OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
The recent rewatching of Star Trek in a multitude of forms, including The Original Series, the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager have prompted a number of random questions, none of which really warrant their own thread, but which might stimulate some interesting conversation, nonetheless.
Of course, at the moment, all but the most recent escape me, though I'm sure the others will return to me, as well as new ones.
Tonight's random question comes courtesy of TNG: "Brothers"
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Shouldn't the Enterprise's main computer be able to deduce that if Captain Picard is giving orders from the main bridge, but Captain Picard is actually located in Main Engineering, then, ya know, maybe you should not automatically turn over command codes?
How much, if any, holistic deductive leeway does the Enterprise's (or any 24th century computer) have dealing with logical problems that should raise some very clear red flags?
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
Not as much as it did in S1.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Doesn't the computer usually locate a person by means of their comm badge? If so, it shouldn't necessarily assume that Picard's badge = Picard, particularly if it thinks there's an emergency.
Of course, one could argue that important commands like that should require some sort of biometric identification, not just voiceprint. After all, just on that one ship, there were at least two crew members who were able to take over by simulating the captain's voice.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
er...who's the second one? Wesley with his toy? Wes did not have that uber-long command code to go with his voice simulator.
It's a good point though- and a problem obviously not addressed untill at least DS9 were the bloody Cardies used the same sort of trick with O'brien's voice...to steal torpedos no less!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
I got a question about the Holodeck:
How does it simulate distance, as in if two people walk in start a program, then one person walks a couple dozen meters away, how does the holodeck make it look like the person is in the distance without them walking into a wall?
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Each user gets his own personal forcefield- and inertia manipulation field -based "treadmill" that provides the sensation of motion when the user is at standstill, or the sensation of immobility when the user is being whisked to a convenient corner of the holodeck.
Also, each user gets a holowalled "booth" erected around him or her, to fool his or her visual, aural and if need be olfactory and tactile senses.
It is then trivially easy to project the image of a departing user B on the booth of user A, and of a left-behind user A on the booth of user B.
A whole baseball field could then be simulated within one of Quark's holosuites. Or, as is more probable, within three of them, all integrated even if physically quite separate.
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Thanks for clearing that up. That's been buggin me for so long.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Probably the holodeck cuts corners wherever it can. It won't use the personal "booths" if there's enough room to actually provide physical distances. If the user is looking at a chair, it's probably just an image; if he sits on it, it becomes a forcefield construct with some rough texture where the user's buttocks rub on it; if he has a fetish about licking chairs, only then will the holodeck bother to replicate some realistic surface, complete with detailed texture, tastes and smells.
Also, pre-"11001001" Federation or Starfleet holodecks may have been less advanced in this respect, relying more extensively on distant holo-imagery and less on personal "booths".
posted
If nothing else, the old model holodecks were certanly less adept at keeping rocks from hitting the walls.
Registered: Mar 2004
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OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
What I still don't get is how the computer could possible adjust quickly enough for it to be a seamless transistion.
So, okay, these computers are infinitely faster than anything we can currently conceive of, but even they have a noticable render time when they replicate food or drinks in the replicator. If a person were to suddenly sit in a chair and then just as suddenly turn around and move to lick it, how could the computer possibly anticipate those actions fast enough to make it unnoticable?
If you were to go into a holodeck and knew which items were fully replicated and which were image projection, would you be able to discover a crack in the illusion if you ran around as fast as you could, touching as many things as you could?
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
It could be a proximity thing. The closer an object is to you, the more complex the modeling so that anything whithin reach is highly detailed while everything outside that perimeter is just a visual. As you move the focus shifts with you so that everything outside a 5'circle around you is just a hologram.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Also, Starfleet gear probably represents the bottom of the barrel: the military has never appreciated the latest in entertainment electronics...
The food replicators and transporters need not have accelerators, silencers and other doohickeys, so they don't have those. The holodeck needs those for a convincing illusion. And somebody like "Ardra" needs even better gear so that the illusion can be created on location... It's all doable with UFP technology, but Starfleet sees no point in doing it just for Earl Grey's sake.
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