Click US special Click - Short Edition

This is absolutely stunning.

You thought you knew virtual reality, well so did I.

Then I came to NASA's jet propulsion laboratory.

This is genuine images collected by the Mars Rover Curiosity,

and the Mars orbiter.

Over there, there is Curiosity.

Hello, old friend.

I can actually walk around the Mars Rover.

Look at this!

Destination Mars is opening soon as a tourist attraction

at the Kennedy Space Centre, but it is already a collaborative

experience that allows scientists to discuss the Red Planet

while standing on Mars.

Despite that view being very small at the moment,

it really does work.

With the HoloLens, there are no cables and no external sensors.

This thing knows where it is and which way you are looking

simply by the sensors that are in the headset,

and that means there are no restrictions,

which means I can keep walking over here, and walk all the way

up this hill.

Or if I really want, I can just disappear off this way

and carry on trekking across Mars.

Excuse me, everybody.

Carry on about your work.

I'm still on Mars!

In theory, that means if you have the data and know

what the landscape on Mars looks like 100 miles that way,

I could just keep walking!

HoloLens is actually an augmented or mixed virtual reality,

which means real objects and virtual ones can be mixed.

JPL is using it to take plans off the computer screen and think

about them in 3-D at full scale before anything is actually built.

We have to build this thing here on the ground,

and people have to get around it.

You have to be able to put your arm in and turn

a screwdriver, for example.

That is a time-consuming thing to check on a 2-D computer screen

at a smaller scale.

We can place pointers on the model, on the hologram, for example

if we want to talk about that antenna, I can place a pointer

there and you and I can both see it and everyone participating

in the session can see it.

These pointers really do get over the final drawback to the mixed

reality experience, the fact that you can't actually touch

the 3-D model.

I dare you not to imagine this changing our world.

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Mind equals blown.

This is stunning and I am totally buying into virtual reality.

But guess what, it gets even better.

In Salt Lake City, Mark Cieslak has been having a fight of his life.

In the shadow of Utah's peaks, cutting-edge virtual reality

is being developed.

Welcome to the Void, or to be more precise,

the research and development facility.

Just inside here is one possible future for virtual reality

technology.

The Void is a virtual reality experience that takes place

inside specially constructed sets.

Kitting up requires a backpack, chest rig, and headset.

What you see inside the headset, you feel and touch in

the real world.

Its creators call this setup hyperreality.

OK, so I'm in a temple.

I look up and I can see the stars, some ruins around me,

and if I reach out and touch the walls and feel them,

I can feel a throne in front of me.

I think myself and my other two cofounders really wanted to create

a holodeck, we are all Star Trek geeks.

Magic and illusion design, film production and television

production were in our background.

I can see flames rising up.

As I get closer to them, it gets hotter.

Sensors trigger heaters, which makes me think the stone bowl

in front of me has erupted in flames.

Over here I can see a torch.

Oh!

I can feel it is well.

I take it out of the hole in the wall, and I'm holding

in my hand what seems to be some kind of Aztec torch.

OK, so the headset again is prompting me to look for things

inside the environment.

To look around for clues as to where I have to go next.

The ability to explore wirelessly massively changes virtual reality.

One of the limiting factors of high-end virtual reality

in the home is that the headset still needs to be tethered

to a computer, which limits how far you can move from the computer.

The guys here have thought about that and cheated a little bit,

because the headset is still tethered to a computer,

but the computer lives in this backpack.

The rest of this rig is capable of doing a bunch of other things.

It is equipped with pads which trigger a physical feeling

when things are activated.

The door has just shattered in front of me, and across my chest it felt

as if the rocks from that door smashed into me.

The current generation of this kit does have its limitations.

There are definitely limits, going upstairs or climbing

We can't see the headset view for the next bit as it is a bit

scary for this time of day.

As I stepped into what I thought was a huge cavern, I was attacked

by a giant sea monster.

This is the effect it had on me.

Off camera, fans blast cold air at me, simulating a monstrous roar

that was awful!

I'm back in the real world, that was intense.

The team here have collaborated with the moviemakers behind

the new Ghostbusters film, creating an attraction

for Madame Tussaud's in New York.

But their ultimate goal is to create their own experience

centres, a bit like VR arcades, providing a host

of different virtual destructions.

Back in Los Angeles, I am looking at something very sexy.

It is sales data, some of the sexiest I've ever seen.

The more information feels like a physical object,

the more your brain goes to work and can easily understand it.

I am in the company of a man who has devoted his life to developing user

interfaces which turn data into visual things that our visual

brains can understand and analyse.

The idea is that you can spot patterns that you

wouldn't be able to.

That is exactly right.

The human visual system is amazingly good at seeing patterns.

We want to build large-scale interfaces to let people do that.

We are inside the data right now?

Inside someone's spending habits.

I've been in worse places.

This technology is already being used by large companies

to visualise information on data that is usually impossible to get.

The screens and animation are controlled by the wand,

which can spin, zoom and fly through it.

We can pull ourselves up to get a conference in view of the city.

It is very reminiscent of kind of interfaces featured in the movie

that has become a touchstone for this kind of thing,

Minority Report.

There is good reason for that.

John is the man who designed the user interfaces

in Minority Report.

I had been at MIT for many years and I was building

interfaces like this.

The production designer for Minority Report visited,

he said, I think this solves Stephen Spielberg's problem.

I moved out to Los Angeles, spent a year designing

the technical, architectural designs.

John's newest project is an operating system that

would allow different computer programmes to interact with each

other by moving the devices they are running on closer together.

The data is now flowing through the signals

in our analysis module.

It means any programme can talk to the other programme,

just like people.

Compatibility?

That is a rude word when it comes to technology.

It will be a brighter future, if it happens.

For years, Minority Report has been to go to vision of the future,

almost a cliche.

And yet, it is actually happening now.

That is it for this week, we will see you next week.

In the meantime, you know where we live on Twitter.