Holodeck Matter

[Trekker4747]

A neat route they could've gone is to, instead of having such a large room, have something like Quark's holosuites, but small enough where only one person could go in at a time... maybe 10 ft by 10 ft or so. Have a row of these, and each person steps into their own chamber, and are joined together in one simulation, each person's environment simulated individually. I guess people couldn't touch each other, though... unless the touching itself is simulated!

If they can see eachother, they can touch eachother. If tables and AI are solid, other users should be too. Its a shame they never explored networked holodecks. Time delayed communications were only an issue on the occasion that the writers thought it might add tension, so real time networked simulations over subspace should be easy. Sleep with your long term partner in another sector, meet mates for beer on separate worlds, or log on to the ultimate holodeck edition of World of Warcarft.

The possibilities are endless.

It's entirely possible that in "Take Me Out to the Holosuite" we're seeing a complex sitautaion where no one character was interacting with a "real" counter-character. Given the size of a baseball field that alone means that in order for each character be in their positions on the field that each character is sectioned off in their own "mini holodeck" where they're only running in place and such, further only interacting with holosimulations of what the other chracters are doing in their own sections of the holodeck. It's also possible the DS9 and Vulcan teams were in seperate holosuites. We, the viewer, see everything spliced and but together as though eveything was happening "fer reals."

Now, the holodeck itself obviously has a limited level of "AI" where it can pretty much listen in to what is going on and "know" how to make objects behave.

First of all, I'd say any object a character isn't physicaly holding is "real" therefore anything they're looking at is projected. A massless image. Picard picks up a book and tosses it out the door. When he hold onto the book the book is "replicated" it is "real." Picard tosses the book out the door. Once the book is out of his hands it is no longer "real" and is now an image that will not exsist outside the holodeck. (The holodeck may also have "known" Picard's demonstration and acted accordingly.)

Now, Picard gets hit by a snowball. The holodeck "knows" that the fight is occuring and that the balls should probably remain replicated to make the fight that much more "real." So Wesley tries to avoide the snowball by calling for the exit and running into the hall. Well, sadly for him (and moreso Picard) the holodeck has a way around this.

Geordi carries the E-D sketch out of the holodeck: Simple. It's replicated since Geordi has to physically hold it. It makes sense that simple objects like that would be replicated and go outside the holodeck if someone takes it with them.

DS9: Nog's recovery with Vic in the holosuite. This is a nice one. Nog has obviously changed clothes during his stay in there so when Vic turns it off Nog isn't naked because his suit is on him and, thus, "replicated." But there's also a really nice touch in this episode. In this episode Nog enters the holosuite with a cane (as he's recovering from being injured on duty and being outfited with an artificial limb) when Vic turns off the holosuite Nog doesn't have his cane with him, infact it's nowhere nearby. But when Vic turns off the holosuite the cane drops down as it is a physical object that was brought in by Nog. (Presumably Nog's original clothes were discarded by the holodeck as is probably standard procedure for some articles of laundry and/or to maintain a 'matter balance' -that is the matter that makes up Nog's 60s suit is having its spent energy repalced by the clothes Nog walked in with. It was a nice little touch in that episode to have the cane appear like that.

 

[Captrek]

Speaking of objects brought out of the holodeck, I vaguely remember a scene from “The Big Goodbye” with Beverly wiping lipstick off Picard’s mouth. I don’t remember for sure whether that was on the holodeck or whether Picard had exited the holodeck with the lipstick still on him, but I think it was the latter.

As for the chair in “Ship in a Bottle,” which is what started this whole discussion, presumably they could use the computer to control whether the chair was made of replicated matter or holomatter. Since the whole point of the exercise was to find a way to get Moriarty’s girlfriend off the holodeck, and she was definitely holomatter, they would naturally conduct the experiment with a holomatter chair.

 

[Trekker4747]

Speaking of objects brought out of the holodeck, I vaguely remember a scene from “The Big Goodbye” with Beverly wiping lipstick off Picard’s mouth. I don’t remember for sure whether that was on the holodeck or whether Picard had exited the holodeck with the lipstick still on him, but I think it was the latter.

Picard got the lipstick on him by a holographic woman (a client in the program) and, yes, he walks out with it. Again, likely because for it to be "on him" the holodeck had to replicate the lipstick onto him.

 

[Zameaze]

Speaking of objects brought out of the holodeck, I vaguely remember a scene from “The Big Goodbye” with Beverly wiping lipstick off Picard’s mouth.

Yeh, captrek, its all fun and games until the safety protocol fails, and then you end up with lipstick all over you.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

Speaking of objects brought out of the holodeck, I vaguely remember a scene from “The Big Goodbye” with Beverly wiping lipstick off Picard’s mouth. I don’t remember for sure whether that was on the holodeck or whether Picard had exited the holodeck with the lipstick still on him, but I think it was the latter.

Of course, "The Big Goodbye" is in the first season, which supports what I was saying earlier: In the first two seasons, holodeck objects could leave the holodeck but after that they could not.

 

[Captain Martin]

I wonder how Geordi saw the holodeck characters and environments considering he has a visor which works on picking up different signals from various sources....

 

[votd]

I wonder how Geordi saw the holodeck characters and environments considering he has a visor which works on picking up different signals from various sources....

I always wondered this too; maybe that's why they didn't have Geordie go into the holodeck in Ship In A Bottle as he would have 'seen through' Moriarty's simulation.

 

[Anticitizen]

I wonder how Geordi saw the holodeck characters and environments considering he has a visor which works on picking up different signals from various sources....

 

[Braindeer]

You know what's always bothered me about the holodeck?

Rotas.

How do they allocate your time in the holodeck? Seems like the main characters are in and out of there all the time. But there are a lot of people on the Enterprise (I'm sure someone can tell me the crew size in TNG, all I know is 400 for TOS...presumably TNG is higher?) - how do they allocate everyone's slot in the holodeck to make it fair? You would assume that, as it is a recreational space AND a kind of stress-buster, it would become necessary to allow each member of the crew an equal amount of time in the holodeck. And they'd have to be given, say, a couple of hours to get the most out of it. Would that mean that some poor sod would have to take his holodeck time at 3am? And do senior officers get priority?

This has bugged me since the age of about 12. I've always wondered if there's some poor engineering Ensign who ALWAYS gets stuck with the graveyard slot...

 

[Anticitizen]

Another reason why holosuites would be more practical.

 

[Captrek]

I wonder how Geordi saw the holodeck characters and environments considering he has a visor which works on picking up different signals from various sources....

I always wondered this too; maybe that's why they didn't have Geordie go into the holodeck in Ship In A Bottle as he would have 'seen through' Moriarty's simulation.

Speaking of Geordi in that episode, there’s something that bugs me about how the revelation is handled. Data says that Geordi’s not really Geordi, but a holographic simulation. Picard dismisses (holo-)Geordi, who simply nods and walks away. Shouldn’t holo-Geordi be programmed to behave as if it’s really Geordi? When Data says that he’s just a hologram, shouldn’t he look surprised and confused and put up an argument?

 

[Zameaze]

Speaking of Geordi in that episode, there’s something that bugs me about how the revelation is handled. Data says that Geordi’s not really Geordi, but a holographic simulation. Picard dismisses (holo-)Geordi, who simply nods and walks away. Shouldn’t holo-Geordi be programmed to behave as if it’s really Geordi? When Data says that he’s just a hologram, shouldn’t he look surprised and confused and put up an argument?

I see what you mean, sort of. But if holo(Gordi) knew that he was really Gordi, ignoring the remark might be a logical reaction to what he considered a silly statement. Maybe later he was planning to tell his friends how strange Data was acting.

 

[Timo]

Here's something I'd like to emphasize:

Why would a holographic rock bounce off the simulation boundary?

Because that's what Data wanted it to do.

The holodeck is there for the purpose of pleasing its users. It's succeeding in that because a pretty clever AI is running it. Surely it would be capable of "failing" whenever the user wants to demonstrate its "fallibility" to a fellow user. Similarly, it would realize the purpose of a book being thrown out of the holodeck in "Elementary, Dear Data" would be to demonstrate that it will cease to exist outside, so the book would be made to disappear - quite regardless of whether it was replicated matter, holomatter, an optical illusion, or perhaps a hallucination created by injecting the users with a psychoactive drug.

In the general case, the holodeck would not be mindlessly consistent: it would be inconsistent as hell to best meet the wishes of the user!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekker4747]

P@F:

The tossed book occurs in Sixth-Season episode "Ship in a Bottle" when Moriarty returns wanting to know why he's been wasting away in ship's memory. In E,DD I don't believe any such demonstration occurs, Picard simply tellls Moriarty can't walk outside of the holodeck. In either case, he'd be correct. But demonstrating with a book, while proving the point, isn't accurate because, again, we know that simple matter and objects CAN exsist outside of the holodeck.