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June 17, 2013 3:45 PM   Subscribe

...no background checks needed. Coming to (or already in) an airport near you: Holograms serve as "virtual assistants" giving instructions in multiple languages. via
posted by agatha_magatha (30 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I saw these at the Dubai airport earlier this year. Cool-looking, but not really scary or "uncanny valley" (unless you're slightly sleep-deprived from a transatlantic flight, at which point it is very confusing). Since they're just (for the time-being) playing back recordings, it isn't that weird. I suspect that it'll start to feel a bit sci-fi once interactive voice recognition is put in place.

yessss this article references hologram tupac... Actually, if you're interested in Hologram Tupac and entertainment, check this article out; it gets really interesting.

"Airports could, if they wanted to, use Gorillaz-style characters as projections instead of people."

YES!
posted by raihan_ at 3:57 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Was there some movie with something like a holographic museum tour guide who... maybe... stayed existing even generations after civilization had collapsed, and was activated by the main characters, who were maybe time travelers or maybe people from the wastelands? And the holographic guide had become at least partially sentient? Maybe? And helped the main characters out on their quest to do whatever it was they were questing to do? Or... uh... something?

Also, The Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager.
posted by Flunkie at 3:58 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


So not really holograms but 2d projections on glass? Neat stuff, but I was hoping for Avina.
posted by brundlefly at 3:58 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Saw this lady at Logan last year, she got very haughty when I asked if she was union and just kept staring forward like I wasn't there.
posted by yerfatma at 3:59 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Wait, is this one of those things where they say "holograph" and actually mean "projection of a video?"
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:02 PM on June 17, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm down with these guys taking over airport security duties, if only because they are incapable of gropage.
posted by brundlefly at 4:03 PM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Can I select which hologram I get? Cuz I want Freddie Mercury. Although MJ might be cool.
posted by Ad hominem at 4:08 PM on June 17, 2013


I'm down with these guys taking over airport security duties, if only because they are incapable of gropage.
Not so fast.
posted by Flunkie at 4:11 PM on June 17, 2013


Was there some movie with something like a holographic museum tour guide...

The Time Machine (2002)
posted by The Tensor at 4:22 PM on June 17, 2013


Flunkie: "Was there some movie with something like a holographic museum tour guide who... maybe... stayed existing even generations after civilization had collapsed, and was activated by the main characters, who were maybe time travelers or maybe people from the wastelands? And the holographic guide had become at least partially sentient? Maybe? And helped the main characters out on their quest to do whatever it was they were questing to do? Or... uh... something?"

I think you're describing Orlando Jones as Vox from the 2002 version of H.G. Wells The Time Machine. The part where he describes what it's like to "remember everything" always makes me tear up a little. It's the line about the 6-year-old girl asking about a book on dinosaurs 800k years ago that gets me, the subtext being that that little girl's species is itself now extinct, humanity having now evolved into the Morlocks and the Eloi.
posted by radwolf76 at 4:24 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Sniped by The Tensor.
posted by radwolf76 at 4:24 PM on June 17, 2013


That's it! Thanks.
posted by Flunkie at 4:25 PM on June 17, 2013


Looks like it has roughly the same utility as a video display, but costs orders of magnitude more. Next step: touch screens and voice recognition to provide information that travelers used to have to resort to getting from...signs.
posted by ceribus peribus at 4:29 PM on June 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


The one-time cost to purchase a hologram is already about as low as a customer service representative’s annual salary.

For fuck's sake; why not just have the video play on a screen? A 40 inch LCD screen would only be $500 or so, and would last for years. You could knock up the video with two staff members and a bloody handheld video camera at an effective cost of almost nothing. Even smartphones shoot in HD these days
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 4:34 PM on June 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


"Holographic announcers are rear projections upon flat sheets of glass."

Um.... that is not exactly what usually comes to mind when I think of holographic projections.

Sounds more like... TV?
posted by Hairy Lobster at 4:48 PM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I can see this kind of thing being more useful for attention-grabbing public advertising (not necessarily desirable, mind you). It seems kind of pointless for simple information delivery.
posted by brundlefly at 4:48 PM on June 17, 2013


It's not hard, just put up more maps and signs.
posted by 2bucksplus at 4:52 PM on June 17, 2013



Was there some movie with something like a holographic museum tour guide who... maybe... stayed existing even generations after civilization had collapsed, and was activated by the main characters, who were maybe time travelers or maybe people from the wastelands? And the holographic guide had become at least partially sentient? Maybe? And helped the main characters out on their quest to do whatever it was they were questing to do? Or... uh... something?


They show up in the Fallout: New Vegas expansion Dead Money, where hard light holograms guard a long-empty casino in the middle of the desert, acting as tour guides and croupiers too. Its pretty awesome.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 4:56 PM on June 17, 2013


Can you even imagine? Your flight gets diverted to a strange airport because of weather, or mechanical difficulties, or a security problem, and you have to queue up behind everyone else to ask Holo-Clippy what's going on? It'll never replace having an actual person that you can harass until they get on the phone to hunt down some answers for you.
posted by ceribus peribus at 4:58 PM on June 17, 2013


They show up in the Fallout: New Vegas expansion Dead Money, where hard light holograms guard a long-empty casino in the middle of the desert, acting as tour guides and croupiers too. Its pretty awesome.

Nah, the Dead Money holograms are terrible. They can shoot lasers from their projections and they aren't bound to line of sight from their projectors, meaning that finding the projector is purely a matter of "where would the developers think would be clever to hide the projector?" rather than "where could the projector be, based on where I've seen the hologram standing?"
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:18 PM on June 17, 2013


The article, whose level of enthusiasm just screams "copied and pasted press release" to me, keeps referring to "holograms", but later says that "holographic announcers are rear projections upon flat sheets of glass". Which is not a hologram.

Anyway, I saw one of these in Boston Logan last month. It was a human-shaped, flat piece of frosted glass with a video of an annoyingly cheerful woman projected onto it from a large white box a few feet behind. You could see the projector lens, which would have spoiled the illusion had I not already known that projectors exist. Projecting onto a bit of frosted glass that's cut to the outline of their model is a novelty, I suppose, but there's no 3D effect or other obvious reason to call it a hologram. It really is just a normal-looking projection onto a person-shaped sheet of frosted glass.

It's possible that the projector is unusually high quality: the colours were good in a well-lit room, and it must have had a special lens to project from just a few feet back. But I've seen at least two banks and an estate agent in central-ish London who project video onto rectangles of frosted plastic stuck up in their windows, and I can't imagine they paid tens of thousands for the privilege.

I was prepared to be impressed by the text-to-speech version, but they concede that the animation doesn't look anything close to realistic. So... um... they have a voice synthesiser and a slideshow of the model who fits their bit of glass. OK then.
posted by metaBugs at 5:29 PM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


They had one of these at the Newark airport when we flew to NYC a few months ago.
From a distance it looks kind of cool, and I thought "hey, a hologram!" but then you get closer and it's a thick hunk of clear plastic in the shape of a lady and it was instantly not cool anymore and we just kept walking, jaded already. Can't even remember what she was saying.
posted by chococat at 5:30 PM on June 17, 2013 [1 favorite]



Nah, the Dead Money holograms are terrible. They can shoot lasers from their projections and they aren't bound to line of sight from their projectors, meaning that finding the projector is purely a matter of "where would the developers think would be clever to hide the projector?" rather than "where could the projector be, based on where I've seen the hologram standing?"


It was implied that the holograms were combined with other tech from the Big MT.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:36 PM on June 17, 2013


...taking over airport security duties, if only because they are incapable of gropage.

Feature, not bug. Groping is why I make sure I am well liquored up prior to flight. Makes it fun for me and them.
posted by QueerAngel28 at 10:22 PM on June 17, 2013


I was hoping for Avina.

I was hoping for Rimmer from Red Dwarf, myself.
posted by hattifattener at 12:26 AM on June 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB THE KEEPERS TSA.
posted by NoraReed at 2:34 AM on June 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I think they have (or had) one of those in the San Jose Airport. I didn't stop to look at it, but I saw a small area roped off and a guy was taking pictures of it. Her. The hologram thingie. I have to go through there again in a few weeks and will see if the setup is still there.
posted by jquinby at 6:18 AM on June 18, 2013


I still say that the most disappointing day in law school is the day you learn what a "holographic will" is.
posted by sparklemotion at 7:41 AM on June 18, 2013


Was there some movie with something like a holographic museum tour guide who... maybe... stayed existing even generations after civilization had collapsed, and was activated by the main characters, who were maybe time travelers or maybe people from the wastelands? And the holographic guide had become at least partially sentient? Maybe? And helped the main characters out on their quest to do whatever it was they were questing to do? Or... uh... something?

A holographic US president (FDR I think) shows up in Eternity Road- a museum installation, with pretty good AI, he converses with one of the characters for a while and provides them with inspiration. It's actually a pretty good moment.
posted by BungaDunga at 2:11 PM on June 18, 2013


Was it the Blue Fairy in AI?
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:46 PM on June 18, 2013


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