Welcome to you stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff. You snow. Jerry's back there. We're all set got our Mike's got the dinosaur. What's this dinosaur's name? Frank the chairs? Uncle is here year old uncle who's in the Olympics, Uncle Merle, the Frank the chair. His uncle Merle is the dinosaur. Oh I was talking about the chairs sitting in?
Is that a nameless Oh yeah, this isn't Frank. Is it Frank's on set at our TV show that we're shooting, unfortunately with a TV show we're making. Is that set in? Uh? Yeah, it's set in that I had to sit in that stupid chair for sixty hours a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, it's hilarious. Yeah, they followed us there. Uh okay, So this is Uncle Merle the dinosaur, the stegasaurs. I believe sure. It's like a stack of source cross with a sharp pay Look at all those wrinkles. That's about it, all right.
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give him some money. He's growing out facial here to help a charitable organization engage in really important scientific research. That's right. And you can go to mobro dot c O slash Charles Bryant and that's my page, or just go to the November site. Type in Charles Bryan in the search bar and look for the picture of me. There's only a couple of us out there. Chuck's wearing a red shirt. It's yeah, um, so what is that again? That's mo bro dot CEO slash Charles Bryant. Yes, thank
you in advance. Yeah, that's nice, Chuck. All right, let's get to it. Chuck, you selected this one. How do you feel it sounded a lot cooler? Yeah. We're talking about holographic environments. Yeah, and you hear that you think Man Star Trek. Yeah, it comes to life. So I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about, and I went and looked up the holidack. Yeah, and it's apparently just from the next generation, like it wasn't
like original. I didn't see anything. I even looked on a Star Trek wiki and it's it seemed to indicate the first I'm so nervous right now. Well let's say this. We'll find out one way or the other very quickly. But it seemed to indicate from my cursory research that the holidack was a feature on the Enterprise from the twenty three sixties e g. Or I e. The next generation. All right, so what it was? The hollow deck? Have you seen it? Are you familiar? Star Trek cital? And
now I was in a Star Trek guy. I mean, it just kind of got past me. But have you seen it? Did you? Did you see it? Yeah? Okay, it's cool. You know, it is a projection, a holographic projection room, and basically, you know, is what you would think. You know, remember in Star Wars, which I am a fan of, when our two D two spit out the little holographic image of Princess Leiah rendering her message. Um, imagine a room of life sized people doing that as
if you're interacting. Yes, that's a very important key, um, because what we're talking about is not just a three D projection like Star Wars clunked along with. But we're talking about the Star Trek holographic environment where you can move around and you get a three D and sixty degree view and you can shake hands and maybe uh, have a cocktail or play a trombone or something with someone else in a virtual environment. But you can interact like you don't like when you walk around the backside
of somebody. It's not you're not getting in the way of the projector. Can I read a line from the article? Yes, eventually you will even be able to hug other people using this technology. They should have put hug in quotes because because it's not a hug, No, they're not really there. Oh I meant I thought that they were talking about like having virtual sex. Of course, it's going to go to virtual sex. It's gonna be the first thing that they come up with. That's what everybody at Microsoft is
working on right now. I'm quite sure you'll make a trillion dollars it's like, uh, is it total recall? Ah, yeah, where you had the three D or virtual reality experiences. Yeah, and I'm sure it's been another stuff too. I'm not thinking of like total recall the remake. Yeah, that was the other thing I was thinking of. All right, what
we're talking about telet immersion. That's the real name for it, yes, not the holidack, And it right now is mainly being um developed for a few different things, potentially video game use, hugging, hugging your family members at Christmas, yeah you can't be there, um, but mainly for uh, something that's not quite as exciting video conferencing, right which we've seen like the pinnacle of video conferencing right now, I think so, Yeah, man, they
owe us a couple of bucks. Yeah, we've plugged them like heavily. Well, I mean it's amazing technology, it is, but it's it's just like nothing compared to teleimersion. Yeah, goal of true. And this article is has got to be outdated, because laughably out of date because after witnessing the Tanburg in use, which basically feels like you're sitting in a room, you know, it's HD It's not like a hologram or three D or anything. But it's really good and it feels like you're sitting in a room
with someone. There's no lag, there's no stuttering. And this article talks about like these days, you know, there's some stuttering and flickering when you try to teleconference. Right, they figured that all out, they did. Um. They also this article you know, this article also no it's not but which I mean, like it's kind of I think where the tele immersion was at when this article was written. Where we're at with like it's pretty decent now, you know.
But the the the author Kevin Bondser makes a point like if you walk out of the way of the webcam, nobody can see you any longer if you are um, like when you're looking at the computer screen, the webcams getting your eyes, but you're not making eye contact, like nobody thinks to do that. That's all this stuff just kind of goes away with tele immersion. Um, because you have a webcam that's tracking your eyes to see where you're where you're looking at. That's a big part of it.
Facial recognition helps with that too, and then also there's a camera ray. It's not just one webcam pointing at you. Your there's cameras around you, but pretty much three D and sixty degrees, so there capturing everything you're doing. So you can't leave the the view of the other person. Yeah, you have to go into a different room and then what you know, what's the point? Hang up? Your call is over at that point, unless you just have to be real quick and you're like, hold on, I'll be
right back. Um. One thing that's in the way right now. I mean, they made a lot of headway that this article points out in two thousand, twelve years ago is when they made their first big breakthrough. Um uh, the National telet Immersion Initiative. Yes, working together Chapel Hill looks like North Carolina. Did you look up this group? Are they still around? Their websites still around? But they reached their pinnacle in May two thousand. Is it my space? Oh? Man,
yeah it is. And it's like what we're doing two thousand? Nothing? Nothing? All right? Well, at the time, it was a big breakthrough because it was the first time they were able to see three dimensional holographic images of like colleagues in different cities. Yeah, all sitting in the same room, right,
And it was a big deal. Yeah, and that's we should also say, like the point of telemersion is basically to create say if you want to telecommunity and you have a conference, rather than everybody flying to the conference room, you have a virtual conference room set up to where everybody basically projects himself into this shared space, the shared room that you can get up and move around and see from different angles and um, each user is depicted three D and sixty degrees. So it it is a
sort of telepresence, is what they call it. Yeah, and it's sort of a green initiative to you could look at it that way. Yeah, save a lot on jet fuel and commuting costs, and that there's some huge challenges to this there we're back in two thousand and it's um,
a lot of them are still around. One of them is the kind of bandwidth that we will need because I think it's said for the frame to refresh itself um at ten, or the screen to refresh itself, or the projection to refresh it time frames a second, that'd be seamless, but it was hitting at like three back in two thousand. I wonder what is that now. I'm sure that we can do that now, but the problem is, um, transmitting that data right is problematic, shuts up a lot
of bandwidth. Yeah. So you're talking about two things. A computers that are way more juiced than they are now even now, and you're talking about an internet um from my internet to basically yeah, now that's still going on, right, it's um basically this initiative by a bunch of universities around the country to wire the US at speeds that are just blistering fast compared to what we've got now,
up to a thousand times faster. That's really really fast. Um. They also have enormous storage capabilities, and I saw one of the things that they're doing is using this to move out to underserved areas of the country. Oh really, Yeah, it's not just like just it's not just for New York or Francisco. It's like, yeah, it's for North Dakota. Why can't North Dakota get online? Finally, that's funny. Uh but true. You also have UM, well just basically tracking somebody,
which Microsoft has done a lot to get past. Are you talking about that new thing, the hollow desk? Yes, yeah, I just found this today. Did you look at that the video? Yeah, it's pretty cool. Microsoft is developing something and this is current UM called the hollow desk, and UM he uses an overhead screen to project a two D two D image through a half silvered beam splitter onto a desktop. Basically, what it looks like is, UM, it looks like you're working on a desk with a
screen between you and the desk. I can see through clear screen. Yeah, so if you look below that screen, you're just gonna see your hands doing nothing. If you look through that screen, you're gonna see holographic images. In this case, there were like little glowing balls that you could pick up and juggle, and you could pick it up with a piece of paper. You could put it in a coffee cup and swirl it around. Pretty cool. Yeah,
that's huge. That's hugely different than anything that this article was talking about or anything we thought of before, because like you're interacting with a virtual environment. It's reacting to you. I mean, yeah, super advanced. And it was like you could tell looking at it. It's like the po of what it will be one day, you know, because it's it's kind of jittery, it's um, the edges aren't clear.
You can when you're holding one of those balls. You can still see your fingers through on the other side, but like there's a virtual ball and you're picking it up and like throwing it from hand to hand, and it's reacting to you like it's there, but it's not there. And I mean that's an enormous lead forward. It's pretty wicked. UM. Right now, it's a research project, so they're not gonna
like roll this out anytime soon. But the stuff you see in movies of the future where like a surgeon will take a model of a heart and you know, a holographic model and moving around with his hand or something like that's coming down the pike at some point. Um. Training surgeons is one application. Training soldiers is another. UM. When I was doing the research in the article for PTSD, which we need to do eventually, it's just gonna be
like there's a lot to it. Is we have that source who like keeps sending us like research up to the date research, um, and yeah, we need to do it anyway. UM. I found that one way that they were trying to prevent PTSD later on was immersing soldiers and like basically what they were gonna see like dead bodies handled. It's just horrible stuff. Yeah, beforehand, it's part of their training. Interesting, but it looked a lot like a current video game now, which is good, but it's
not really lifelike. If you could nail this and have somebody immersed in it, then all of a sudden, like they're going to see what they're going to experience, and maybe it's kind of like easing them into it a little bit to prevent PTSD further down the road. Interesting, so like desensitizing them beforehand. Well, that have to be pretty real though. I imagine even the realist projection, when you still see the real thing, it's like, I don't know,
I imagine that's still pretty bad. Sure, it's like missing something. It's like interacting with a robot. It's missing something. Even the greatest robot is missing. Yeah, it could maybe prime your brain to see the real thing. At the very least, even if it doesn't work to prevent PTSD, they'll make a lot a lot of money. It's making video games like that, like using it as a straight up video game.
I think that's one of the big goals of tele immersion, is to create a virtual world that you are interacting with, Like look at the Microsoft connect the little bar that tracks your movements. So now you can like dance and like the little avatar and the screen is making your movements. Right. You've been to the mall and seeing people doing this? Right? Yeah? I think so I know what you're talking about. So what have you seen, like people just dancing in the
middle of the mall in front of the TV screen? No? But is it like we fit very much? Okay? Um, but I think Microsoft is the one who really had the breakthrough with this connect gotch um. So they they've got that, They've got tracking human motion down. Yeah. Now all they have to do is make it so that you're not looking at a screen, you're in the screen. Yeah,
that's the tele imersion part. Yeah, and the whole um hubbub we were talking about with being able to hug something for with the hollow deck with Microsoft, like you're you're juggling these invisible balls, these holographic balls, but you can't feel them. Um. But with something called haptics tectic sensors, potentially you might be able to at least replicate some of this. Um it is uh tactile feedback technology. So if you ever played like PS three, now they have
the vibrating controllers. Yeah, that's one. So like when you get shot or you shoot a guy or something in the first person shooter at like vibrates. They also have them so that like you can you get little shocks to stimulate your sense of touch really to simulate pressure, temperature change and basically just screw with your brain. Um. So that yeah, then that all of a sudden, now hugging would be virtual hugging is like that's I guess that would be the holy grail. But it still needs
to be something physical. So when you have to like wear some sort of a suit that's wired to like compress like arms around you or m but I mean, like we're almost there, and and I don't even know if you would have to wear I mean a suit would probably be helpful, but I'll bet there's little like patches of your skin where if you're wired into that and you electrocute those, you could simulate like your whole arm feeling a sensation rather than just that finger that
has that electrode array on it. So you're talking about plugging in very much so, and that's the haptic part of it. And I think we're already starting to get there like some of the some smartphones have like this. This haptic effect or is what it's called. The haptic sensor senses you squeezing something, and the haptic effect or would be the array on the person's arm that simulated
the pressure of that squeeze. In between, you have a lot of information being measured and crunched and transmitted because you know how much pressure are you applying, like are you trying to hurt the person? Like that? All that has to be tracked and then sent and sent out to the effect or which replicates it. Well, you want it to be exact right, otherwise it's just clumsy, sure, or it hurts. That's a good point. It's like, stop squeeze, it's hard. I'm not it's the machine. You always say that.
I know. Uh, the two pack hologram. Yeah, um, I looked up. Actually, the NPR did a great story on how that was done. But I think I should just read real quickly what one of the designers um. He sort of explains it by saying sort of a lot. He's one of those guys. Uh. He said. There's an overhead projector that sort of reflects down onto basically a tilted piece of glass that's sort of on the stage floor.
Then uh, that reflects the well reflection onto a milar sort of screen and it sort of projects in this sort of three D kind of thing where it allows the other performers to sort of walk in front of Tupac and basically interact with him. And he said sort of literally like six times. But that's a pretty basic way of explaining how hologram works. But we have a really detailed article on that if we ever feel squirrely holograms. Yeah, Tracy wrote it and it's I tried to read it
today and it flew way over my head. So it's gonna require some more effort. That and Blood is going to require like a lot of effort that we should That should be our last podcast ever. Yeah, and we should just like at the same time, cut each other's jackulars and flee out on cameras and you got anything else. Oh, tele immersion is still going on, yeah, um at Berkeley. Berkeley has a big tele immersion lamb you see Berkeley, not the music school, same school though, mm hmmmm, Berkeley
School of Music. That's it. Um, that's like in Massachusetts. Yeah, I didn't know that Massachusetts. Yeah, I think it's around Boston. I feel like a dummy. Now. Oh it's okay, man, and it's not related to Berkeley in California at all. I don't believe, so I will. It's all right. Sometimes you're swinging thiss, but you look good doing it. I appreciate it. Um. Can we be done talking about this? I think so? Look for um realistic holographic video conferencing
in an office near you in the future. In seven years, your boss in Japan will be hugging you just because he can. Yeah. All right, Well, if you want to learn more about virtual environments or holographs or holodecks, you can type any of those words into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. See what comes up, spin the wheel, take your chances, and then just read them all. There you go, I said, search bar, Yes, so do it, Josh, I'm gonna call this email from
or Ol buddy Lance Spangler. Oh him, he was, Um, he's in the military. Okay, rights all the time. Yes, I remember, get hats from him. I don't remember. I think our traditional Afghani tribal heads. How was that for him? I believe so? If not, we're gonna hear about it. Josh and Chuck in your production assistant, and I was not talking about Jerry. I think he thinks we actually have like a team working for us, which is funny in itself. It is we've got Uncle Merle. Let's take
a source. Sharp Pick always crack up when people email me, They're like, whoever entranses were? Josh and Chuck? Yeah, I wish Um. I first discovered y'all while working in Iraq several years ago and continue to listen to everything you do. Um. You even sent me some stickers in two T shirts back then. The stickers are no doubt still stuck to a number of buildings from Baghdad to Kuwait. I love that you missed one testing method, however, in your nuclear devices.
In your most recent podcasts, Um, remember we talked about underground outer space and what in the water and yeah yeah what is currently the world's fastest computer located in California has been contracted by the d O E and d O D to run simulations on each device's output real life versus the estimated design output. The computer is powerful enough that it models the simulators at the sub
atomic level. Each sub atomic particle from beginning to end is represented that it's crazy because our nuclear arsenal is aging. Some weapons are twenty five plus years old. That is kind of crazy, uh, in any number of treaty restrictions. Uh. These simulations are the perfect way to test the device without any nuclear fallout. Even more interesting, these simulations have
uncovered some surprises, some good, others not so good. I guess he's gonna keep this private, right, um, but last you think this computer is just a mushroom cloud in disguise. They're also modeling the human heart at the cellular level, um, each individual cell. That is, to determine the effects of various drugs and diseases. All and I'll keep up the great work in what you're doing. And as an old television producer, knock them dead with the new TV show.
Thank you. What an interesting project to be a part of. And with the kind of brand awareness and the following you have, it's sure to be a success. And that is from our old buddy Lance Spangler in Castle Rock, Colorado, who hopefully um knocked on wood with that last sentence. We're knocking now just in case. Yeah, UM, thank you very much, Lance. I won't I don't know if you
saw me sending the hats are not well. I definitely remember that we sent him stickers and shirts and now they're in baghday and I believe he might have sent a picture back of them wearing the shirts, but that might have been another year. Right. But then we have another guy who's taking who took pictures of the flint Stone Amusement park in Baghdad. Oh yeah he I think he was the one who sent us the hat that
was awesome off to all our military listeners. Afghany hats off. Uh, let's see if you have a correction or uh like lance head just a I guess a mind blowing add Yes, thank you, Chuck, because I was really having trouble there. Um. You can tweet it to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you should don't. You can also send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit Howstuff Works dot com.