Is such a thing possible?

[Yukaphile]

Forgive me if this is the wrong section, I didn't know where to put it, but since I have Trek in mind, I figured this was appropriate.

I have a dream. A dream that one day, you can buy a CD or app (or the equivalent in that era), take it home, and boom! You can create something like TNG on your tablet or computer screen with CGI that's 100% realistic, the characters look as they should, and you can even distort your voice to sound like other characters', 100% without fail. If such a day were to come, it could revolutionize fan videos and of course the big corps would fear that.

I ask you... is such a thing possible?

[CharlesPhipps]

Well it's basically CGI and takes months and months of work.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Not anymore. Now we can do both at the same time. According to myth, the CGI was created in six months. Now watch out. Here comes Yuka's cgi app. We'll do it for you in six days.

[Deledrius]

I'm not sure what it is you're asking for. What does it mean to "create something like TNG"?

[LittleRaven]

I think he means 'make a television show' without requiring all the crap that television shows require...like actors, writers, stages, camera people, sound people, effects teams....the list goes on and on.

And the short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is...not in the world we know. Making a television show takes a whole lot of work from a whole lot of people - a single episode represents hundreds or even thousands of man hours. Automation can and will help with that, but I don't think you're going to see a world where one person can produce all of that on their own. And if by some chance you do...then we're all living in a world of super-intelligent AIs anyway and all bets are off the table.

[MissKittyFantastico]

I mean, theoretically, sure, I don't see why not. I didn't get around to upgrading my PC for like ten years after I got Diablo II (why would I, I had Diablo II) - when I finally did and got Mass Effect, it was rendering the kinda-looks-like-Jodie-Foster-in-Contact Shepard I'd custom built not five minutes earlier in real time to a higher standard than the pre-rendered D2 cutscenes Blizzard had had months to slave over. Whatever EA's up to now is probably way prettier as well, but after Inquisition's PC controls they can kiss my azure, so I dunno... For photorealism, for right now it's still cheaper to pay those fifty billion cubicle slaves whose names go by while you're waiting for the last ten seconds of a Marvel movie to put the finishing touches on the render farm's output than it is to make a program that can do it without human input, but the line's still moving and probably won't stop, at least until there's nobody around to develop new software because we've all been drafted into the Water Wars or whatever.

So yeah, sure, one day - if we make it that far, and alongside that kind of supercomputing upending pretty much everything in the same way an iPhone with 4G internet would look to someone out of the dark ages who's only kinda-sorta sure the village down the road actually exists - there could be software that'll be able to generate an episode of TNG that might've come straight out of the late-80s/early-90s no questions asked - libraries for sets, costumes, voices, actor body language and mannerisms, the real purists will probably even throw together some libraries of 'errors' that wouldn't have shown up in 1987 standard def tv, but we can see them now we're watching in HD. You'll probably be having to pay through the nose for a monthly license to use the software, plus all the libraries, or sneak around using future-torrenting pirated versions, or just still use a 2002 copy of photoshop you got from a friend at university purely hypothetically, shut up, but yeah, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. Hollywood won't be happy, but the day the software makers can get one more dollar out of general sales than they can keeping it limited to 'professionals', I'm sure they'll do it and laugh all the way to the future-bank.

And then someone'll make a 657-episode saga about Deanna Troi having a torrid affair with David Hasselhoff and Rainbow Dash in full 3D-mega-HD, and a lot of people will reflect that maybe Ian Malcolm had a point about not stopping to think whether we should. (Not that I can judge after I invented Mountor the elcor porn star.)

[Nealithi]

Possible? Yes.
Each technical hurdle in image processing gets defeated by creativity and more powerful processors and smoother programs.
Audio alteration is getting better as well.
Special effects and the like can and are done by computer.
Now out of the box. That is trickier. It can take a person a bit of a curve to relearn a change in a paint program. So you need to learn the controls for each bit you want to do. Assuming this is a program with open support like DAZ and, you may hate me, Second Life. Then you can purchase additional resources to get bodies, voices, and sets. Tweak them to taste for personal work and then set the whole thing to render out your show.


Probable? Far less likely and there would definitely be rules in the licensing not to make another licensed IP on the software. Because then the maker of the software can be held liable if you make your own Star Trek or Star Wars film. Just as examples.

[Zoinksberg]

Sure, it's quite possible in the not-too-distant future. Already several companies working on various components of this.

Now for the dark side. Remember Unification II when Sela was going to use a perfect hologram of Spock to convince Vulcan that the Romulan invasion fleet was a peace envoy? Picture the technology to do that very thing with real leaders, minus the holograms. The ability for someone to create a video of a president doing something impeachable? Or perhaps such a video is authentic but the technology exists that the person in it could plausibly deny its authenticity.

Your security camera clearly shows the face of the person who broke in and robbed your house. Their lawyer counters that the footage could have been faked. Does that provide the jury enough doubt to refuse to convict?

A college student in one dorm is using it to create his ultimate TOS fanfic, while the student in the next dorm over is using it to make a video of his ex-gf saying some awful things about her closest friends so he can post it online to get back at her for dumping him.

Oh this will be real one day. The ramifications will be pretty far reaching. Video will be just as untrustworthy as the written word. Corporations aren't the only ones who should fear that.

[technobabbler]

the first gen. Oculus VR is what the 1970's Motorola brick phone is to the iPhone today.

Given 30 years (to be conservative), I'd imagine you'd have something like a VR app doing exactly what you described. aka the VR visor that Capt. Ransom had in Equinoix.

VR meets Eve Online meets the Star Trek universe.

https://bgr.com/2018/12/18/nvidia-ai-fa ... cent-real/

[Deledrius]

Sure, it's quite possible in the not-too-distant future. Already several companies working on various components of this.

Now for the dark side. Remember Unification II when Sela was going to use a perfect hologram of Spock to convince Vulcan that the Romulan invasion fleet was a peace envoy? Picture the technology to do that very thing with real leaders, minus the holograms. The ability for someone to create a video of a president doing something impeachable? Or perhaps such a video is authentic but the technology exists that the person in it could plausibly deny its authenticity.

Your security camera clearly shows the face of the person who broke in and robbed your house. Their lawyer counters that the footage could have been faked. Does that provide the jury enough doubt to refuse to convict?

A college student in one dorm is using it to create his ultimate TOS fanfic, while the student in the next dorm over is using it to make a video of his ex-gf saying some awful things about her closest friends so he can post it online to get back at her for dumping him.

Oh this will be real one day. The ramifications will be pretty far reaching. Video will be just as untrustworthy as the written word. Corporations aren't the only ones who should fear that.

People can already do this, to various degrees of success (depending on how much reference material you have available and its quality).