I’m taking an IT class at school and my professor asked a question that I thought was pretty interesting, so I sendit along to you guys:
How long do you think it will be before there is a real life “holodeck” as shown in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”?
My answer is that unless there is a breakthrough in materials science, never. Right now we’re pushing the speed limit of silicon based chips, and I’d think that something like a holodeck would require thousands, if not millions of extremely fast parallel processors that control the functions of the room such as textures, light, sound, smell, etc.
We’re nowhere near that speed, nor do we have the technology to create the delivery systems to “fool” the five senses into thinking what they are seeing is real. In addition, I’d think you’d have to have at least a semi-functional AI program running so that conversations seem authentic, etc.
I was just talking about this… granted I was having some help from my friend mary jane…
well anyway… I think there are 2 parts to this technology…
1 will be when we are able to sit in a chair and wear glasses, and be in a dream sequence of sorts…like Total Recall…
and 2 will be when we walk into a fake room…
We are most likely not too far off from the chair method. an uninformed guess based on the growth of technology would be somewhere around 10 years…
but the holodeck will take many more years to be able to “fool” someone into thinking that it is real…
I would be shocked to see a star trek like holodeck within the next 25 years…
I am sure there is someone out there trying to figure out the way to do it… and eventually someone will probably get it…
but It is hard to think that this will happen in my lifetime… and I am 25…
I’d think the Matrix is a more likely virtual reality scenario than the holodeck. Besides, the holodeck produced sentience twice, which is another “problem” that would need to be tackled when trying to build one in real life.
geez arent there any real trekkies here (beside me?)
The ST:TNG holodeck is made up of light projection and forcefields. You get the solid feel by projecting a realistic image onto the field itself. Anyone who has ever rendered a 3D image with an actual photograph nows how realistic a simulation that can be.
So to have this technology you need super fast computers which at the rate that computers are progressing, is entirely possible. We havent hit a wall yet so that part is promising.
You would also need imageing technology that can project 3D full photo realistic light images without a medium and be able to interact with these images and not cause any shadows. Not promising but in the research stages. maybe in a hundred years or so or sooner if someone makes a real breakthru in laser holography.
Forcefields. Projected forcefields. Projected animated forcefeilds. Thats pure fiction. Unless someone comes up with a solution for this then a holodeck is pure fantasy.
I would rather they drilled a hole in the base of my skull and wire my brain and medula oblongata to interact with computer simulated reality.
As stated in Encounter at Farpoint, the holodecks use a combination of holograms, tractor beams, force fields to create an illusion if illusion will work and replicators and transporters to create actual physical objects if physical objects are needed (ex.: Wesley falls into the water and is still wet when he leaves the holodeck because the water was real, not a hologram). Hologram technology is just one part of what’s needed for a fully functioning holodeck, and probably the easiest one, given our current level of technology.
