Having your own private strip club wouldn't be relaxing? Or to be less sexually motivated, a nice hike, a walk on the beach, or a picnic with a loved one could be very relaxing while in the confines of a starship where all that separates you from the cold vacuum of space is a wall.
Add to that the fact that if there IS more than one person, the holodeck would have to be able to create an optical illusion of distance somehow. I would buy it if people went in two DIFFERENT holosuites and "networked" as though they were in an MMORPG of some sort (so that the true distances could be preserved), but in the same suite? I don't buy that one. EDIT: That's how you could actually pull it off. Have several smallish rooms (just enough for people to not get completely claustrophobic when no scenario is running), one for each person, and then network them. Since we know that holograms can be made to feel solid, that would solve the problem of being able to reach out and touch the people you're simming with. But I think it would have to be individual rooms per player.
Just for fun : what happens if two persons enters a holosuite program, walk 50 meters in opposite direction, and then turn off the holosuite ^^ i don't think this was ever seen on screen. people in the holosimulation can be far appart in the program (like spread on a baseball field), but, conveniently, they are always close together when the program is turned off. Vic's casino, for instance, is much much bigger than quark's holosuite, and sometimes there are 10 "real people" in it.
Like I said, it has to be a VERY complex optical illusion. But I think my own solution would've been technologically more plausible for the show.
When they turn off the holodeck the two people would find themselves only a few meters apart, because they never were more than that far apart the whole time the holodeck was running. It's the same if ten people were on a baseball team and were distributed across the field, each person is in their own little holo "bubble," just far enough apart not to be able to touch each other. Only if they're within touching distance of each other are they in the same bubble. On the same holodeck I'm up on a mountain, you down in a valley, switch off the holodeck and we're (again) standing a few meters apart.
I think a good resolution to the problem of holodeck space would have been to have the walls between holodecks retractable to make the holodeck bigger, or as was pointed out before, link a few together.
What the hell? Have you never seen any episode of Star Trek? The holodeck and holograms are all about the fact that physical feelings are associated with it. Thats how come we repeatedly see The Doctor touching people, people being able to sit on chair in the holodeck, people getting shot by holograms, people getting massaged and having sex with holograms... This is the basics of how the holodeck works, it suspends you millemetres from the actual floor so it can treadmill you. They apparently work on something called 'first person subjective mode'. Im guessing that when two people move further away from each other in the simulation, in reality the holodeck is just changing to look of things right in front of each 'player' to add perspective.
Tell that to the Pleasure Goddess of Riiks. If that doesn't satisfy, you can TRY to get your money back from Quark..
I guess the Holodeck would be the Trek Universe's way of having a Stress Relief toy... Though I'd end up like Barclay.....addicted to it.