Either the Star Trek producers were tech visionaries, or modern day scientists were Star Trek fans.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – Microsoft may have failed with the AI bot that turned really bad, really quick, but the company is already making amends for that mistake. A new video released by the tech giant suggests that the Star Trek holodeck could be real, soon.
If you remember the Star Trek episode where Data and Captain Picard played Sherlock Holmes in eighteenth-century London, then you remember thinking how great it would be if the technology actually existed.
Well, we all know that flip phones, Bluetooth headsets, video calls and GPS were inspired the science-fiction TV show. Some German scientists even attempted to take a crack at the fundamentals of teleportation.
But the holodeck was always a subject of fascination. The projections looked real; the environment mimicked reality to the detail and, let’s face it, a holographic projection of a good memory will beat a picture or a home-made video anytime.
This is what Shahram Izadi, a partner research manager at Microsoft, is talking about in a video that the company recently uploaded on social media. From what Izadi explains, advanced holoportation can be achieved with a display that is capable of rendering augmented reality and a set of 3D cameras.
The “exciting new technology that will fundamentally change the way in which people will communicate in the future” is described as a new 3D capture type of technology that allows users to experience high-quality 3D models of the people they are trying to communicate with.
The 3D models of individuals are compressed, reconstructed and transmitted in real-time anywhere in the world. When the technology is combined with HoloLens display, both participants can interact in 3D, exactly as they would if they were standing face-to-face.
Such a technological breakthrough will allow people to communicate with friends and family that are living all the way across the world. The best part of the holoportation is that it records every conversation the users had on the interface, and it can replay it as you would a video.
So if you miss a loved one, you can always replay your conservations. Furthermore, users will have the opportunity of replaying the file in real life size, interacting with the projections, or shrinking it.
The present holoportation technology is still in developmental stage. When the scientists and engineers are done, they are expecting the models to be indistinguishable from real individuals.
For more details and information, you can consult the video embedded below.
Image source: Flickr