133: The First Steps to the Holodeck

Jon Sanderson

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The First Steps to the Holodeck

"As technology leaps forward every day, the doors to a completely immersive play experience fly open. While the Star Trek holodeck is probably a ways off, currently existing technology can get us pretty close. It's just a matter of whether or not the entertainment industry can make it affordable enough to be realistic. Then again, if you own a PS3, maybe you're already willing to drop exorbitant amounts of money on games."

Jon Sanderson wonders: Are we there yet?


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Cyberqat

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Well its a nice dream....

But the reality is that we are still far far away from a "holodeck". Yes you can surround yourself with video in a CAVE (try the Pirates of the Carribean game at DisneyQuest in Florida) or, likely more reasonably, strap on an HMD with head tracking. And yes, already some MMOs are supporting 3D virtualized sound. But haptic feedback remains as elusive as ever.

The "pressure suit" concept comes from air force flight simulators. Its great if you want to simulate the rush of blood to or away from your head and get real "red out" and "black out" but its hardly a general purpose haptic device unless your simualation world consists of being surrounded by randomly inflating baloons.

There are some haptic feedback devices on the market today such as the Novint Falcon (http://home.novint.com/products/novint_falcon.php) but again unless what you want to simulate is pushing and pulling a little handle in your virtual world, the applications are pretty limited.

In short the visual and audio ability to do a "holodeck" have been around since Jaron Lanier coined the term Virtual Reality. What remains distant, however, are all the OTHER sensations that make it anything more then a ghostly world of empty images and sounds.
 

incoherent

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I can't help but think that the same people who would have trouble fitting into a pressure suit would have similar if not larger difficulties actually carrying on a crazy kung-fu fight.
 

cavicchia

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i agree with incoherent, lets be honest here, whats the average gamer like? and does that person really want to run all the way across your virtual world, in order to do one quest?
 

[HD]Rob Inglis

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cavicchia said:
i agree with incoherent, lets be honest here, whats the average gamer like? and does that person really want to run all the way across your virtual world, in order to do one quest?
GOD YES. I love games where you can run around pointlessly in giant areas, junk. That's a poor description, but that's one reason why I liked Windwaker, and no on else did. I liked how it took me a while to go form one place to another, being aable to do fun sutff along the way.
 

Darkpen

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Whenever I come across this topic, the one thing I think that is the most important out of all of these is how control input is managed. If games simulated a world, but you still had the same physical capabilities as you do now, then what's so great about it to begin with?

Lucid dreams in particular come to mind, with the only problem of lucid dreaming being the sheer amount of sensitivity and control is necessary to stay in a dream-state, as well as the fact that most content that the brain comes up with is through merely living and interacting with every-day life.

I think the highest stage that "gaming" can go would be to be at the level of a solidified illusion. How we go about that will be the great question that our children will experience, and advance to the point of where our sci-fi now is reality for them, where violence is rampant, and any sense of freedom is destroyed.
 

Trulock

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Darkpen said:
How we go about that will be the great question that our children will experience, and advance to the point of where our sci-fi now is reality for them
I don't know how old you are, but my dad is 53 and I believe that even he will be able to experience all sensory virtual reality in his life yet.

cavicchia said:
i agree with incoherent, lets be honest here, whats the average gamer like? and does that person really want to run all the way across your virtual world, in order to do one quest?
Social networking anyone? If you can interact with people you love that is living on the other side of the world as if he is standing right next to you, won't you do that as regularly as possible? Games and other possibilities won't be nearly as much of a driving factor as this one alone.

You will be able to run a whole business with people where no one is living in the same City/State/Country. www.blit-blot.com these guys created Aquaria over distance, this will become the norm not the exception. If I as a developer can live wherever I like and still do my job exactly the same as before, why won't I take advantage of that?

While it may be still a few years off, don't get a fright when you wipe your eyes of the sleep and find yourself unable to cope with the new networking revolution.
 

Frybird

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Actually, the Wii reminds me how far away we're still from a "holodeck"

It's not a bad control device by any means, and the level of interaction with even such a simple game as Wii Sports is truly amazing, but in most games it is just a different method of input, and not necessarily a more immersive one.


Other than that, i'm not even sure if i would like a "holodeck"...Okay, it would be definitly cool, but...

Do i really want to go into a isolated enviroment every time i play a game?
Will graphics ever be good enough to let you feel truely as a part of the world?
What about games like Puzzles, or Strategy Games, what use has a "holodeck" here?
 

Novan Leon

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Even if all the technology was there, I still don't think the holodeck would be the hit everyone thinks it would be. Why you ask? Because it would require a certain level of physical effort to "play". Nobody is going to do that.
 

Arbre

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Obviously, it would not be suited for all experiences. But a holoroom would clearly have more mundane applications than pure gaming.

Check this [http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay] out. Not exactly what you're looking for, but still fun.

EDIT: besides, I think too many here have a vision that is not far from this [http://bp2.blogger.com/_deCYoZO5PhE/RkDtBb5fUXI/AAAAAAAAAGg/ROHLZzBMsaw/s1600-h/wow_world_of_warcraft_2030_reality.jpg].
 

General Ma Chao

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According to the creator of Dilbert, the holodeck will be the end of civilization. I can see where he's coming from. Why enter meat space and have to deal with STDs, unwanted pregnancies, or the downs of marriage? You can just go onto the holodeck and have at it with the partners of your dreams.
 

Novan Leon

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Arbre said:
EDIT: besides, I think too many here have a vision that is not far from this [http://bp2.blogger.com/_deCYoZO5PhE/RkDtBb5fUXI/AAAAAAAAAGg/ROHLZzBMsaw/s1600-h/wow_world_of_warcraft_2030_reality.jpg].
That's quite thought provoking. I can easily see where that could become a reality.

Kinda eerie...
 

Arbre

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Novan Leon said:
Arbre said:
EDIT: besides, I think too many here have a vision that is not far from this [http://bp2.blogger.com/_deCYoZO5PhE/RkDtBb5fUXI/AAAAAAAAAGg/ROHLZzBMsaw/s1600-h/wow_world_of_warcraft_2030_reality.jpg].
That's quite thought provoking. I can easily see where that could become a reality.

Kinda eerie...
Well, in some recent brain shampoo cession, game devs were all shitting their pants, scaring themselves and all going no, this can't happen, and if it does, it could only end bad.
 

Novan Leon

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Cheeze_Pavilion said:
General Ma Chao said:
According to the creator of Dilbert, the holodeck will be the end of civilization. I can see where he's coming from. Why enter meat space and have to deal with STDs, unwanted pregnancies, or the downs of marriage? You can just go onto the holodeck and have at it with the partners of your dreams.
I actually think it'll be the beginning of real civilization--what will you do when you can have any kind of pleasurable experience you want without having to work for it? It becomes a lot easier to spend your life as a starving artist when you have access to a holodeck where you can eat steak and lay on a warm beach all day.

Not to mention it'll make our interactions in meatspace much more pure--the not-so-attractive person with the great personality becomes a lot easier to spend one's life with when you've got an infinite supply of gorgeous, totally willing sex partners on digital tap.

Because let's face it: that's who is going to develop holodeck technology first. The porn industry. Pressure suit? Let's be honest--all you really need is a pressure *sleeve* to go with all that other stuff.
But who will want to make babies with that non-to-attractive person after spending yourself on all the fake gorgeous women? How will virtual food nourish your body in order to keep you alive?
 
Dec 29, 2007
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Personally I think it would be more interesting to have a gaming machine closer to the one described in Dennis L. Mckiernan's Caverns of Socrates. Where the people playing are basically put into these capsules and supplied with food and water through tubes, and are basically "dreaming" an environment controlled by a computer. Other than that, the fact is that once you think about a game acting as an alternate civilization, one in which you can eat sleep and live in, people will not want to ever leave. If you get everything you want from something, why go back to a place where you don't get everything you want? No, while it would be fun to have virtual reality or a "holodeck," if it got so far as to cater to everyone's whim then there would be no more life on this earth. We could each live a million lives just by fast-forwarding, but what would we accomplish? What is life without challenge? What is living without constantly trying to better ourselves? Sure, some people may do that in the beginning, but once they figured out that they could live any way they want with no consequences they would quickly become addicts. They would stop living for the simple joy of life and start living for simple pleasures and getting everything they want when they want it. The earth would be covered in "holodecks" with a very few people actually inhabiting and living life as we know it now. Fantasy is fun, but after a while one needs to come back.
 

Arbre

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Novan Leon said:
But who will want to make babies with that non-to-attractive person after spending yourself on all the fake gorgeous women? How will virtual food nourish your body in order to keep you alive?
1. No more Pampers, thanks to holofeces.
2. Bring your steak with you.
3. Star Trek's holodeck are just advanced unlikely technology, well for the moment, and there's lot to come before anything like photon and magnetic field manipulation could reach such a level. I wouldn't like to be inside when the machine gets a blue screen, if it's to be impaled by raws and columns of code.
4. A simple holoroom, where surrounding light spectacles would be the major feature, would be plain enough for me. As you'd sit in a fashion circle painted on the floor, your hands' moves would be sensed, you'd be touching spheres of light floating all around you... ah, I can picture my totally made up colourful zen environment...
 

SubtleMockery

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Zeddicus Zhul Zorander said:
Personally I think it would be more interesting to have a gaming machine closer to the one described in Dennis L. Mckiernan's Caverns of Socrates. Where the people playing are basically put into these capsules and supplied with food and water through tubes, and are basically "dreaming" an environment controlled by a computer. Other than that, the fact is that once you think about a game acting as an alternate civilization, one in which you can eat sleep and live in, people will not want to ever leave. If you get everything you want from something, why go back to a place where you don't get everything you want? No, while it would be fun to have virtual reality or a "holodeck," if it got so far as to cater to everyone's whim then there would be no more life on this earth. We could each live a million lives just by fast-forwarding, but what would we accomplish? What is life without challenge? What is living without constantly trying to better ourselves? Sure, some people may do that in the beginning, but once they figured out that they could live any way they want with no consequences they would quickly become addicts. They would stop living for the simple joy of life and start living for simple pleasures and getting everything they want when they want it. The earth would be covered in "holodecks" with a very few people actually inhabiting and living life as we know it now. Fantasy is fun, but after a while one needs to come back.
Why? Why does one need to come back? Wouldn't that be the "Utopia" that we have constantly been bettering ourselves towards? Why should we force people to continue suffering in this realm, when we've created heaven for the masses? I think it's an admirable goal. No more want, no more work, no more weakness.