After Star Wars fans were treated to the news of a real lightsaber, fans of Star Trek can rejoice as well as they’ll get to experience the holographic world of the franchise soon enough!
Star Trek creator’s estate has announced a large-scale project involving the digital archive for the famous franchise. The Roddenberry Archive, not only aims to preserve the scripts, blueprints and studio designs but also has ambitious plans for designing a “fully immersive holographic installation” that recreates the Starship Enterprise. In simple words, the creator wants to make a Star Trek holodeck and give people an out-of-this-world experience.
For this project, the Roddenberry Archive has teamed up with Light Field Lab. In 2019, Light Field Lab produced a demo of a working holographic project in a small 4-by-6 inch space although it still has a long way to go before it can perfect the real-life size starship from Star Trek. And that’s not speaking metaphorically, the company founder himself has no clue when or if this project is going to develop into what they actually have in mind. But they’re still optimistic about the project and have told fans to keep holding on to the thought that they will get to experience the holographic Enterprise “one day”.
The company is still working hard and has already created a full-scale digital model of the starship using a mix of original studio models, reference designs and production blueprints and even building the areas of the starship that were not visible in the original TV series or films. The images shared by the Roddenberry Archive are an impressive work of art depicting Kirk’s famous starship. The project company has also partnered with OTOY, a cloud graphics firm to create 3D scans of props and design models from the Star Trek franchise so fans can experience the documents in a more interactive manner. This archive is a “multi-decade collaboration to collect and preserve Gene Roddenberry’s legacy”, according to The Roddenberry Estate and it will be some time before we get to see the final product.