S03 E13: Why does USS Discovery inside looks like Borg cube?

[fireproof78]

The same way you don't run into a wall when you're running on a treadmill - the thing you're walking on moves to cancel your movement out.

Is this your first time watching Star Trek or something?

Yes, but I know the floor is moving. Are you saying the floor moves?

 

[fireproof78]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Treknological plot contrivances.

Exactly.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Yes, but I know the floor is moving. Are you saying the floor moves?

Sorry are you being deliberately obtuse here? Either way is fine, I'm just curious?

 

[eschaton]

Still doesn't explain how two people can be in the holodeck at once and not be in view of one another.

Any solution I come up with for that basically involves showing different things to different people - at which point it's just needlessly complicated VR.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Still doesn't explain how two people can be in the holodeck at once and not be in view of one another.

Just like you and I can be in the same room with screen between us and not be in view of each other.

Just like one person can be hiding from the other one behind a settee and they're not in view of each other.

 

[Butters]

Still doesn't explain how two people can be in the holodeck at once and not be in view of one another.

Any solution I come up with for that basically involves showing different things to different people - at which point it's just needlessly complicated VR.

Well that's what is. VR, without the headset. There's a diagram in the TNG technical manual showing how the ground moves, not the user, on an omnidirectional treadmill at the centre of the simulation.

The on-screen portrayal was messed up by the likes of holographic rocks rebounding off the wall.

 

[eschaton]

Just like you and I can be in the same room with screen between us and not be in view of each other.

Just like one person can be hiding from the other one behind a settee and they're not in view of each other.

No, not at all.

The Holodeck is supposed to give you a tactile, interactive world within say a 10-20 foot radius of yourself. Everything further out is simulated as static images with lower fidelity.

But say Tom Paris and Harry Kim are in the holodeck. In reality, they are 10 feet apart, but in the holo they are a mile apart. At some point between them the holo-world has to shift from high fidelity to a flat plane, because the objects in that direction cannot be simulated as real objects because an actual human is in the way.

But then...how can Tom not hear Harry? He's right in the same room. Holes can generate sound, but can the muffle it as well?

 

[fireproof78]

Sorry are you being deliberately obtuse here? Either way is fine, I'm just curious?

No, I'm trying to understand.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

No, I'm trying to understand.

Okay then. In that case the holodeck generates a forcefield that a person would stand on, which creates a 'treadmill effect' that gives that person the sense of walking forward while actually remaining in the same place.

 

[fireproof78]

Okay then. In that case the holodeck generates a forcefield that a person would stand on, which creates a 'treadmill effect' that gives that person the sense of walking forward while actually remaining in the same place.

Weird and not immediately apparent.

 

[RichT]

But then...how can Tom not hear Harry? He's right in the same room. Holes can generate sound, but can the muffle it as well?

Yes, a forcefield will attune the environment to feel "correct" to the human observers, and can dampen/generate sound appropriately.

This idea – that a holodeck will "subdivide itself" for multiple people – is both seen on the show ("Ship in a Bottle" again, as the entire Enterprise is simulated on the holodeck for both Data and Picard and they move separately throughout) and indicated in the TNG Tech Manual. There is presumably a maximum effective limit to how many people a given holodeck of a particular size can deal with before the ability to subdivide compromises the simulation, which is why the official Enterprise-D blueprints show sixteen holodecks of three different sizes, including enormous ones 50m across, much bigger than we see in the show. It's presumably also possible to network holodecks to form a contiguous simulation for far more people than could normally fit in a single room.

 

[Angry Fanboy]

Weird and not immediately apparent.

In your opinion maybe.

I think the fictional 'physics' behind the holodeck are fairly well-known amongst Star Trek fandom nowadays, much like the equally fictional physics of things like the transporter.

 

[fireproof78]

In your opinion maybe.

I think the fictional 'physics' behind the holodeck are fairly well-known amongst Star Trek fandom nowadays, much like the equally fictional physics of things like the transporter.

Ok...

Learn something new I guess.

 

[Timo]

The weird thing is, TAS "Practical Joker" already had a holodeck that simulated an expansive outdoors scene or three (and quite possibly simulated an expansive indoors scene when our sidekicks first entered!). Yet Uhura, the show's presumed expert on entertainment technology (she was the radio-fixing wizard in that universe, rather than a cunning linguist), feels that

"...this is still a room, no matter how it appears. If we can travel long enough in one direction, we're bound to reach a wall. Then we can feel our way to an exit."

This is quite unlikely to be true even in said episode. After all, the sidekicks never did reach a wall. Also, they moved vertically during the simulation (falling into a pit) despite starting at what looked like a level floor, so there was vertical treadmilling of some sort there already.

Of course, we can argue that the machinery of the day did not feature any actual treadmills, of forcefield or even rubber mat sort. But it would have been pretty trivial for the crazed computer to stop the characters from walking in a straight line - after all, walking in a straight line is basically impossible for human beings, in absence of visual cues, and the holodeck could give all the wrong ones to Uhura and pals. So Uhura would be technically correct but woefully optimistic and ultimately wrong.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Paul Weaver]

The turbolift was really weird for me, I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, visual noise

However reading this thread does allow me to justify it -- the turbolift actually traveled through a holodeck.

 

[RichT]

However reading this thread does allow me to justify it -- the turbolift actually traveled through a holodeck.

Honestly... this is about the only explanation that makes even a tiny bit of sense at this point

 

[jackoverfull]

Yeah, basically. A holodeck with no safeties. The only question remains: why.

 

[thribs]

No no. They were shrunk down. That makes more sense

 

[Imaus]

I believe in this context the correct spelling is "kewl".



No. Force fields. Some is replicated matter, some are EMH style "hard light". Voyager writers lazily wanting holodeck episodes without fans complaining that the ship is supposed to be desperately reserving resources (thus as far as know it's only true of Intrepid class ships). Drama?

Yea there's a difference between 'Cool' and 'Kewl', 'Kewl' is cheap, easily ruined by fridge-thinking or even just musing on the scene right after it ends. 'Cool' isn't cheap. It lasts. It's not going to make you question it, it's not going to ruin itself by its own setting.

'Kewl' is DIS and ENT fighting S31 and Control. In the end it raises too many questions for its own good.
'Cool' is, say, the Klingons warping in on time from a angle and destroying the Dominion-Cardassians and forming up with the Defiant.

But overall this is just a problem too, of making everything too-damn-big. The Mirror Universe Empire has a ship with what, 200 decks and a sun in it? In the early-mid 23rd century? Come on. Enterprise and DIS being hundreds of meters bigger than they should be. Like I don't know about you but 300, 200 meters is big enough, especially when they're also skyscrapers (18, 21 decks).

 

[fireproof78]

Yea there's a difference between 'Cool' and 'Kewl', 'Kewl' is cheap, easily ruined by fridge-thinking or even just musing on the scene right after it ends. 'Cool' isn't cheap. It lasts. It's not going to make you question it, it's not going to ruin itself by its own setting.

I see no difference. It's there to make people cheer and nothing else. Give me substantial over cool.