Welcome Michael Swaim back to the channel for Futureproof, where Swaim explores science fiction technology and their real life counterparts.
This week Swaim explains: holograms!
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This week Swaim explains: holograms!
See more http://www.cracked.com
LIKE us on: http://www.facebook.com/cracked
FOLLOW us on: http://www.twitter.com/cracked
FOLLOW us on: http://cracked.tumblr.com
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FunTranscript
00:00Hot quiz, pop shot.
00:02If candygrams come with candy, yeah,
00:04and telegrams come over the tele...
00:07phone? Kind of. F*** you.
00:09Then what are holograms made of?
00:11That's right.
00:12The hollow space in my breast
00:14where once resided hope for the future.
00:16A fabulous future when we would change
00:18hover car tires, not the climate.
00:20And AI would raise our children,
00:22not pump out images of Steve Harvey
00:24running from Sasquatch.
00:26Although those are also very good.
00:28My point is, we almost never get the future
00:30that we're promised.
00:32And when we do, it's in the bad Orwell way.
00:35I swear.
00:36That guy writes the anti-colonialist essay
00:38to shoot an elephant in 1936,
00:40and wouldn't you know it, by 1984,
00:42several other elephants had also been shot.
00:45Eerily prescient.
00:47Of all of sci-fi's empty promises,
00:49one of the most common is a cordless,
00:51screenless, TV-less TV
00:53made of three-dimensional light.
00:55Welcome to Future Proof,
00:56where I nerd out about classic sci-fi staples
00:58and their real-world counterparts.
01:00Today's episode, Holograms.
01:10First, we need to sort out some terms
01:12and answer my initial question.
01:14So hey, let's choke down a steaming hot cup of quiz
01:17and define hologram as precisely as we can.
01:20In actuality, what you think of
01:22when you think of a sci-fi hologram
01:24is called a 3D volumetric display.
01:27You idiot.
01:28A hologram is a flat rendering
01:30of something 3D that you can look at
01:32from a limited range of angles,
01:34like the little tiny one on your credit card,
01:36or that trading card of Wolverine
01:38you had as a kid that you could tilt back and forth
01:40to make the claws retract.
01:42You may have noticed they're also called foil cards,
01:44and tend to have a kind of rainbow effect to them.
01:47This type of hologram is called a Benton hologram,
01:50or rainbow hologram,
01:51because everything's so woke now.
01:53Invented in 1968,
01:54the technique relies on the same mechanisms
01:57as a prism, or a rainbow, I guess.
02:00Under various conditions,
02:01like say there's a gentle spray of water droplets
02:04or a big clear triangle rock,
02:06white or transparent light
02:08can be made to split into its component wavelengths,
02:11which we perceive as stacked stripes of color.
02:14Well, if you know ahead of time
02:16that various bands of light
02:18will illuminate various different and specific
02:20and predictable parts of a given image,
02:23this allows Benton to create the illusion of depth
02:26and parallax using a 2D picture
02:28rendered by some light
02:29shined through a little horizontal slit.
02:32Got it?
02:33Got that concept?
02:34Okay, so forget about that kind of hologram.
02:36That kind of hologram sucks.
02:39Today, we're talking about a 6-inch princess layout.
02:43We're talking about the free-floating,
02:44gesture-driven computer terminals
02:46from Minority Report.
02:48We're talking Avatar and Iron Man.
02:51We're talking Tupac performing with Snoop at Coachella.
02:54Actually, I'm gonna stop you there, me.
02:56That Tupac thing also isn't a hologram, technically.
02:59Well, I wish you wouldn't undermine me
03:01in front of the audience, me.
03:03If it's not a hologram, what is it, smart guy?
03:05I don't know.
03:06Why don't you field that one,
03:07clips of Job from Arrested Development?
03:10Illusions.
03:11Illusion.
03:12Illusion, Michael.
03:13Wow, he remembered my name.
03:16And he's right.
03:17This effect is called the Pepper's Ghost Illusion.
03:19It was invented all the way back in 1584 by,
03:22you guessed it,
03:23Jean-Baptiste de la Porta.
03:26Although it was popularized by a guy called
03:28John Henry Pepper.
03:29And I'll let you connect the dots from there,
03:31you genius.
03:32The trick...
03:33The trick is something a whore does for money.
03:35Sorry, illusion,
03:36involves projecting an image in a mirror
03:38that bounces the light into a pane of glass
03:41positioned at 45 degrees from the viewing angle.
03:44The projected image is still flat,
03:45like the floating TV screens in The Hunger Games,
03:47but not the 3D rendering of the city
03:50from The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2,
03:52Katniss Everdeen and the Chamber of Secrets.
03:54Incidentally,
03:55this means the Coachella people
03:57on the sides of the Snoop show
03:59got to see Tupac,
04:00arguably the greatest poet of his generation,
04:03revived from the dead
04:04as a two-dimensional line segment.
04:07Dystopian,
04:08but it's still a cool effect,
04:09whose peak use was, of course,
04:11for the 1991 Sega arcade game Time Traveler,
04:14where you got to play
04:15a live-action holographic cowboy
04:17for the low, low price of four quarters
04:19every 90 seconds or so.
04:21Alright, I hear ya.
04:22If foil cards aren't holograms,
04:24and Tupac isn't a hologram,
04:26and those little dots you see
04:28floating around in your eyeball sometimes
04:30when you look at a clear blue sky
04:31aren't holograms,
04:32then what the hell is?
04:34What do you want from me?
04:35When will it be good enough, Michael?
04:37When?
04:38First of all, let's all calm down.
04:40Secondly, I already said it before.
04:42It's called 3D Volumetric Display.
04:44Admittedly,
04:45it's not as catchy a name as hologram,
04:48which is why I encourage you
04:50to call it 3DVD.
04:52Go on, tell your partner you want to get 3DVD,
04:55or at least Syphilimax.
04:56A volumetric display is the holy grail of grams,
04:59a free-floating 3D rendering
05:01that multiple viewers can observe
05:03from multiple angles at once.
05:05To be even more nitpicky,
05:06let's limit today's discussion
05:08to softlight holograms,
05:09meaning ones that are used for display,
05:11rather than holograms you can physically interact with,
05:14like Star Trek's holodeck.
05:15Oh, side note.
05:17Volumetric video is also a thing,
05:19but that refers to scanning a 3D object
05:22such that you can present it on a 2D screen,
05:24like a computer screen,
05:26and view it from any angle within a virtual space.
05:29Yet another cheat is to project light or lasers
05:32onto a big sheet of water,
05:33like at the Disneyland California Adventure
05:35World of Color water show
05:37and overpriced corndogs spectacular.
05:40But a true sci-fi hologram should be freestanding
05:43and something I can conjure up anywhere, anytime.
05:46I'll even take the ones that are inexplicably
05:48monochrome, glitchy, and grainy,
05:50as if we've mastered bending light itself to our whims
05:53but refuse to upgrade from the cheap demo version.
05:55I'm looking at you, Halo, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed,
05:58and Fallout New Vegas Dead Money,
06:00Mockingjay Part 3, Katniss Everdeen,
06:02and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
06:04So, after narrowing it down,
06:06it turns out only a few sci-fi series
06:09feature full-fledged 3D volumetric displays.
06:12There's the aforementioned Star Wars franchise,
06:15which actually shows hologram technology
06:17developing over the course of the series.
06:19Even harder to buy from a tech perspective
06:21are holographic projections like Mysterios
06:24or Krieger's Japanese girlfriend in Archer,
06:26for one very specific reason.
06:28Where is the sound coming from?
06:30Think about it.
06:31Holograms are colored light suspended in air.
06:35They don't touch anything or vibrate sound waves.
06:38Creating the tech to project whatever audio you want
06:41from an arbitrary point in space,
06:43be it threatening Spider-Man
06:45or proposing weird sex stuff to your virtual girlfriend,
06:48is a whole separate scientific journey.
06:50Or I guess you could hire ventriloquists
06:52to throw their voice,
06:54but no one wants to deal with those people.
06:56Sad. Creepy vibes.
06:58Perhaps the most realistic, or at least viable,
07:01holographic tech in pop culture
07:03is the one villains use
07:04to convene around an empty but ominous conference table.
07:07I'm thinking of the Guild of Calamitous Intent
07:09and Doctor Doom here.
07:11For example, in many iterations of the Fantastic Four,
07:14Doom chats with his evil colleagues
07:16via a holographic projector.
07:18This is a little button that scans the environment
07:21and transmits that image to a tank
07:23where it can be viewed.
07:24Compare that to a Google Maps car
07:26driving around taking pictures
07:28and streaming the 3D geometry to a server.
07:30It almost seems like it could be real now.
07:32Of course, in those comics,
07:34Doctor Doom can also project a solid hologram of himself
07:37that can fight in his stead,
07:39so this is all academic.
07:40If you're wondering about a real,
07:42real real,
07:43I mean real life,
07:45honest to goodness,
07:46real sci-fi hologram that's real,
07:49i.e. a working 3D volumetric display
07:52that fulfills all of my ludicrous standards,
07:54it does exist.
07:56It's this little tiny outline of a butterfly,
07:59less than the size of a fingertip.
08:01It takes an incredible amount of power to produce.
08:03You can't capture it on film
08:05without getting that flickering effect,
08:07and if history is any guide,
08:08they're just gonna strap it to a robot dog
08:10and give a dozen to every police force.
08:12But until they do,
08:14we get to marvel at the team at Brigham Young
08:17who are able to trap and illuminate
08:19a single particle in midair
08:21and use lasers to control its position,
08:24essentially drawing in space
08:26with one glowing real life pixel.
08:28Neat!
08:29I mean, it's not gonna solve crimes before they happen,
08:31but still.
08:33I've been Michael Slaim,
08:34reminding you that the cops
08:35still can't predict crime yet,
08:37so if you were ever going to commit a crime,
08:39you should get on that sooner rather than later.
08:41Now's good.
08:43This has been Future Proof.
08:44Give me a like and a comment,
08:45and I'll see you next time.