Holograms, Screens, & Virtual Reality

Over the last few centuries there have been amazing advances in how we interact with the digital world. Simple screens have given way to 3D, Tactile Displays. Holograms have created not only floating screens but full-on interactive objects and figures. Brain-Computer interfaces have enabled a true virtual-reality experience without relying on clunky headsets and gloves.

Advances in 2D Screens

The humble screen has undergone a drastic transformation. These simple screens have advanced in three key areas:

3D Displays

Common screens on any ship or station now give a full-depth experience when looking at them. They can fake the appearance of a real window or provide an environment to look around. This has been achieved with lightfield technology. It creates a real 3D world inside the screen. These are most useful for entertainment, but they have some applications in flight and engineering.

This technology is so common as to be a standard feature on nearly every display sold. The only exception is panels where it makes absolutely no-sense: things like door panels and simple emergency screens. Basic, dedicated indicators still remain the domain of basic, 2D panels.

Transparent Screens

Similar advances in technology have enabled truly transparent displays. These are most commonly seen on hand terminals and large public data screens. The idea works much as it sounds. A glass panel holds a full and functional screen. In common settings they’re used as whiteboards or for visually disappearing screens. Their key advantage is that they’re dirt-cheap. It’s common and easy to deploy these everywhere.

Despite their appearance, as simple glass sheets, they are increidbly durable. The top of the line models are frequently just 5-7 millimeters thick - yet they’ll survive being used and abused like power tools.

The Humble Hand Terminal

The poster child of the transparent screen is the hand terminal. These simple displays are ubiquitous, carried around by essentially everyone. They’ve replaced the old concept of a phone with a thin sheet of glass. The electronics are etched into the panels themselves, invisible to the naked eye. These little marvels have local networking to interface with most hardwware, tons of storage, and often serve to both entertain and inform. They’re commonly used for identification and access to advanced systems.

Holograms

More complex and more expensive than any simple flat screen, holograms took centuries to truly perfect. These are emissions of confined and controlled light. Effectively, advaanced particle physics enabled intense mannipulations of light and shadow. The technology is sufficiently advanced to create a full, fake virtual environment if desired. A room can be turned into the ocean or an alien desert.

The trade off of course is cost and touch. These systems are far more expensive and no matter how real they look, you can never touch them. Some theorize ways to give photons mass, but there are more dangerous implications for physics if that ever comes to fruition.

From a cost perspective, there are billions of cheap and abundant low-grade holographic screens. These produce a floating, 2D image. They’re used everywhere to enhance and augment common screens. The projectors that create people and environments? That’s where the money comes in. Such systems create ads, public displays, and are common-place on the Parthenon.

There are cheaper ways to experience a full world.

Virtual Reality

Less of a display and more of a replacement altogether is the brain-computer interface. This system allows a person to have several experiences:

• Information projected into their vision
• Direct knowledge/information transfer
• Reality replacement

At its most gentle, these systems create artificial displays in your vision without needing a real screen. They can be overlayed as if they were truly in the room. These same interfaces can add knowledge to your brain without having to ever actually read it. That technology, when pushed to the limit, can temporarily paralyze your limbs and allow you to experience a computer generated world as if it were real - for all of your senses.