 "The holodecks tend to be something of a treat that I have no problem
with indulging in. They allow us to take a break from the every day and enjoy a holo
- novel or perhaps a holo - adventure of some kind. Personally, I enjoy a good game
of Pool and the occasional rappelling session.""Now, unfortunately, a lot of officers who work here end up in our next stop if they are not careful with the safety setting. Off to sickbay it is ...." |
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 Since
before the first satellite launches within the Sol system, fiction writers and engineers
alike assumed that long- duration space flights would require certain measures to keep the
travelers happy and psychologically fit for continued duty. During the first Earth orbital
and lunar landing missions, crew members listened to cassette tapes of their favorite
music, and flight controllers periodically passed up capsule versions of the daily
newspapers of the day. Documentation and video recordings were routinely transmitted to
orbital stations and planetary outposts into the early part of the twenty-first century. The desire to experience images, sounds, and tactile stimuli not normally encountered on a space vessel has followed explorers across the galaxy for the last four hundred years. Computer-driven projection imagery has filled starship crews' needs for provocative spaces and, with the addition of certain sport and recreational gear, provided an enjoyable model of reality. Various holographic optical and acoustic techniques were applied through the years, finally giving way to a series of breakthroughs in small forcefield and imaging devices that not only did not seriously impact starship mass and volume constraints, but actually nurtured hyperrealistic, flight-critical simulations. In the last thirty years, the starship Holodeck has come into its own.
The Holodeck also generates remarkably lifelike recreations of humanoids or other lifeforms. Such animated characters are composed of solid matter arranged by transporter- based replicators and manipulated by highly articulated computer driven tractor beams. The results are exceptionally realistic "puppets," which exhibit behaviors almost exactly like those of living beings, depending on software limits. Transporter - based matter replication is, of course, incapable of duplicating an actual living being. Objects created on the Holodeck that are pure holo - graphic images cannot be removed from the Holodeck, even if they appear to possess physical reality because of the focused force beam imagery. Objects created by replicator matter conversion do have physical reality and can indeed be removed from the Holodeck, even though they will no longer be under computer control. |
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The
Holodeck utilizes two main subsystems, the holo - graphic imagery subsystem and the matter
conversion sub - system. The holographic imagery subsection creates the realistic
background environments. The matter conversion subsystem creates physical
"props" from the starship's central raw matter supplies. Under normal
conditions, a participant in a Holodeck simulation should not be able to detect
differences between a real object and a simulated one.