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They're just Excelsiors. They don't necessarily have to be Excelsiors though, they could be Starfleet's "generic" ship at the time.
This is part of the original draw-up for the LCARS seen on the one forward console on the E-B's bridge. Also, in the drawing, all the Excelsiors are labeled as "1701-B" underneath.
[ July 25, 2001: Message edited by: The359 ]
-------------------- "Lotta people go through life doing things badly. Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting."
-Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney, LeMans
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Either they're positions of the Enterprise or positions the Enerprise was supposed to be in. They could also be representing other ships, just the creators took the Excelsior design from the Enerprise's MSD, adn the regisrty, and put them on the LCARS thinking no one would notice.
posted
The Starfleet Emblems are Starbases and Relay Stations. I can't read them clearly though. One does seem to say Relay 47A though.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
See? They put names and stuff in there, thinking no one would notice. It's not what we want to believe, but they don't have time to make up new names for everything that is put in small print. ("Whispers" was an exception, I guess)
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So what do we make of the shape of that panel? The real thing was horizontally more elongated, but the fancy shape still defies logic. Are we supposed to be looking at five-twelvths of the entire galaxy or what? If not, why is the curvature there?
Thinking in fanfic terms, this could be a representation of the "original quadrant system" of a sphere a couple of hundred ly across surrounding the UFP core worlds. The sphere was supposed to be divided into eight quadrants (or four quadrants, each with upper and lower subquadrants, so the nomenclature wasn't quite as idiotic as it sounded) - perhaps the subquadrants were divided into sectors using cylindrar coordinates, and what we see here is a horizontal intersection of the volume, or 5/12 of it anyway.
Thinking of the function of the display, it doesn't seem to be a "control device" as much as it is a "display". For it to be of practical use to the helmsman, it would have to describe a relatively small volume of space. Otherwise, there simply wouldn't be much movement on it within reasonable timescales, and the detail would be insufficient for steering or navigation tasks. (I think both the helm and navigation consoles of the E-B sported this same design, BTW.)
An immobile picture of a large part of our galaxy would be stupid waste of console surface, better used for more of control knobs and buttons.
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