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The Future of Holograms
D3 writes "A Slate article talks about the failure of holograms to really catch on and the future of using computers to create true holographic video ala Princess Leia. The article covers some history such as the fact that holograms have been around since 1947. Lots of great geek-pop references as well."
I've long said if you give me a holodeck and replicator I'm never (ever) coming out. If you cut the power I will kill myself rather than facing the real world again.
Sadly I think this would actually happen to more people than just myself, which would eventually erode teh human specis into non-existance.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
You need not ask anymore why somebody would ever want a 500 TFlop graphics card that runs at 4 THz with a petabyte or more of video RAM. Imagine the computational power needed for high FPS first person holographic virtual reality games!
My rights don't need management.
Well, Scott Adams once predicted that the Holodeck will be the last invention that humanity ever creates. Wouldn't surprise me if he turned out to be right.
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I agree that it'd happen to others, but not the whole species. It'd just get rid of those prone to being addicted to living in a fantasy. So that's all the D&D geeks, video gamers, /. readers, crazy liberal artists - we'd be left with a world full of dull suits. Great.
Of course, some would argue that TV has already started the process...
This is not a sig
What happened to the promised hologram storage?
-- Bryan
The cheapest way to make a hologram: http://www.amasci.com/amateur/holo1.html
robots obey what the children say - TMBG
I'm coming up on 30 years of age. A couple of weekends ago I had a choice of whether to play a video game or to catch up on my language exercises. Believe it or not, declining Latin nouns appealed as something far more fun than whacking monsters, casting spells, or jumping ladders. This is not a decision I would have made when I was 20 or even 25.
To some people, a holodeck, by the virtue of being a fake replica, can never replace the real world; and this will hold true for the time to come--as long as you are able to tell apart the real world and the world of make-believe, some people will voluntarily not partake in whatever the technology of play has to offer simply because they will perceive it as ultimately fruitless.
Now, whether they will choose to procreate is an entirely different matter. :)
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Most things labeled as holgrams are crappy 3D effects. Such as those lenticular sheet 3D effects on magazine covers and breakfast cerial boxes.
This word missuse has really discredited those who have real holograms.
Then there are still image holograms such as the cheap Mylar prints that aren't too bad if lit right, but most people can't or aren't willing to get up proper lighting to display them effectivly. The fact that I can't just put a nail in the wall and hang it is a large setback.
The glass plate holograms are very expensive but when done right are frightenly real. Like one a friend of mine made of his head with a pulsed ruby laser. I really looks like a decapitated head in a box, in almost any lighting. He was showing it at a fleamarket and people would call the cops, or completely go histerical in horror screaming and crying, thinking is was a real head in a box (except it was just a flat glass palate)
Here is the big hint now.
Did you know you can digitaly generate a hologram compulationaly and print it on a laser printer, photographicaly reduce it and have it work as a hologram!
A hologram is really just a black and white print of the light interferiance patterns (that are much larger then the wavelength of light used).
You can even display these interference patterns in realtime using a LCOS chip if it's illiminated correctly,(mono chrome only) and product true holographic image. Limited to 1 inch across through and $5000 at the moment.
So if it were possible to get an LCOS that was 14 inches across it would litteraly be like a red tinted glass porthole into another universe. Will all the detail and resolution of looking out side the window of your office!
There was some very interesting experiments we did with this a few years ago. Maybe someday I'll have the time to write these up in more detail.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
In Issue 205 of ZZZ Online, we discussed the HelioDisplay. There are some really cool holographic systems out there, but they're expensive and not quite what I think anyone expected.
The cool think about things like the HelioDisplay is that it uses water vapor to make the projection. I didn't see any of that around Princess Leia. I think the biggest obstacle has been trying to make holographic projections appear in space without having some kind of hard media (glass, crystal, etc.) surrounding it.
It's coming, just give it some time. If someone ever discovers Hard Light, I'd like to talk to them.
The strict conditions under which holograms are made greatly limits what you can generate images of. It isn't hard to make holograms, but to make bright, interesting holograms is more of an effort. If you only have a continuous source (such as a laser diode) the hologram has to be made in darkroom conditions, and vibration and temperature changes must be kept to a minimum. Exposures are quite long too - with the process I use, small plates are exposed around 10-15 seconds. Holographic Optical Elements and interferometry are some useful things that can be done, however a 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch reflection hologram holds limited fascination for most people, regardless of what you have recorded there. Some people are amazed when they see holograms, others couldn't care less.
==
Classic Star Trek predicted it long before Scott Adams.
The bulging-skull Talosians destroyed their society because they mastered the power of illusion. The Federation considered the technology so dangerous that Talos IV was off-limits. (Spock illegally took the crippled Capt. Pike there so he could have some semblance of a normal life, even if it was an illusion.)
Jebus, I am a geek for knowing that.
Everybody remembers the Pricess Leia "hologram" that was really just a movie optical effect. But nobody remembers the REAL hologram that appeared in a major movie in 1975, two years BEFORE the first Star Wars.
Near the end of Logan's Run, Michael York's character undergoes an interrogation surrounded by surrogate projected heads that rotate and repeatedly drone catchphrases like "There is no sanctuary." Those heads are not optical effects. They are real, physical holograms of Michael York, made earlier and installed and properly lit on-set as the scene was filmed. Although they give the appearance of being animated, they are really a standard mylar-based hologram which was captured using a rotating slit; on-set, walking around the hologram would make it appear to move.
I've always wondered why this technique was never expanded upon. It satisfies the basic criteria, of being mounted into a cylindrical shape so that the entire audience may surround it. Surely by now some clever folks should have been able to figure out some way of using double-scanning slits or somesuch to allow each horizontal slice of the cylinder to represent one moment in time, while the entire cylinder was pulled vertically like movie film. Is there some elusive but fundamental piece of hologram physics that prevents this? Or it is just that nobody has actually tried it yet?
Actually there currently are true 3D volumetric
displays availible. Check out the Lightspace
Depth Cube.. it has 4 inches of true depth.
It has five layers per inch of depth and pixels
are interpolated between layers to give the
illusion of a seamless surface.
I've seen real time apps run on it such as quake
and they look great.
This guy needs to do his homework b4 saying
that nothing will be availible for 30 years
Jake
Erode the human species into non-existence? I think you greatly overestimate the value in the (relative) handful of persons who'd rather live in a holodeck with a replicator.
The rest of the human race will go on doing exactly what they always did and move forward (slowly of course) sans-holodeck.
And I'm not trying to belittle you in any way. I'm possibly going to end my days in a holodeck with a replicator too in your scenario.
Computer. "Load program Swedish Bikini Team number 14 please. "Irresistable Me" protocol will be in effect and crank me up some waffles while you're at it!"
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I remember that it seemed rigged. It never played quite the same way twice despite being totally linear like their other rigged game Dragon's Lair. Those things were quarter eating monsters.
The games flashed when you need to press the button or move the stick, and even if you could do a particular sequnce perfectly, after three or so successful sequences you would always die in the next one no matter what. When you went to do it again it would work fine. You would loose all your lives pretty quickly and have to put in more quarters to continue the game.
Did anyone else find that was the case, or is there some geek out there who was actually able to play one of these games all the way through without paying out repeatedly?
"Take that Lisa's beliefs!" - Homer Simpson