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Holographic Tupac Shakur Performs Live With Snoop, Makes Star Wars Holo-Tech Look Stupid

Date: Apr 16, 2012 | Author: Josh Tyler | Category: Sci-Fi In Real Life

The future is now. Tupac Shakur has been dead since 1996, but that didn’t stop him from performing live on stage at the Coachella music festival Sunday night.

In the closing set of the three-day performance Tupac reportedly appeared, thanks to a state of the art hologram created by Dr. Dre and the same special effects company that created CGI versions of Brad Pitt for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Here’s Holo Tupac in action…

As you can see Holo Tupac appeared on stage, looking completely real, raised his arms and shouted, “What the fuck is up, Coachella?!” He then performed Shakur’s “Hail Mary” solo, and then did a duet on “Amerikaz Most Wanted” with a very not holographic Snoop Dogg. The audience reaction sounds pleasantly surprised, but unless they were expecting this, that seems almost like underplaying it. Shouldn’t have people been fainting or something? Did they know this wasn’t actually Tupac? How could they? It looks too real.

Dre apparently spared no expense on the special effect. Yahoo says the hologram cost somewhere in the low six figures to produce. Estimates seem to range from $100,000 – $400,000. Even if he paid a full half-million, I’d say Dre got his money’s worth.

I don’t think we’ve ever seen holographic technology used on this level before, at least outside of science fiction. This is Star Wars level technology we’re talking about here. Scratch that, it’s better. Those holographic broadcasts of the Emperor always looked a little grainy when he reached out to hassle Darth Vader. This made it look like Tupac was actually standing there on stage.

Here’s the best the Emperor could manage…

Weak. Even Princess Leia couldn’t do much better…

Holo Tupac wins. Hands down.

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Comments

  • Adam Ostrow

    TNG (& later) Holo-tech still better, when it doesn’t malfunction & try to kill you…

  • steve c.

    wonder how long it will take lucas to redo the star wars movie with the updated holographic display,and claim it was there all along?

  • GUEST

    It’s just an old magic trick dunn.  Hate to say but they used one of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper’s_ghost
    CGI and digital projectors have come a long, long way.  Unfourtubately in this part of the galaxy real holographic technology is strictly controled. We might only see around here it much, much further on in the future.
    In other words this tech has been around since the sixteenth century way before electricity existed.  Closest modern appliance to this is a television, which has been in use publicly this last century.

  • GUEST

    Or rather way before we harnessed electrical power for for sorage and utility.  It’s prbably the same game they used in star wars except now we have better image rendering tech.

  • GUEST

    SHIT is GUEST tho prpps.

  • http://www.facebook.com/briancmckinley Brian C McKinley

    Wow, absolutely breathtaking. I hope to see it put to other uses besides rap. But still wow. 

  • I__wright

    Since when did projecting on a scrim become a “hologram?”

  • Guy who likes Terra Nova

    There is a good explaination why the star wars holograms are not as good

    1.) The Emperor is transmitting his face over great distances of space.
    2.) R2D2 only comes standard with a 3 mega pixle holo recorder.

    Tupac was created over a period of time and not in live action comunications like the Emperor

  • http://www.facebook.com/jmcenanly James McEnanly

    In the Star Wars movies, the video look of the ‘holograms’ was to let the audiences in 1977 through 1983 know that these were recordings, and not actual people or ghosts. I am certain that when we have commonplace , real holographic transmissions, they will be to the Star Wars hologram what a smartphone is to the Star Trek communicator.