Holograms (Stars Wars, Illusionist)?

Question

I just watched 'The Illusionist' last night and wondered about holograms. I have been fascinated with them since seeing Luke Skywalker with the distress holo of Leia and now 'The Illusionist'. Is it possible to create your own? Like a full figure human like in the 'The Illusionist'?

Answer 1

Yes, sort of. You need an screen between the viewer and the virtual image, though, using known techniques. That was absent in Star Wars, so you need to put it right along side the light saber and such in context.

In The illusionist, though, remember he was, well, an illusionist. He always displayed his holograms in dark buildings (even in the barn where he lured the prince to "murder"). This means he could have had assistants discretely lowering screens from the rafters. Regardless, the techniques he employed were well ahead of his time. That's why he was able to fool everyone.

Answer 2

The general idea behind making holograms is to use layers of transparent film, carefully distorted by laser light at different depths down in the layers, to give multiple angles of view of an imaged object.

Usually, two different lasers at two different positions in space are used to scan the subject.

The reflected laser light coming off the subject hits the layers of film, creating different ripples and contours in the different layers of film at different depths in the layers, depending on how the two laser beams interact. The beams' interaction depends on how far they have travelled after they leave the laser and bounce off the subject, so the illusion of "depth" that makes a hologram seem three dimensional is preserved.

When you look at the film, the ripples and contours in the film layers interact with the ordinary light bouncing off the holographic film and into your eye, and you "see" the image as it was seen by the scanning lasers.

In Star Trek, "holograms" are usually synthetic, material reconstructions of objects down to the molecular level, so not quite the same thing. In other sci-fi, a hologram is an image with no material medium, like a photograph without paper, but real holograms, like the anti-counterfeiting stickers on credit cards, have a plastic film that has been "developed" using laser light, rather than a chemical rinse like paper photographs.

You could make your own, but it would require special equipment... the lasers for one thing, and the right kind of plastic film. Furthermore, I haven't seen "true color" from holograms, they are always silvery, with a rainbow sheen from the light interference effects that give them their three-dimensional character.

Answer 3

That would be cool. Watch the Presteige. That would be cool to make holograms AND Tesla Coils. Try Google

Answer 4

I seriously doubt modern day people like us are open to that type of tech for creating such "Illusions" or any trickery of the sort. But who knows in 1o years we might all be on the moon.