had intended to post these in November but I did not get around to doing so. I want to share some of the links for pre-production visualizations and graphics created by Robert Stein for the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. Stein had posted many of these visualizations and graphics in a Flickr album titled "Microsoft Vista."

This album shows quite a few interesting images. Among other things, the album shows:

• Preliminary retail box designs, including a beveled plasic box mimicking the refraction of glass so that consumers could view the enclosed DVD-ROM.
• A static image of an aurora animation that would be displayed during the operating system's Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) to determine if the hardware was capable of running the AERO interface (in a manner similar to WinSAT). This indicates that WinSAT predates the development "reset" of the operating system. The animation itself can be found here.
• A partially translucent icon for the Contacts folder. An animation of the icon itself can be found here.
• A single frame for an animation intended to be displayed while the user burned a CD or DVD.
• A 3D glass chip intended to represent different colors of glass in the AERO UI.
• Pre-production progress bar designs for Windows Explorer.

It is interesting to note that some of the images that one may associate with the product before its development "reset" may have been created after that event. For example, Stein's 3D world globes have a copyright date of 2006, which was approximately two years after Microsoft "reset" the product.

Stein also created designs for the original Xbox game console and for a multimedia PC.