Researchers at the University of Tokyo are working to create holographic displays that mimic the sensation of interacting with solid objects. Sadly, there are none of the holodeck's forcefields at work to turn light into a solid object. Instead, the researchers place a reflective marker on a person's hand and use Nintendo Wiimotes to track the position of the hand relative to the hologram. As the hand gets near the hologram, the display triggers a feedback mechanism, which feeds acoustic radiation pressure to the hand, creating the sensation that the person is touching an object. At the same time, the hologram reacts to the hand's position, and can be batted, grabbed, or floated based on the hand's position.

At the moment, it is all an extremely clever illusion, and one in need of greater development. But I hope that the researchers plan on sticking to holograms of balls and don't get around to creating a holographic Professor Moriarty any time soon.

[Physorg]

Doctor Who

Was "The Deadly Assassin" the inspiration for the Wachowski Brothers? Probably not, but The Doctor's 1976 jaunt inside a virtual reality called The Matrix - with a psychedelic world constructed by The Master; Who loves to use that definitive article - may have been the first use of VR that many people ever encountered. Of course, this Matrix was more like a surrealist's nightmare constructed on a drama school budget, but Tom Baker managed to make you believe with his usual sense of glee.

Tron

To this day, the definitive virtual reality movie for many people, the 1982 weirdly Disney-esque anthromorphisation of computer programs (Yes, I know it was made by Disney; I mean it in the sense of, making computer programs into people seems very similar to giving animals human mannerisms and language) made an entire generation wish that they, too, could be zapped inside of a computer and ride around on awesome-looking virtual motorcycles.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

One of the first mainstream suggestions that VR could be fun and not a sign of some nefarious plot - even if it did keep breaking down, TNG's holodecks were, in fact, a holdover from the ill-fated late 1970s Star Trek: Phase II series. Needless to say, fans came up with the idea of using the ability to create lifelike duplicates of real people for purposes not suited for family television long before Quark's holosuites hinted at it in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Red Dwarf

Despite the science fiction on the British series often being more or less a disposable addition to the very traditional sitcom element of the show, 1988's "Better Than Life" introduced the concept of a "total immersion video game" that was so indistinguishable from reality that you could never be quite sure when you were actually in the game, and when you weren't, making it seem as scary as it did exciting - especially when the game could pick up on your subconscious self-loathing without your realization.

The Lawnmower Man

Ah, the early 1990s, when virtual reality really crossed into the mainstream, and we almost believed that it could (a) make you smarter, (b) give you psychic powers and (c) allow for melty virtual sex, just as this movie promised.

Of course, the technology wasn't there just then - or now, for that matter - and the disappointment turned us all into Jeff Fahey, going from this:



to this:


We await the day when virtual reality becomes all we've been promised by all of these shows and movies, if only for the ability to make the above change again, in reverse.

Says Hollywood Reporter:

[Virtuality] is set aboard the Phaeton, Earth's first starship. It revolves around its crew of 12 astronauts on a 10-year journey to explore a distant solar system. To help them endure the long trip and keep their minds occupied, NASA has equipped the ship with advanced virtual-reality modules, allowing the crew members to assume adventurous identities and go to any place they want. The plan works flawlessly until a mysterious "bug" is found in the system.

"It's very much about what's fantasy and what's reality; what we do to escape our lives and what actually institutes our lives; are these things very different," [Universal] president Katherine Pope said.

The biggest challenge in creating good starship feng shui is the fact that starships move around all the time. So you can't necessarily know which part of the ship will be facing "north." Traditional Earth-bound feng shui uses a special compass to locate the "ba gua" in a space, so you'll know where to position major features. But with a starship, those points of reference may not have any meaning, notes Janice Sugita, author of The Feng Shui Equation:

Since it is a moving object, the normal use of a compass for orientation of the qi does not apply in a "spaceship". Placement of the interior walls, doors and architectural features can alter the flow of qi that may be beneficial or not to the occupant. An example: if you place a desk or computer in the path of a sharp corner from a wall or column the occupant may feel unconfortable and not sit for long periods of time. It is the broken or disturbed natural flow of qi in the space that is directed to the occupant.

Human beings lived in nature far longer than they have lived in artificial, man-made environments, therefore it will be very important that space ships incorporate images from nature into the interior design of the craft. People are soothed by images of nature, so plants, images of nature, water features, and materials made from natural substances like wood need to be integrated into the design so that space travel becomes less stressful. It will be essential that human beings keep their connection to nature to balance all the cold, industrial feelings of machinery.

Perhaps plasma screens with nature scenes could be viewed throughout the space ship. Sounds of birds, streams, and ocean waves could be heard in the background, and perhaps a domed structure with a forest environment like the ship in Silent Running could be added so passengers would have the experience of a walk in a garden while on those long flights between planets. Anything to lower stress levels resulting from long periods of time out of a natural environment would assist the space travelers in finding rest and relaxation while on their galactic travels.

A Brief History of the Reality Distortion Field

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• Steve Jobs and his Reality Distortion Field: Apparently the Star Trekly-esque named Bud Tribble was working on a software project for Apple in 1981, and thought he had been given an unrealistic ten-month schedule from inception to ship date. When asked why he didn't just ask Steve to change it, he reportedly said "Well, it's Steve. Steve insists that we're shipping in early 1982, and won't accept answers to the contrary. The best way to describe the situation is a term from Star Trek. Steve has a reality distortion field." Although it turns out no one could find a connection between that term and Star Trek, and thus a legend was born.
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• The Scramble Suits from A Scanner Darkly: In Phillip K. Dick's novel about drug addiction and the paranoid world on both sides of that issue, government narcotics agents wear "scramble suits" that change every aspect of the reader, shifting at a moment's notice so that people looking at someone wearing one will never be able to tell what they look like. In the novel they shift extremely quickly, but they slowed it down in the movie to show how they work. They alter your voice as well, making you the most visible invisible man/woman around: they scramble reality for everyone except you.
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• The Matrix in The Matrix: Nothing distorts reality more than entire system of machines set up to grow you from a fetus, nurture you, and feed your brain signals that tell it you're growing up normal inside a world that doesn't exist. As Morpheus says, "It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth." Sounds pretty distorty to us, although if they decided to make us some sort of science fiction superstar inside this simulation, we probably wouldn't mind. Then you'd all be invited to the rad parties we'd throw.
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• The Holodeck in Star Trek: Seriously, we could never understand why people just didn't stay on the holodeck 24/7. Sure, it's technically "not real," but it does everything you'd want a real world to do. You've got an entire library of billions and billions of option of things to simulate, plus you can even disable the security protocols making it possible to actually die while you pretend you're inside Alice in Wonderland. It's like a portable Matrix To Go (tm), so how did they ever manage to get any work done with one of these things around?
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• The world of They Live: You can blame our current obsession with this film on the fact that it's been showing up on cable a lot lately, but there's something about this Roddy Piper/John Carpenter film that makes it hard to hate. In their world, an alien signal is being beamed out that makes humans as complacent as cattle, and stops them from seeing the aliens as they actually are. Thankfully, Roddy gets some magic glasses that help him kick ass and thwart the fugly aliens. Although in retrospect, they just wanted to make him rich. Was that so bad?
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Image above from the Joy of Tech website. Full version can be seen here.