Commercial Halodeck Launched...

[James Morrow]

HP have demonstrated the future of AV collaboration, although the company’s Halo Studio is so advanced that executives are trying to shake off comparisons with other products in the videoconferencing market.

Requiring a dedicated room, each Halo room is equipped with studio quality audio and lighting, three plasma screens for remote viewing and another for sharing documents. With instant visual communication and clear sound over a 54Mbps T3 line, each room costs over US$500k to install, plus a monthly service charge of US$18k, it might sound expensive, but the CEOs of AMD and Dreamworks – who have been using the product for some time – declared that the ability to have impromptu meetings with colleagues and partners around the world was invaluable. It was Dreamworks need for high quality transatlantic AV communications that inspired the development of the product, and they have already seen a significant return on investment whilst using Halo in the development of Shrek 2.

See the March issues of PC Pro magazine for more details …

To HAV and HAV Not …
Naturally, the addition of a haptic communication channel would open up further possibilities, as would higher resolution and more immersive AV display and projection technologies. An upgrade to fully immersive hyperspectral systems would open up further applications, with three-dimension HAV ultimately including a full range of sensory inputs and allowing real-time interaction at great distances, with real, virtual or symbolic environments, in real, hyper-real or hypo-real time and space – or a combination thereof. Augmented reality allows man’s natural abilities to be dynamically remapped directly into novel environments and problem domains, singly or in teams – the members of which may all be in the same physical Halodeck or may be dispersed across a number of decks in remote locations …

Imaging …
Of course, one other minor advantage might be that, where a return transatlantic jumbo flight (no, not the elephant) will consume nearly 1,000 tons of fuel (enough to refuel around 20,000 typical cars) and potentially leave you with DVT and severe jetlag, twenty-four hours in the Halodeck only uses around half a Terabyte (500 Gigabytes) at most – and there’s no lag, provided you choose your interaction session [IS] times carefully …

…and then there are the potential risks involved in sending scores of flying fuel tanks carrying hundreds of tons of highly volatile aviation fuel at around 500mph over densely populated areas, day after day after day…

The Halodeck might be in the bargain basement at your local Telepresence R Us, and it’s not even fully immersive and three-dimensional – but at least it’s a start …