Movie Holograms VS. Real Life Holograms | Futureproof with Michael Swaim - video Dailymotion

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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!  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

Transcript

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.

Movie Holograms VS. Real Life Holograms | Futureproof with Michael Swaim

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