Going on a slightly tangential topic, I wonder what the primary purpose of the holodeck is. I mean, we usually see it as a means of recreation, but of course it would also be an insanely useful tactical training tool (as we see for example in Voyager, when they train for the Borg cube raid). I wonder what percentage of holodeck time is spent on recreation, and what percentage is spent on more serious purposes.
I have a holodeck question or two
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
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Recreation is serious for the mental health of a crew going on stressful missions in deep space for years at a time. I mean, a ship exploring the frontier might go months between friendly ports, and a lot of the crew might never get to go down to a planet surface (since it's usually only the main characters who beam down even though there are supposed to be hundreds of expert scientists aboard). Holodecks keep the crew from going stir crazy or getting overwhelmed by the stress of their missions.
^ Oh, I didn't mean to imply recreation wasn't important, but couldn't think of a better word when I wrote that post. Perhaps I should have said something like 'directly duty-related purposes' rather than 'serious purposies'.
Militaries of today spend millions of dollars strictly on recreation and entertainment of its personnel. Surely the supposedly non-military Starfleet which exists in an allegedly moneyless world would have no problem with a holodeck which serves a strictly recreational purpose. The fact that there are also work related applications the holodeck can be used for would just be a bonus.
the earlist holodeck we see, timeline wise, is the Xyrillian one in ENT "unexpected". it was only able to produce enviroments. (and apparently had at least a limited ability to produce physical objects, as you could scoop up sand from the ground in one of the enviroments, and it created props in another)
the klingons made the xyrillians give them the technology at the end of the episode, so it is likely that at least some form of the tech dated back the the late 22nd century.
my own guess is that before replicators, such devices would have been complex to operate, and would have kept a stockpile of 'stuff' to beam in for the different environments. so ship board ones might have been rare for most groups in the federation, but you might find them on space stations and in cities. once replicator tech became a thing, it got mixed in and made it easier to operate them, and expanded their options for programs.
i also assume that holoprograms like Flotter & Trevis, prior to TNG, would be closer to an interactive video. the characters can move and do things, but actual interaction with the 'player' would be restricted to non-physical stuff. so you could walk through the Woods with Flotter, but he'd always be out of arms reach. and until the mid TNG upgrades, his dialog would be more limited. this limitation with characters would be part of why in early TNG it was mostly used for recreating environments and replaying non-interactive events. it could do characters at the time, but they weren't all that useful.
ad far as the ferengi.. i suspect that they got the tech early on (we know at least a couple ships were around the vicinity of earth in the 22nd century, and i wouldn't be surprised if they didn't buy the tech off the xyrillians and work on improving it themselves.) i suspect the difference between a holodeck and a holosuite is just one of nuance.. holodecks being purpose built set up, using a large space for the holographic enviroment. while holo-suites are probably more like pre-fab hardware that can be installed into whatever cargohold or empty crew quarters you have on hand. that and marketing.. "suite", being the term for a set of fancy rooms, is a lot more inviting than "deck".
the klingons made the xyrillians give them the technology at the end of the episode, so it is likely that at least some form of the tech dated back the the late 22nd century.
my own guess is that before replicators, such devices would have been complex to operate, and would have kept a stockpile of 'stuff' to beam in for the different environments. so ship board ones might have been rare for most groups in the federation, but you might find them on space stations and in cities. once replicator tech became a thing, it got mixed in and made it easier to operate them, and expanded their options for programs.
i also assume that holoprograms like Flotter & Trevis, prior to TNG, would be closer to an interactive video. the characters can move and do things, but actual interaction with the 'player' would be restricted to non-physical stuff. so you could walk through the Woods with Flotter, but he'd always be out of arms reach. and until the mid TNG upgrades, his dialog would be more limited. this limitation with characters would be part of why in early TNG it was mostly used for recreating environments and replaying non-interactive events. it could do characters at the time, but they weren't all that useful.
ad far as the ferengi.. i suspect that they got the tech early on (we know at least a couple ships were around the vicinity of earth in the 22nd century, and i wouldn't be surprised if they didn't buy the tech off the xyrillians and work on improving it themselves.) i suspect the difference between a holodeck and a holosuite is just one of nuance.. holodecks being purpose built set up, using a large space for the holographic enviroment. while holo-suites are probably more like pre-fab hardware that can be installed into whatever cargohold or empty crew quarters you have on hand. that and marketing.. "suite", being the term for a set of fancy rooms, is a lot more inviting than "deck".
It was more that Tucker negotiated a trade of the technology so the Klingons would be appeased and spare the Xyrillians.
In my post-ENT novels, I posited that the Xyrillians embargoed further sales of their holotechnology when they discovered the Klingons had been using it to torture prisoners. The Klingons lacked the skill to repair the tech when it broke down from their rough use, so eventually it faded away.
No, they had tactile holograms back in TAS: "The Practical Joker." Sulu suggested a swim at the beach, so we know it wasn't just a visual illusion (assuming he wasn't speaking metaphorically). The Alan Dean Foster novelization describes the trapped characters digging a ramp out of the dirt wall of the pit trap to climb out. Although the novelization says the rec room can only make inanimate objects solid, while the birds wheeling above the beach scene are merely visual projections and audio recordings.
It's much simpler than that. "Deck" is a nautical term. It's only a holodeck if it's on a spaceship (or presumably a water vessel); in a station or ground facility, it's a holosuite.
How simple would water and sand texture be to mimic, compared to realistic skin or textile texture and color gradations? Also, could some of it be replicated? Real water and sand, with fake accompanying scenery (sky, birds, shells, etc)?
Despite its portrayal of being as lifelike as real things in TAS, the rec deck hologenerators may have resolution problems we know nothing of. It may glitch after more hours in use than was shown, or with the running of more complicated involved programs.
I'd assume any physical texture could be replicated with equal ease; the problem is animating it, making it move and behave in a lifelike way. So, for instance, the rec deck could simulate a stuffed bird on someone's shelf, but not a living, moving bird, except by playing back a recorded hologram of one (as Foster interpreted it). Or, alternatively, it could devote processing power to generating a moving visual image or to simulating a realistic, solid surface texture, but doing both at once would take too much bandwidth and you'd get a low-resolution or jerky image.
They didn't have transporter-based replicators in the 23rd century (although Strange New Worlds has implied otherwise), so they couldn't just materialize a real physical object.
Foster says the rec deck created "the illusion of solidity," so presumably he was imagining something similar to how holodecks use shaped force fields to simulate solid objects.
Also, the rec deck wasn't able to simulate being a larger space than it was. As Uhura said, if you walked far enough in a straight line, you'd hit a wall; presumably the computer was using visual tricks to send them in circles, or something like that.
I'm pretty sure Boimler got assimilated in the holodeck...
Even in S1 of TNG they were talking about recent updates to the holodeck that significantly increased the resolution and realism. Picard damn near lost his mind when he started up the Dixon Hill program the first time, so it clearly wasn't a common thing.
"I actually SAW AUTOMOBILES!"
That wasn't an exclamation of somebody who had been able to do this kind of thing before.
Even in S1 of TNG they were talking about recent updates to the holodeck that significantly increased the resolution and realism. Picard damn near lost his mind when he started up the Dixon Hill program the first time, so it clearly wasn't a common thing.
"I actually SAW AUTOMOBILES!"
That wasn't an exclamation of somebody who had been able to do this kind of thing before.
His previous posting was a shitbox, after all.
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Grandpa Picard's a late adopter of "unnecessary" entertainment technology.
I remember an episode of Voyager that was basically Barclay all over again but with Seven, and in that episode the holodeck was able to make her hair look longer and make her appear to not have her implants. Assuming that there's no limits to how changes like these could give way to more extreme ones, yeah, it probably could.
Neelix was a Klingon when the Hirogen took over Voyager and turned it into a giant holodeck... I don't believe it's ever addressed, it COULD have been the 'old "surgically alter them to look like x race", but it seems like it was probably more efficient to just have the holodeck make it look like he was a Klingon.
Apparently fire in holodecks is real, too - just came across this line from "Cost of Living" (Parallax colony holoprogram)
In "Manhunt," Lwaxana didn't realize that the holographic bartender wasn't a real person, so I think it's safe to assume she has little understanding of holodecks.
Not even all Starfleet officers are aware of what holodeck can do - I'm thinking of that scene where Pulaski (I think?) is in awe of what TNG's holodeck can do. (I personally think it's more like a potential death trap but then I guess they only showed us the moments when something went wrong and not enough of the ones where everything went smoothly, lol.)
That one kind of jumps out to me, as you'd think she would have been aware of the bartender having no thoughts...or was it a point of "Manhunt" that her telepathy was on the fritz?
I think it was supposed to be a quirk of hers rather than her level of understanding about technology, like knocking on the panel before asking the computer where the holodeck was
Her inability to read his mind was exactly what fascinated her about him. "No man has ever been such a mystery to me. I usually know their thoughts before they do."
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