Hehe, found the very same artist a few days ago:-)
natirips wrote:Did you know that holograms actually exist outside Star Trek and the likes?
*Waves furiously* Yo. First described and attempted at in the thirties, fully realized in the fifties, when laser was invented. That's not to say that you'd
need laser; reflecting and intersecting coherent wavefronts are just the most convenient way to capture the shape of a real-world object. For artificial stuff, like logos and alphanumerals, transparent plastic with embossed grooves is just fine, with reflective foil providing backlight. As the term is used somewhat loosely, not necessitating the use of interference patterns to qualify, it is in fact entirely possible to
draw a hologram by hand -- called "specular holograms", these utilize glare points in semi-circular grooves to create an illusion of dot-cloud object.
natirips wrote:Unclefragger wrote:sadly that's just a projection on a transparent surface
But you can see the projection from different angles and it is thus a 3D projection, which is the very definition of a hologram - wholepicture.
Pffft. It's like saying that binoculars are the very definition of a TV set, allowing you to
see far. In fact, you can see the image on a [TV] screen from different angles, and you can even see the object depicted from different angles -- if the camera's moving around it. This projection acts like any other 2D image; depending on your viewpoint, she would appear stretched or squashed. And no, you can't see under her skirt, quit trying:-) Funnily enough, actual holograms are characterized by the fact that you
can't see them from every angle; they're the equivalent of reliefs, not sculptures.
natirips wrote:I didn't say that it can walk around among people like an EMG from the Star Trek, but they might find a way to project it into the air in the future.
Into the air? Well, if you have sufficiently powerful lasers, and focus them correctly, and have the beams to intersect and move in sync... hello, hot plasma girl:-) But no, as far as I know, this is impossible -- the air's way too transparent. (In case you're wondering, in real holograms the interference pattern is projected directly onto you retina.) Real-life volumetric displays need stuff like fine mist, or smoke, or a glass/plastic cube/sphere to project the image onto.
You can't make light hover.Actually I find it rather weird that people are concentrating on the decidedly uninteresting aspects of virtual personalities. Voice synthesis has been around from at least the seventies (and vocoders, while not strictly "synthesis", originate from the forties); rear projection is
older than projectors (google "Pepper's ghost"); and virtual personalities are as old as storytelling (people can get really worked up over the life and death of some guy who hasn't existed and never will). Much more interesting -- and somewhat unnerving -- is their impact on the society, as people are entirely capable of relating to someone who hasn't even the intelligence of a cockroach, much less any emotions. Having the artificial personality shaped as a cute teenage girl is taking advantage of this very fact.
BTW, the first mostly virtual (drawn, voiced by an actress) idoru appeared about the same time William Gibson was writing
Idoru.