“Ten years ago, it seemed like a dream. Now, it feels within reach.”
Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking are playing poker together.
No, this isn’t a bad physics joke. It’s a scene from “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” It takes place in a holodeck, a simulated-reality room in the fictional Star Trek universe. The three scientists — or at least computer-generated versions of them — have been transported to the 2300s to play cards with Lt. Cmdr. Data.
“I don’t even know why I’m here in the first place,” Newton says.
While the show is set in the future, some scientists and researchers say we could have something like holodecks by 2024. If you have enough money, you could even buy one today, though it would be crude compared to the holodecks on Star Trek.
This is all part of a quest by computer companies, Hollywood and video game makers to move entertainment closer to reality — or at least a computer-generated version of reality. Rather than simply watch movies, the thinking goes, we could become part of the story. We could see people and things moving around our living rooms. The actors could talk to us. Gamers who today slouch on the couch could step inside their games. They could pick up a computer-simulated bat in computer-simulated Yankee Stadium while a computer-simulated crowd roared around them.
“The holodeck is something we’ve been fixated on here for a number of years as a future target experience that would be truly immersive,” said Phil Rogers, a corporate fellow at Advanced Micro Devices, the computer chip maker. “Ten years ago, it seemed like a dream. Now, it feels within reach.”
At A.M.D.’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., Mr. Rogers and his team have built a version of a holodeck. It’s shaped like a dome and is covered with wall-to-wall projectors. The room uses surround sound, augmented reality and other technologies to recreate the real world.
“Eventually, wallpaper will become intelligent and we will paper over our entire living room with intelligent paper, surrounding and immersing ourselves with 3-D images,” said Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist. “Much of this technology already exists, but in crude form.”
How would you walk through these virtual worlds without hitting your bedroom or office wall? The United States Army Research Laboratory has already solved that problem. It has created a floor called an “omnidirectional treadmill” that enables people to seemingly wander around a room while the floor moves and the person stays in place.
This all sounds fun. But it also sounds terrifying to some industries.
The Latest on: Holodeck
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The Latest on: Holodeck
- 8 Ups & 2 Downs From Star Trek: Discovery 5.7 - Erigahon May 8, 2024 at 5:00 pm
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- How Science Fiction Confronts the Real Isolation of Spaceon May 6, 2024 at 2:19 pm
A Space Odyssey to Moon, Project Hail Mary and Star Trek's holodeck, explore the psychological challenges of astronaut loneliness found in sci-fi, drawing parallels to real-life ISS experiences and ...
- Make 3D Scenes With A Holodeck-Like Voice Interfaceon April 29, 2024 at 8:30 am
The voice interface for the holodeck in Star Trek had users create objects by saying things like “create a table” and “now make it a metal table” and so forth, all with ...
- Shockingly, People Aren’t Interested In Paying $3,500 For Apple’s Wildly Overpriced Vision Pro VR Headseton April 26, 2024 at 5:49 am
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- Best of Last Week—gravity free technology, recreating the Holodeck, why the moon is lopsidedon April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
And a team at the University of Pennsylvania recreated Star Trek's holodeck using ChatGPT and video game assets—called Holodeck, the system generates interactive virtual 3D environments. A team of ...
- Star Trek’s Holodeck Recreated As Virtual Training Ground For Next-Gen Robotson April 14, 2024 at 5:00 pm
But the Holodeck system (yep, that’s what it’s called), created by a team at Penn Engineering and their collaborators, can build pretty much any 3D environment you can think up. You just have ...
- A real Holodeck? Scientists recreate Star Trek technology with ChatGPTon April 12, 2024 at 9:26 am
To do so, they built their version of Star Trek’s “Holodeck”, an AI-powered system that builds virtual worlds. Though the scientists likely had a great time recreating a tool out of an ...
- Penn Engineers recreate Star Trek’s Holodeck using ChatGPT and video game assetson April 11, 2024 at 9:21 am
Using everyday language, users can prompt Holodeck to generate a virtually infinite variety of 3D spaces, which creates new possibilities for training robots to navigate the world. That paucity of ...
- Star Trek's Holodeck recreated using ChatGPT and video game assetson April 10, 2024 at 5:00 pm
Star Trek's Holodeck is no longer just science fiction. Using AI, engineers have created a tool that can generate 3D environments, prompted by everyday language. In Star Trek: The Next Generation ...
- Holodeck: A Revolutionary AI Tool for Creating Virtual Worlds Unveiledon December 19, 2023 at 12:30 pm
Holodeck’s core functionality hinges on the amalgamation of cutting-edge AI technologies. At its heart lies OpenAI’s GPT-4, a powerhouse model renowned for its adeptness in comprehending and ...
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