Computer, load holodeck program Reg Barclay 1.8

Any “Star Trek” fan can tell you their most anticipated technology, it may be warp drive, Tri-Corders, or food processors that materialize your favorite meal right before your eyes in a matter of seconds.

Another, is the Holodeck, the future of entertainment! Imagine walking into a room, and loading a program into the computers interface. As your program loads, the room disappears and you are immersed in another world!

The holodeck ideal is now in it’s infancy, Microsoft, having applied for a patent for what they are calling “immersive display experience.” The idea is to make gaming “more realistic” by applying moving displays to multiple surfaces.

This new technology seems to be based on the Kinect System. According to Ars Technica;

Microsoft’s patent application for an “immersive display experience” was published by the US Patent Office last week after being filed back in early 2011. It describes a standard video game system with a connected “environmental display” capable of projecting a panoramic image that “appears to surround the user.” Such a projector wouldn’t replace the central TV display used in current consoles, but it would provide a “peripheral image” that would “serve as an extension” of that primary display. The purpose, of course, is to extend the gaming environment outside of the TV screen, so a player could, for instance, “turn around and observe an enemy sneaking up from behind.” The display device as described is integrated tightly with a depth-sensing camera system (read: Kinect) that could even be housed in the same casing as the environmental projector, according to the application. This device could be a standard two-camera, structured-light-sensing system like the current Kinect, or a more sophisticated model that could include “multiple image capture devices” to “stitch a panoramic image from a plurality of captured images” pointed in all directions around the room.

(image courtesy of Ars Technica)

So I ask you, Faithful Followers, what are your thoughts? Could this be the beginning of “Trek Technology?” Obviously, there will be problems with this sort of fledgling tech, but we can only hope that the programmers can work through the bugs and provide the consumer with a valid, working holodeck style experience. I remain… hopeful if not skeptical.

As usual, the fine folks here in the satellite of love known as ScienceFiction.com welcome your thoughts. Post your comments, will we be living out a chapter of Dixon Hill? Perhaps not, at least, not for some time!