Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome everyone to Forward Thinking, the podcast where
Speaker 1: we look at the future, open up our arms and
Speaker 1: say come here you. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocalvon,
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And today we wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about holograms, uh and uh and kind of
Speaker 1: the misconceptions about holograms and how Hollywood has given us
Speaker 1: unrealistic expectations that we cannot help but feel um are
Speaker 1: should just be right around the corner room. We're always
Speaker 1: disappointed when it doesn't happen. Yeah, where's my Layah hologram? Honestly?
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're talking about Princess Leah. Are there any
Speaker 1: other layers that are critical too? Sure? There are some
Speaker 1: people with some very nerdy parents who, yes, are named Leia. Correct,
Speaker 1: you're correct. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to invalidate all
Speaker 1: of you layers out there. No, No, I don't want
Speaker 1: to invalidate any layers anywhere, but I do want to
Speaker 1: talk about holograms and uh. You know, do you guys
Speaker 1: remember the story about Tupac headlining over at Coachella. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said it was a hologram. Didn't they know he
Speaker 1: was on stage with Snoop Lion. He's now SNOOPO used
Speaker 1: to be Snoop Dogg. No, I understand, I know who
Speaker 1: it is. Okay, all right, you're looking at me like
Speaker 1: just like I just wasn't sure that he. I just
Speaker 1: knew he was performing on stage with somebody. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: he was on stage, or really an image of him
Speaker 1: was on stage. Of course, Tupac himself was sadly no
Speaker 1: longer with us, and that, of course, was the big deal,
Speaker 1: was the fact that there was a person who was
Speaker 1: once alive and now no longer alive performing at Coachella,
Speaker 1: And it looked like kind of a hologram sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and that's what everyone called it. Well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: so I heard it was a hologram. It's not. Why not,
Speaker 1: because it really was just a sort of a well,
Speaker 1: kind of a sub set of an old trick called
Speaker 1: Pepper's Ghost, which is a trick that's used by magicians.
Speaker 1: It's used in haunted houses, it's used in dark rides. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's a way to create an illusion so that
Speaker 1: you have sort of a transparent figure that seemingly can
Speaker 1: interact with a real physical setting and uh and the
Speaker 1: way it works is pretty pretty nifty. Um and and
Speaker 1: the the best manifestation of this that I have seen
Speaker 1: is that the Disney ride the Haunted Mansion. So for
Speaker 1: you Disney fans out there who are listening to this
Speaker 1: podcast who absolutely do not want to have the magic ruined,
Speaker 1: I will suggest that you skip ahead on this podcast
Speaker 1: because I'm going to tell you how a certain effect works.
Speaker 1: And once you know it, you can never unknow it.
Speaker 1: So um, I know that some people take that very seriously.
Speaker 1: So and by the way, the Easter Bunny is real
Speaker 1: fair enough, So you go through the Haunted Mansion ride.
Speaker 1: One of the big sequences in this ride is a
Speaker 1: ball where there's a giant birthday party going on. There's
Speaker 1: some ghosts dancing, there's a ghost playing a pipe organ.
Speaker 1: You see some ghosts uh portraits dueling with pistols, um,
Speaker 1: other ghosts appear to be circling chandelier. A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff is happening in this one sequenceeous it looks great.
Speaker 1: And all the ghosts are these transparent figures that are
Speaker 1: moving around what looks like an actual three dimensional scene,
Speaker 1: and so it's kind of it can be a little confusing,
Speaker 1: like how did they do that? It's actually very simple.
Speaker 1: So the setting is real. There's a real table there there,
Speaker 1: there's a real uh, chandelier, chandelier, pipe organ, all these
Speaker 1: kind of things are actually there. But all the figures
Speaker 1: you see are actually just reflections. There's a pane of
Speaker 1: glass between the ride vehicles and the setting where the
Speaker 1: table is and all that, uh, and then below you
Speaker 1: and above you on you know, right along the same
Speaker 1: parallel as the as the track you are on, there
Speaker 1: are animatronic figures that are lit so that they will
Speaker 1: reflect off the glass. The ride part that you are
Speaker 1: in is very dark, so you don't see your own
Speaker 1: reflection or else that would ruin the illusion. There's also
Speaker 1: a scrim there that kind of cuts down on the
Speaker 1: glare so that you can't tell that there's a reflection
Speaker 1: going on. By controlling the lighting in that section above
Speaker 1: and below you, you can make the ghosts appear to
Speaker 1: fade in and fade out of existence. The brighter it is,
Speaker 1: the stronger the reflection is. The dimmer it is, the
Speaker 1: more weak the reflection, so they start to look like
Speaker 1: they are becoming more and more insubstantial as the lights
Speaker 1: go down right right, the same way that if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen on TV if they're interrogating suspect and on
Speaker 1: one side of a one way mirror, and if the
Speaker 1: lights come up on the other side, then you can
Speaker 1: see who's through the other end. Right, that's considered a
Speaker 1: bad thing, usually usually played to great comedic effect and
Speaker 1: things like but but yeah, that's how that that illusion
Speaker 1: we're because it's just a reflection. So you've got the
Speaker 1: dark part of the ride, so you can't see your
Speaker 1: own reflection. You've got the parts that are lit up
Speaker 1: above you and below you, those are blocked out from
Speaker 1: your view by the floor and ceiling of the actual
Speaker 1: ride track that you are on. And then you're looking
Speaker 1: into a room and seeing the reflection, and that gives
Speaker 1: you the illusion that there are ghosts wandering around. Now.
Speaker 1: In the case of Tupac over at Coachella, it was
Speaker 1: a variant of this particular trick, uh and it's very similar,
Speaker 1: but it does require a slightly different setup. It's called
Speaker 1: the Musion eyeliner, which is actually a proprietary tech. It's
Speaker 1: done by this one company. Is that is that the
Speaker 1: projection or the film or both. It's it's really the
Speaker 1: projection method. So at the stage at Coachella, you have
Speaker 1: you have the stage itself where the people are all
Speaker 1: dance and round, singing and stuff. In front of the
Speaker 1: stage is a screen that's that's on the ground, so
Speaker 1: it's not it's not mounted vertically. It's mounted so that
Speaker 1: it's actually on the ground itself, flat against the ground.
Speaker 1: You've got a frame that's in front of the stage
Speaker 1: that that supports a screen that's tilted at a forty
Speaker 1: five degree angle toward the audience. So the base of
Speaker 1: the screen or foil as as Musian Eyeliner calls it,
Speaker 1: the base of the foil is on the edge of
Speaker 1: the stage. The top of the foil is mounted to
Speaker 1: a sort of a lattice that's in front of the stage,
Speaker 1: and it's transparent so you can see through it. So
Speaker 1: if you're standing in front of the stage, there's just
Speaker 1: the screen that you probably aren't really noticing, particularly if
Speaker 1: it's if it's dark, uh, And so you can see
Speaker 1: everything that's happening on the stage just fine. Well, you've
Speaker 1: got a projector also mounted at the top of the
Speaker 1: the you know, the structure that's holding the screen up
Speaker 1: it's projecting down onto the ground, so that screen that's
Speaker 1: flat on the ground, it projects onto that. The foil
Speaker 1: reflects that projection, so that from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: audience there appears to be a three dimensional moving figure
Speaker 1: up there on stage that's ghostly in nature, because of
Speaker 1: course you can see through the screen, so it's sort
Speaker 1: of this transparent kind of figure that's moving around, and
Speaker 1: it can seem to move through the same physical space
Speaker 1: as the people who are actually on the stage. It's
Speaker 1: all on illusion, but yeah, it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: perspective right now. I'd imagine if you're a performer who's
Speaker 1: up there on the stage with the image of Tupac,
Speaker 1: you you're not seeing anything interacting with him. Maybe you're
Speaker 1: seeing you're seeing a little bit of light on the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might see, you might see the foil in front
Speaker 1: of you. You probably could see where it was being projected,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't, Yeah, you wouldn't look to your right
Speaker 1: and suddenly see a ghostly performer standing there. And that's
Speaker 1: one thing I think we need to keep in mind
Speaker 1: as we're going through the rest of this podcast is
Speaker 1: the idea that um when we're talking about three D imaging.
Speaker 1: It turns out most of the time what we're actually
Speaker 1: talking about is something that is going one way. Is
Speaker 1: it's a forced perspective. Is if you are sitting and
Speaker 1: looking from one direction, it appears three D and right.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't always know that. But we we can get
Speaker 1: to the Hollywood misconceptions in a bit. Well. For instance,
Speaker 1: if you were staying to the side of that stage,
Speaker 1: if you were looking at the stage from like your
Speaker 1: ninety degrees off, so you're looking from the left or
Speaker 1: right side, you could see that there are people on
Speaker 1: the stage dancing. You would see that there's a screen
Speaker 1: that's that's tilted out toward the audience, and that's all
Speaker 1: you would see. You would not see a ghostly figure
Speaker 1: at all. You might see that there's a projector that's
Speaker 1: beaming something down, but you wouldn't be able to tell
Speaker 1: what it was. There'd be no three dimensionality to it
Speaker 1: um and you wouldn't even know necessarily that there was
Speaker 1: the ghostly figure of two pack cor dancing around on stage.
Speaker 1: It only appears to have volume from one direction. It
Speaker 1: doesn't actually have depths exactly. Yeah, you couldn't walk around
Speaker 1: it you know it, it would only be it would
Speaker 1: only work as long as you were in the right position,
Speaker 1: which is why this works great for things like haunted
Speaker 1: houses and rides where the perspective, Yeah, you're pretty much
Speaker 1: stuck with one point of view. You can't change that
Speaker 1: easily in most of these And the same thing with
Speaker 1: magic tricks. You know you you have designed this so
Speaker 1: that people can look at it in one particular way,
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't matter if it doesn't work any
Speaker 1: other way because no one's ever going to be in
Speaker 1: that position to see it. So we should probably explain
Speaker 1: if Tupac wasn't a real hologram. What is a hologram?
Speaker 1: When people use that word, what what are we actually
Speaker 1: talking about? So hologram is essentially a three dimensional representation
Speaker 1: of some sort of object. And the way it works
Speaker 1: is using one of my favorite things in the world, lasers,
Speaker 1: or really just one laser. Use a laser and a
Speaker 1: beam splitter to split that laser beam into two, and
Speaker 1: use mirrors to direct exactly where those beams go. And
Speaker 1: you have two, these two beams that perform very important functions.
Speaker 1: One of them is the object beam. Now this is
Speaker 1: the B beam that you direct, and you actually also
Speaker 1: use a lens to to diffuse the light in fact,
Speaker 1: to scan over an object, whatever the object is that
Speaker 1: you want to make a hologram of, and so that
Speaker 1: light then hits the object, some of it gets reflected
Speaker 1: back to this holographic medium, whether it's film or some
Speaker 1: sort of digital representation ship. Right, and in the in
Speaker 1: the good old days of holograms, we're talking holographic film,
Speaker 1: which is very very sensitive. It's got very high resolution
Speaker 1: for different different grades and phases of light. Your other
Speaker 1: beam is a reference beam which reflects and then is
Speaker 1: projected directly onto the holographic film, never having encountered the object.
Speaker 1: So you've got these two different beams for reference, right,
Speaker 1: You've got the well, you've got the one for reference
Speaker 1: in the one of the object one, and then uh
Speaker 1: that ends up being the basis of the holographic image
Speaker 1: that gets captured on the film. So what you're actually
Speaker 1: recording is the interference between these two beams. How a
Speaker 1: clean fusion of the beam interacts with uh, the waves
Speaker 1: of light that passed over the object. Right. And so
Speaker 1: then what you do is, once you've developed this holographic
Speaker 1: film or processed it through digital means whatever you have
Speaker 1: a physical representation you've got, like the picture, the holographic
Speaker 1: picture in front of you, in whatever medium you've used,
Speaker 1: usually it's clear plastic film. Uh. Then you have to
Speaker 1: use the same sort of light you used as your
Speaker 1: your your object being a reference beams so that you
Speaker 1: can recreate that that um that instance and get the effect.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you're just you're just looking at noise signal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not looking at anything in particular, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just it's just clear plastic film. So you illuminate with
Speaker 1: the proper type of light, and the effect is that
Speaker 1: you get a three dimensional object that looks like it's
Speaker 1: right behind that plastic film, like like the plastic film
Speaker 1: is almost like a window, right and uh, and that
Speaker 1: you can it's something that you feel like you can
Speaker 1: even walk around it. And depending upon how you process
Speaker 1: the um the image and how you're displaying it, you
Speaker 1: might be able to walk around and see slightly different
Speaker 1: versions of that thing. Most of the time, you're getting
Speaker 1: something that's always forward facing because every single aspect of
Speaker 1: that holographic film, uh is captured in every piece of
Speaker 1: that holographic film. In other words, every section of that
Speaker 1: holographic film has the information of the entire picture inside
Speaker 1: of it. Right. You can even you can even rip
Speaker 1: a hologram in half and in each half see the
Speaker 1: exact state image, right, although every time you rip it
Speaker 1: you're going to degrade the right, You're you're going to
Speaker 1: have the resolution right. So, but but you can also
Speaker 1: do things like take several different images, represent them as holograms,
Speaker 1: and then through the process of just moving through a space,
Speaker 1: create the illusion of movements. So in other words, there's
Speaker 1: a famous hologram where it's a woman who appears to
Speaker 1: be blowing a kiss as you walk around this and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's done the same way you would do a
Speaker 1: hand drawn animation. It's just a series of these photos
Speaker 1: done as holograms, and as you move through the space,
Speaker 1: it seems to move. But that's all I can do. Like,
Speaker 1: you can either make it make the the image appear
Speaker 1: to blow a kiss or catch a kiss and shove
Speaker 1: it into the lips, I mean, take a kiss back.
Speaker 1: Those are your two choices. Yeah, I always walked in
Speaker 1: the wrong way, so lonely, um, but yeah, that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's your basic hologram. I mean, that's the thing is
Speaker 1: that that's what a hologram is. That you're using these
Speaker 1: lasers to really um to explore through light the dimensions
Speaker 1: of of an object and then capture that in some medium.
Speaker 1: That's all hologram really is, Whereas what we're kind of
Speaker 1: used to thinking of as holograms isn't necessarily that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's almost more of a problem of vocabulary
Speaker 1: than anything else, right, I mean, people use the word
Speaker 1: hologram when really I think what they're talking about is
Speaker 1: is pretty much any kind of three D image rey
Speaker 1: or three D projection. Yeah, yeah, exactly, So there are
Speaker 1: other means of three D projection to have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with holograms. You know, you don't have to use
Speaker 1: the laser beams or splitters or anything like that in
Speaker 1: order to generate the effect. The Pepper's Ghost one is
Speaker 1: a great example. There's no lasers involved in that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could throw lasers in there if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, but there's no reason for them. But with
Speaker 1: the Pepper's Ghost, I mean, in that instance, there's actually
Speaker 1: nothing even three D about the image, right, It just
Speaker 1: appears to uh right, right, You're you're looking at a reflection.
Speaker 1: But then there's nothing three D about a reflection either.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the way Pepper's Ghost works, It's the
Speaker 1: way where a lot of holograms work. When you look
Speaker 1: into a reflection and you see a reflection of yourself,
Speaker 1: there's that illusion of depth, there's an illusion that light
Speaker 1: is coming at you, even though it's just really bouncing
Speaker 1: off to cracting off of various surfaces that make it
Speaker 1: seem as though. Right. What I'm talking about is um
Speaker 1: is for the viewers. So if you look at a
Speaker 1: Pepper's Ghost projection and you move around to the left
Speaker 1: or right of your position, it's still it's just gonna
Speaker 1: it's just a reflection, just a reflection. You're just going
Speaker 1: to be move around. It's not going to appear as
Speaker 1: a three D object would, Which is why, which is
Speaker 1: why they force your point of view in most of
Speaker 1: these uh instances of Pepper's ghosts. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to If you were to move to the side, you
Speaker 1: would just see that there's a pane of glass between
Speaker 1: people and a thing. Right, But there are ways to
Speaker 1: to create that three D illusion, right, to actually make
Speaker 1: so you know, I'm looking dead on and if I
Speaker 1: move my head over to the left. I see a
Speaker 1: little bit more to the left of the supposed image. Um,
Speaker 1: and it simulates the effect of three D volume even
Speaker 1: though we're still just looking at a projection coming from
Speaker 1: a screen. There's there's volumetric display, and volumetric display. Is
Speaker 1: this idea that you use a three dimensional display as
Speaker 1: opposed to the Planer displays P L A, N A
Speaker 1: R displays that we're used to. That's, you know, something
Speaker 1: you would have on your computer or your television or
Speaker 1: movie screen or whatever. This would be a display that
Speaker 1: itself had three dimensions, and so you would project things
Speaker 1: on it. It would essentially still be two dimensional projections
Speaker 1: on a three dimensional object, but that would give it
Speaker 1: the three dimensionality. That's kind of cheating. It is. It
Speaker 1: is cheating, and it's it's exactly cheating. And uh. And
Speaker 1: we've talked about the possibility of using things like missed
Speaker 1: or fog to project things on, but again, you're not
Speaker 1: we can't tell the projection. Hey, I want you to
Speaker 1: hit this one particle that's floating, this bit of particulate
Speaker 1: matter that's floating in the air, but don't hit the
Speaker 1: ones that are in front of it. Because I need
Speaker 1: you to to simulate depth. You can't really do that.
Speaker 1: We can't. We can't yet. Yeah, well yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the idea of projecting into a fog or suspended mist
Speaker 1: is interesting, but we're not there yet in in terms
Speaker 1: of really creating something that that has a convincing volume
Speaker 1: to it. You can can specificity of our of our
Speaker 1: projection is not anywhere and and and controlling something like
Speaker 1: a fog or missed in a way where it doesn't
Speaker 1: reveal to the viewer that that's why it is as
Speaker 1: tricky as well. I will say that, Uh, there was
Speaker 1: another Disney ride that I loved very much. Uh was
Speaker 1: that Disneyland Flying Elephants. That was what I loved when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. I don't like. I don't like
Speaker 1: waiting three hours to write on it now. Um No,
Speaker 1: spinning teacups, awesome ride, fantastic. Don't ride that more than
Speaker 1: three times in a row, people, I speak from experience. No,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Indiana Jones ride, which is at Disneyland,
Speaker 1: not at disney World. Um. And at Disneyland, that one
Speaker 1: part of the ride, it involves going through this dark
Speaker 1: tunnel and at the end of the dark tunnel is
Speaker 1: a wall and on that wall or all these rats
Speaker 1: crawling across it, and the vehicle you're on is going
Speaker 1: very quickly towards that wall, and you're thinking, oh God, Tom,
Speaker 1: turn it the last second, that'll be exciting, But instead
Speaker 1: you go through it, and when you go through it,
Speaker 1: you realize that the whole thing was a projection that
Speaker 1: was done on Missed. Now, since then they've done similar
Speaker 1: things with the Pirates of the cab En ride where
Speaker 1: they'll project like Davy Jones's face on Missed before you
Speaker 1: go through it. But that was the first time I'd
Speaker 1: ever experienced that effect, and the particular day I went
Speaker 1: it was working really well. So I was genuinely surprised
Speaker 1: when it happened. And though we should say that effect
Speaker 1: is too deep projection, it was too deep projection. It
Speaker 1: was in the dark, and it was fast because I
Speaker 1: was on a fast moving ride, so you're not going,
Speaker 1: you know, you don't have a long enough moment to
Speaker 1: sit there and really evaluate exactly. All you see is rats. Wow,
Speaker 1: that was cool. That's That's about how fast it went.
Speaker 1: So so this brings us to something that we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about, which is the misconceptions that we get
Speaker 1: when we're our ideas are fed by Hollywood, right, the
Speaker 1: whole Star Wars Princess Leiah hologram. Right. And I was
Speaker 1: actually trying to figure out why when I started doing
Speaker 1: research for this holograms. You know, the three D projections
Speaker 1: and holograms that I was finding, even the state of
Speaker 1: the art ones were nothing like the idea I had.
Speaker 1: Is just a kind of a shallow consumer of science fiction.
Speaker 1: And I think that's because the movies, um do not
Speaker 1: effectively communicate the idea that, as far as we know,
Speaker 1: three D imaging is really shackle too screens to some
Speaker 1: form of actual physical medium that you can't just project
Speaker 1: light into a space and have it be coherent in
Speaker 1: any way until we have a transparent nanobot army that
Speaker 1: we can use to reflect images off of. But it's true,
Speaker 1: I mean here, which we don't even need to reflect
Speaker 1: at that point. The nano bots themselves just take on
Speaker 1: whatever color they need, and then because they're nanobots, they're
Speaker 1: already got an amazing resolutions, So really they just form whatever,
Speaker 1: Like your idea twenty years away, Yeah, it's always away,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, um No, but I mean so we can
Speaker 1: think of a few in the movies. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: tons of these things. But if you think of in
Speaker 1: Star Wars, like you mentioned earlier, Lauren, Princess Leah, or
Speaker 1: They or the Chess set, these are uh if it
Speaker 1: seems to have a little base and then coming up
Speaker 1: out of it, yeah, right, and it seemed, well, what
Speaker 1: it is is the thing that's amazing about it is
Speaker 1: the full simulation of volume from every angle, not attached
Speaker 1: to a screen. Right. So in other words, so it's
Speaker 1: not it's not taking advantage of your perspective. Right. You
Speaker 1: could walk around this thing and see it from any
Speaker 1: angle and it would be as if there were an
Speaker 1: actual person or thing in the room with you, not
Speaker 1: just a projection. So yeah, it seems to have all
Speaker 1: the qualities of an actual, real object. It's just it's
Speaker 1: one made out of light. But there's some obvious problems
Speaker 1: with this. I mean, we can project images that appear
Speaker 1: three D from a certain perspective, but um, you can't
Speaker 1: just project something into thin air and then make it
Speaker 1: stop right here. If we could, if we could control
Speaker 1: light like that, then lightsabers would be a thing. It's
Speaker 1: the same problem with lightsabers right, how do you turn
Speaker 1: on a lightsaber and have the light stop at saber
Speaker 1: length as opposed to just being a really destructive flashlight,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean that's the same sort of problem
Speaker 1: with the laser if you prefer be a laser gun,
Speaker 1: but with a lightsaber handle instead of an unstead of
Speaker 1: a gun handle. Um. Now, in the world of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: we can explain it by saying magic, because come on,
Speaker 1: it's really what Star Wars is. But there are other
Speaker 1: there are other instances of this. I mean I was
Speaker 1: mentioning before the show Bones, the Sri television series Bones.
Speaker 1: It's you know, a forensic, uh procedural kind of show,
Speaker 1: and in almost every episode, at some point they have
Speaker 1: a uh they go and look at this holographic display,
Speaker 1: which is this three dimensional display that shows whatever they
Speaker 1: need to look at in all dimensions. They can manipulate
Speaker 1: in any way, and it's within their actual physical space.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, so it's it's like fully with
Speaker 1: volume and they can Yeah, it's it's like a it's
Speaker 1: like a giant like fish tank of a hologram that
Speaker 1: they can just go up to and and you know,
Speaker 1: the characters are standing all around it. And you can
Speaker 1: see straight through this image to the other people behind it,
Speaker 1: and everyone is seeing the same is rotating around it. Well,
Speaker 1: I actually I think that might be more feasible than
Speaker 1: the Princess Leiath thing, because you've got to contain, right,
Speaker 1: if you've got a container with with like glass on
Speaker 1: all sides, then I think in that case, with some
Speaker 1: really advanced projection technology and resolution, it might be possible
Speaker 1: to say, well, we can contain the illusion of an
Speaker 1: image within this glass area. And and and I especially
Speaker 1: if it were you know, maybe not quite cylindrical, but
Speaker 1: but many sided, you could project a slightly different image
Speaker 1: onto each pane of glass create the illusion that you're
Speaker 1: going all the way around an object right right in person.
Speaker 1: If you were to walk around it, it would not
Speaker 1: look nearly as impressive as the depiction in the television series.
Speaker 1: But then again, you know, everything's heightened for entertainment. I mean,
Speaker 1: we understand that, but it's it's again another sort of
Speaker 1: misrepresentation of what three D imaging really is. Well, and
Speaker 1: clearly they've been doing this for a while. I mean
Speaker 1: we mentioned Star Wars, and that was the s and
Speaker 1: then uh and then you see going through uh, one
Speaker 1: was total recall made. It was like something two thousand eleven. Right,
Speaker 1: is the original one with the one with believe that
Speaker 1: people defend the original Okay, oh, we're about to fight
Speaker 1: the original one after the show, the original one with
Speaker 1: Honold he they've got they've got a hologram in that movie, right,
Speaker 1: a quote hologram, Right, But it's it's it's it just
Speaker 1: walks around with everybody. Well in the series of In
Speaker 1: the British comedy series Red Dwarf, one of the main
Speaker 1: characters is a hologram, although that's simply played by an
Speaker 1: actor who's really moving around in the space um and
Speaker 1: then only occasionally does stuff move through him where they
Speaker 1: you know, have to shoot some sort of effects of that, right, right,
Speaker 1: or the doctor on a voyager, yeah, holographic medical and
Speaker 1: and none of these rely on screens in the way
Speaker 1: that every hologram exactly something. There's some form of coherent light.
Speaker 1: But by Star Trek, you've got the idea of the
Speaker 1: holodeck where you're in this this four dimensional holographic environment
Speaker 1: that you know, but they also have replicators so they
Speaker 1: can make whatever they need it. It's funny how much
Speaker 1: we want this because people I keep seeing online how
Speaker 1: everybody keeps announcing now we've got the full Princess Leia
Speaker 1: hologram right around there's new news. It's it's like, no,
Speaker 1: this one, this one for real. Yeah, they keep promising
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in the movies and then you look
Speaker 1: into it and it's like somebody overhyped this. What what
Speaker 1: you're talking about In each case is still just like, um,
Speaker 1: this is a sort of better hologram than the one before,
Speaker 1: or not hologram they use the word that fancier screen
Speaker 1: or I was looking at this one in the Guardian.
Speaker 1: The headline is Princess Leia Hologram could become a reality,
Speaker 1: and it's talking about something. Uh. They're doing Hewlett Packard Labs.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to downplay their achievement all. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have created an amazing screen, uh for for simulating
Speaker 1: really really good three D and you can move your
Speaker 1: head all around it. It's got a lot of range
Speaker 1: of vision. You know, you can go in that almost
Speaker 1: full semicircle around the screen um to see it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so so I don't mean to downplay at all
Speaker 1: what they've done, but it's not print. I mean it's
Speaker 1: still a screen, right, Yeah, I think I think, uh,
Speaker 1: we're probably limited by screens for the foreseeable future. I
Speaker 1: mean not to say that someone won't someday figure out
Speaker 1: ways of telling light who's the Boss and and maybe
Speaker 1: projecting a three dimensional, you know, entertainment right there in
Speaker 1: your room, perhaps an episode of Who's the Boss. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I was, I was waiting Joe. Joe just stared at
Speaker 1: me in shell shockhar and Lawrence just snickering, just like
Speaker 1: the The Angel. The horrible, painful setup of that went
Speaker 1: so long. That's that's my gig, man, that's my gig.
Speaker 1: I do long setups and talk about it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, and then we podcast about it. That's awesome. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's I think all of that's really relevant information. I
Speaker 1: mean the idea that since we already have the preconceived
Speaker 1: notion that this is where we're headed, the Princess Leiah hologram,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, then it's understandable that
Speaker 1: that's how people report on it because it immediately conveys
Speaker 1: information to the reader. Because that's one of those touchstones
Speaker 1: that most people are familiar with. I do wish they
Speaker 1: would come up with a different term, although we also
Speaker 1: have to admit the fact that language is plastic, it's flexible,
Speaker 1: and sometimes words eventually start to mean things that they
Speaker 1: did not originally mean. So I suspect, knowing the way
Speaker 1: people work, that hologram essentially will be you know, it's
Speaker 1: already colloquially used for three D projection, but it's gonna
Speaker 1: just that's just gonna be the name, the meaning of
Speaker 1: the words. We'll just listen to how we've been using
Speaker 1: it now, even though we like just made the distinction.
Speaker 1: I mean, well, it's because that's what everyone calls it,
Speaker 1: not that I'm not saying it because that's what I
Speaker 1: think of I think it is. I'm saying because that's okay, Jonathan, Look,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm speaking to the people using the language
Speaker 1: they use. I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: lose folks after my hostage. Yeah, I support you, Okay, good,
Speaker 1: all right? Well, Hey, you know what, I think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna wrap this up because I have the power to
Speaker 1: do that. This is a fun discussion though, holograms. That's
Speaker 1: really one of those interesting things. There's a great article
Speaker 1: on the How Stuff Works site about how holograms work,
Speaker 1: which really goes into amazing detail about how the light
Speaker 1: interacts to create this illusion of a three D image,
Speaker 1: um and and how your brain picks up some of
Speaker 1: the work. Tracy Wilson wrote it, and it's it gets
Speaker 1: really deep into the physics if you're into that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. It nearly broke her. I remember when she
Speaker 1: was writing it. It was one of the ones that
Speaker 1: was There are a couple of articles on that site
Speaker 1: that were particularly difficult, and that was one of them.
Speaker 1: But it's really well done. She did a great job,
Speaker 1: so I highly recommend checking that out. Also, if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with us, we have an
Speaker 1: email address that's f W Thinking at Discovery dot com.
Speaker 1: You can go to f W thinking dot com and
Speaker 1: uh and check out all of the blogs, the podcast,
Speaker 1: the video episodes, they're all up there. You can find
Speaker 1: links to our social media so you can follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus and get in
Speaker 1: touch with us. Let's know what what interests you about
Speaker 1: the future, what what what has you excited? What points
Speaker 1: do you do you want us to cover. We're really
Speaker 1: eager to hear from you, and we look forward to
Speaker 1: talking to you again. Really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,