In science fiction, holograms are realistic, moving three-dimensional images. (Remember Arnie being spooked by his mirror self in Total Recall, and the priceless line Watch out, hes got a hologram!). In the movies, if they flicker a bit (“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi…”), its just so the audience realises its a hologram and doesnt get confused. Real life holograms are a lot more limited, so I was interested to see this study carried by Dr David Watt on Holograms As Nonlethal Weapons for NTIC, the Nonlethal Technology Innovations Center in New Hampshire.
This is a serious look at the technical possibilities for holograms. Its a far cry from blue sky fantasies like the Air Force 2025 Airborne Holographic Projector which displays a three-dimensional visual image in a desired location, removed from the display generator or the even more wildly optimistic Hologram, Death: Hologram used to scare a target individual to death.
Real holograms will not fool people at short range and they do not move, nor can they be projected into a remote location. But they might still have their uses.
One of Watt’s suggested applications is ‘deception in an urban environment’. Take a shop window and replace it with a hologram of a window display, and you have an apparently innocuous space where troops can be stationed without any hint of their presence. A vehicle (a car or bus) could use similar trompe loeil effect.
There is the possibility of using holograms to create virtual forces or virtual obstacles, but the problems are all too apparent. The situation is much better indoors where the optical environment can be controlled. Dr Watt suggests installations could have virtual doors, walls and windows as ways of confusing or misleading intruders.
A more unusual approach is using a speckle hologram as virtual smoke. This type of hologram produces an image that appears to be in front of its real surface, and this could project a confusing image of three-dimensional spots before their eyes, making it impossible for viewers to judge what is in front of them and how far away it is.
The human eye is difficult to fool, notes Dr Watt, but infra-red sensors are much less sophisticated there is no need for the same level of colour fidelity. An infra-red hologram of a vehicle could make a very convincing decoy. Automated systems (such as missile guidance) with no humans to spot the flaws should be particularly easy to fool. However, as Watt points out the technology does not yet exist to create infra-red holograms.
It is the third dimension that makes holograms uniquely different to other means of camouflage and potentially valuable. During WWII, circles of black cloth were used to give the impression of bomb craters on runways after air raids, but these would not stand up to close inspection. Holograms would allow you to put realistic-looking holes or craters on any surface and confuse any possible damage assessment.
Watts conclusion is Fascinating, but — there are just too many limitations at present. Size limits and material restrictions are a real problem, and
Most NLT [non lethal technology] applications rely on psychological predisposition of belligerents.
In other words it will take a certain amount showmanship to set the illusion up in the first place; this may be feasible in Las Vegas, but not on the battlefield.
But perhaps the biggest stumbling block at present is the cost of holograms large enough for practical applications. Watt quotes $10,000 for a one metre by two hologram, or a hefty $200k for one metre by six metres, which is a lot of money especially if the bad guys decide to test whether one is real by putting a bullet through it.
– David Hambling
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
I can imagine, that hographic technology will be useful as guideline to constrution of buildongs :
Project a holographic picture ofe the desired building as a “SIM-Building”-outline with all suppliances e.g. cables, water-tubes etc. and bulid in on the spot.
That way, You won’t need plans written on paper and even an architect won’t be necessary any more.
Another gear ma become the “Holographic TV-Room”, were You may decide, if you want to sit right in the middle of the action or handle a “Act-with”-facility :
What can a man or woman like more than shotting down the evel in favorite films with a “SIM-Gun” or take the risk of film-ending by gettin virtual shooted him/herself ?
Even the adventure of beeing kissed by “JamesBond” with “Feelie”-Films managed through “Brainstorming” could become a real thrill.
As the piece mentions, it is not currently possible to project a hologram ‘onto’ anything yet, so the application are more limited.
Stop-frame animation.
You don’t need to be able to record images at 25 fps, or whatever is good enough for a moving picture. You just need to be able to play them back. There have been all sorts of moving-picture machines that could be used to produce holograms.
The military uses for a hologram What-The-Butler-Saw machine are left as an exercise for the reader, but I think it will be a while before we see skeletal warriors springing out of the ground in the style of Ray Harryhausen.
Flight 77 from 9/11? Considering the lack of any significant wreckage, and the tiny hole in the wall of the Pentagon (how does a 757 fit through that?), and the fact eyewitness Keith Wheelhouse claims he saw a 2nd plane “shadowing” the AA jet and veering away right before impact as well.. but so many people SAW the 757 fly into the pentagon! Where did it go? How did those steel and titanium engines just evaporate? Why didn’t the engines leave ANY trace of impacting the pentagon wall? LOL!
there is a thing i call matter control it deals with computers being able to spot recognize and contol atoms in the air with it the posiblities are endless and using it to take and add or remove electrons form a molicule such as hydrogen
you could change its form to another element but more if you took this power and had the computer
take the attoms of dust particles and build an image with it and add light or lasers to iluminate and or color it a real fantasy world hologram is posible but the trick is figuring out how to magnetize an attom via electro static
Even the adventure of beeing kissed by “JamesBond” with “Feelie”-Films managed through “Brainstorming” could become a real thrill
Even the adventure of beeing kissed by “JamesBond” with “Feelie”-Films managed through “Brainstorming” could become a real thrill
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I guess people forgot that hologram technology has been in use for years . . . . . . I can recall watching Discovery channel many years ago a man crawled through a backyard an into a house using a hologram suite . . . . I also used it on a tank.