In the future virtual reality
will be very big. But there will still be groups of people who will
want to go out and be entertained together, particularly young
people. Such people will still be able to go to the theater and see
live actors, or see movies on a flat screen. But such forms of
entertainment may seem very old fashioned. Will there be any way in
the future for a man and a woman (or a group of young friends) to go
out and get some futuristic high-tech entertainment that will seem to
transport them to another time or place?
Let us imagine a very new
form of entertainment that we might call a holographic theater.
Rather than imagine something like the holodeck in the TV series Star
Trek: The New Generation ( a device which involves incredibly
advanced technology you're unlikely to ever see), let's imagine
some technology you might actually see within a few decades. The
holographic theater I imagine would be a dome of between 10 and 30
meters. In the center of the dome would be a circular or rectangular
area that we might call the audience area. All the rest of the
interior of the dome would be a projection area.
The audience in the audience
area would see what appeared to be some other place, typically some
place outdoors (although it might also be some vast indoor area such as
the interior of St. Peter's Cathedral). It would be a full 3D 360
degree projection, so an audience member could look around in any
direction and see the holographic projection (although if he looked
down at his feet he would not see the projection).
The idea behind the
holographic theater is that it would be just like being transported
to some other place. For example, you and the person you were dating
might go to a holographic theater promising to take you to the top of
Mount Everest. After entering into the audience area, you could look
around in all directions and see what someone might see if he was on
top of Mount Everest.
In such a theater there would
not be the movie and Broadway theater convention that the audience
sits motionless in seats. Instead, audience members would be
encouraged to walk around a little, within the confines of the
audience area. The area represented by the holographic projection
would have to be chosen so that the restriction of movement in the
audience area would somehow seem natural. For example, such a
holographic theater would not make an audience member think he was in
the middle of Times Square, but the theater might make the audience
member think he was on a balcony or roof of an apartment building
with a magnificent view of a city. Similarly, such a holographic
theater would not make an audience member think he was in the middle
of a vast meadow, but it might make the audience member think he was
on top of a mountain (with no easy climb down from that top).
In such a theater there need
not be the Broadway and movie convention of a show lasting about 90
minutes or two hours. Since the size of the audience area would be
limited (not allowing hundreds of audience members at the same time),
it would be better to allow no more than 5, 10, or 20 audience
members at the same time, with the show ending after only 10, 15 or
20 minutes.
To aid in the “you are
really there” illusion, there might be some props in the audience
area. For example, if the holographic projection was supposed to show
the view from the top of Mount Everest, then some artificial snow
might be placed on the floor of the audience area. With a little care
and forethought, it might be impossible for the audience member to
tell where the audience area ended and the holographic projection
began.
The simplest way to do such a
holographic projection would simply be making the audience member
think he is motionless in some place with an impressive view. But
with a little more advanced technology, it would be possible to also
provide an illusion of motion. If the audience area was set up to
look like the deck of a boat, a holographic theater could provide
some kind of projection giving the audience member the feel of a boat
trip down the Amazon River. Providing the bodily sensation of motion
might be a little tricky, but it could probably be achieved with some
hydraulics.
Why would such a holographic theater be more realistic than a virtual reality system? It's because a virtual reality system only offers a small image projection area, about the size of the virtual reality goggles. But a dome of between 10 and 30 meters would allow an image projection with vastly more pixels -- thousands of times more.
In such a holographic
theater, a story would generally not be presented. Instead of making
the audience member feel like a theatergoer watching some play or
movie, the idea would be to make the audience member feel just as if
he was in some distant and beautiful place. The place depicted might
be some place that now exists on Earth, some place that once existed (such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), or some imaginary place existing on some alien planet. The
holographic projection could be created from actual earthly
photography, or it could be based on some artificial CGI
representation of reality. The latter would allow almost any
possibility for the scene represented. By the time we had the
technology for the holographic theater, photo-realistic CGI
technology would be perfected. So inside the holographic theater,
some imaginary and visionary landscape would look just as realistic
as anything you might see in real life.
No comments:
Post a Comment