Apparently holographic jumps may be in our future. Call me a traditionalist but I’m digging in my heels already! Nope nope nope. Nooo thank you. Not even caring about the pros or cons yet, just seems wrong. Four legs good, two legs bad. No change. Na-uh. No siry Bob! And yes, I’m also against holographic Tupac. Sorry dude, nothing against your posthumous performance, but there’s something ooky about watching a dead man rap live.
Where’s all this coming from, you may ask? Why, from today’s guest submission- well, kinda. A new blog, Mi Caballa Esta Muy Loca!, invited me to use one of her posts as a guest blog but, of course, Google’s of the opinion that duplicated material should hurt your SEO. Sooo rather than copy and paste on over here, check out her post on Silly Popular Science and the potential future development of holographic jumps.
It’s ok, I’ll wait.
So what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Would you prefer to jump holograms rather than wood and plastic?
31 Comments
Hrm.
I’m really not sure.
First of all, how, with this system, do we tell the HORSE when it has hit the jump? A good jumper knows it shouldn’t hit poles and tries its best not to do so…and horses respond best to tactile feedback. An audible sound might work? Not sure there.
It WOULD reduce injuries and it would also allow course designers to do some very interesting stuff. I just am not sure the horses could be taught to respect the jumps properly
While it has the potential to reduce injuries to riders and horses for missed distances, I think it would desensitize the horses to the jumps–eventually, a smart horse will put two and two together, and realize that it doesn’t have to jump. My old trainer used to have a horse who could tell if a jump’s poles were PVC or wood on the approach–how, I don’t know. Inevitably, he’d whack the PVC because he knew the consequences were minimal; he’d become tidy over wood poles. On a course of mixed PVC and wood, he’d ONLY hit the PVC. This same horse also would be less careful depending on what type of boots he was wearing; the trainer had him in Professional’s Choice boots until he noticed the horse started to act like a one-equine wrecking ball, then swapped him to open fronts so he had to take note of the poles. My point is, while I inwardly cringe when a horse crashes a fence (I’m recalling the spooky horse, I believe in the initial round of showjumping in the Olympics, who crashed into the middle of the triple bar and the rider catapulted off), when a rider misses a distance and poles scatter, or when a horse grazes across a pretty unforgiving surface, they’re not stupid. If there’s no consequence for tapping an imaginary pole, they’ll eventually run through the whole course like it’s not even there…because it really isn’t!
My horse figured out the PVC thing, too. I tried riding PVC trot poles. My horse stepped on them. He broke two. It was then I was told that if he broke any more I would have to replace them. Now I only use wooden poles.
Hmm, I don’t know. I think to really make a decision I’d have to see such a course being ridden. So far though, I’m not completely crazy about the idea.
One, the danger is part of the sport. People already complain that it’s not a sport and shouldn’t be in the Olympics now, will it stay as an Olympic sport if the jumps are holographs?
Two, as people already said, horses will probably become less and less careful over these “jumps”, and may eventually just run around and NOT jump. Also, how easy would these jumps be to see? How about in bad weather? How often would the technology go awry? What if the ability to sense the horse went down on a jump, would what would we have the horse and rider do?
Three, call me traditional but there’s just something about seeing a real course.
Now, I’m not totally against the idea by any means. I think it could be really neat IF the technology comes to a point where it is consistent and reliable. It would need to be test driven many time in places other than the Olympics, which is an expense not many people can afford.
I don’t know a lot about holographs so excuse me if any of these cons wouldn’t be an issue.
*what would
*many times
Obviously these people do not understand how a horse’s vision works. I highly doubt they will be able to see this.
I think a combination of solid and holographic jumps could be quite cool. You’d still have the poles for the height and the ground pole, but the fillers and side decorations could be holographic. Even organises could save money like this and you could come up with pretty nifty ideas.
This way, they still have the chance to hit a physical pole, but with it being just one the risk of injury can be reduced, also there’s no nasty fillers to get hooves stuck.
This actually makes more sense, because I promise you that I haven’t ridden a horse yet that wouldn’t figure out that the jump was fake. I give it two jumps, maybe three, and the horse would be like, “Yo Mom, look! It’s not real! We can canter RIGHT THROUGH THEM!”
My mare likes to play warmblood urban assault vehicle when she believes the jumps aren’t big enough or interesting enough for her. I am pretty sure the holographic jumps would only work once…
And the ground crew would have to be radically re-trained in everyday things such as laser safety. And if the holographic projectors are located anywhere in the ring, they still might get stomped on, which would be big money.
As a scientist, I do love new technologies, but ideas like this seem like tech for tech’s sake…
LOL “warmblood urban assault vehicle” love it
I imagine her with a cannon and turret on top…and jumps crumbling beneath her
I hear ya. Mine jumps like a wrecking ball.
Ehh..I don’t like the idea.
Not MIGHT. I remember one year at one of the big horse trials they lost three cameras…they put this camera under the jump and it got taken out THREE TIMES.
Murphy’s law guarantees that the projectors would get taken out.
A holographic image is just light, right? I’m pretty sure I’ve only ever seen similar things work in darkened rooms. Will the hologram even be visible under direct sunlight?
I dont worry about the “respect” for the jump, but if horses can actually SEE the jumps! Their eyes and eye sight if very different from ours, so if they can even determine that it is a “brick wall” or just a projector off to the side.
Teaching the horse to jump it would be as simple and projecting over a normal real jump to teach the horse that they are in fact poles. They are talking about this for the larger jumping events, not your local backyard show…. these horses are not like horses most of us ride daily so it shouldn’t be hard to get them to jump….if we are smart enough to create holographic jumps, we are smart enough to teach a horse to jump over it!
I think if we turn up our noses at every concept we will never change our sport and this is what gets us stuck in being considered such a dangerous sport.
Exactly. A horse can only see 2D and need a 3D object for them to see. That holographic image may be too flat for their eyes.
Hmmm… I like the concept, but think it would need a lot of work, and rules might need some adjustment, especially for something like cross country where there’s no penalty for hitting a jump, as long as you get over it without injury. And holographic technology would have to get to the point that things look genuinely solid.
I like the idea litefoot gave of combining solid and holographic jumps – that way, there’s still something there to hit, but the dangers associated with hitting a jump are much reduced. There could be a single top rail and simple standards, or in the case of cross-country, the solid part could be something “soft” like a brush jump, combined with a hologram that makes it appear to be a log. There could also be ways of making it uncomfortable to “hit” a jump thus keep the horse from becoming desensitized, i.e., using something similar to an electric dog collar on the lower leg that produces a strong vibration or very mild shock. Such devices would have to be strictly regulated to prevent abuse, of course, but I could see it working if done properly.
Also, guys, I’m not sure where everyone is getting this “horses see in 2D” stuff, and how that translates into them not being able to see a 2D image. That is not how eyes work. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but their eyes behave the same way every other animal’s eyes do right? If horses could only see in “2D” they would have no depth perception whatsoever. Everything would look absolutely flat, and they wouldn’t be able to jump for squat. And an animal with no depth perception is soon an animal with no life. No, they do not have stereoscopic vision, which results in more accurate depth perception, but that is not the only way to turn a 2D image into a 3D image (which is exactly what our brains do. The image sent to our brains from our eyes is 2D). You can try it for yourself: Look at a TV screen or a photo: does everything look 2D? No. Now close one eye. Does everything suddenly look flat? No. Would you have a little more trouble judging distances in an unfamiliar environment? Maybe. It depends on the objects you’re looking at. But there are a multitude of other things that indicate how far away it is: how far the top and bottom are from the horizon line, how big/small it gets as you move towards and away from it, how quickly it gets big/small as you move towards/away from it, etc.
Now, a horse wouldn’t be able to look at a 2D image (those holographic jumps) and convert it into a 3D one in the same way we do (to us, the “rail” might look 4 or 5 inches thick, to them it would probably just look flat), but they should certainly be able to tell how far away that 2D image is – which is the important part – as long as it’s sufficiently opaque. After all, I’m sure if you strung up a giant piece of paper (about as close to 2D as you can get with a physical object) they’d be able to see it, figure out where it is, and not crash into it. And with a sufficiently well trained horse, they’d probably be able to jump it too.
No. Absolutely not. No.
Besides, are all facilities/trainers supposed to invest in the equipment for training?
The assumption is that holographic technology would improve to the point that the direct sunlight and vision issues would be resolved … and presumably be installed into a platform that would be within a reasonable budget and could survive being stomped on. As for the tactile feedback it shouldn’t be too hard to build that into a set of jumping boots that could give the horse a quick thump if they detect a collision between the leg and the jump, something that could even be adjusted on the basis of the horse. As someone who is thinking of ways to train a jumper at a barn with minimal facilities I like this idea a lot because it would give a lot of flexibility in course design. It isn’t necessarily the most serious use of a major upgrade to our technology but one of the things as tech gets cheaper people start putting it places they might not of thought before. I like the idea a lot
Somebody has too much time on their hands.
So the opportunity is lost to have that moment of suspense when you hit a pole, but it bounces in the cups & stays up?
The economy is so sucky right now, if any equestrian with half a brain has the funds to work on this kind of contraption, maybe they should consider using their lazers to develop a more simple sterilization process for horses….like a stun gun….so you can do drive-bys of Craigslist ad’s with mutated stallions up for “stud” and castrate them….
I’m sorry but no, no & no, keep technology out of the arena. How about memory foam arena’s for reining horses? Remote control cattle for team penners? Ask a barrel racer about holographic barrels…can’t reach out and hold a holographic barrel up to save your butt when you hit it!
Negative ghost rider…
I love that “stun gun” idea. Life would be much simpler.
Honestly I don’t see it working. A horse can only see in 2D and normal holographic images are 1D and therefore the horse would have a hard time seeing it. Also there are no rails to knock for point deductions etc.. So what if the horse runs through the jump is that a disqualification or point deduction? Not the animal’s fault for human stupidity. I prefer good old traditional wooden jumps. But that’s me.
Um, if this is such a great idea then why don’t we all have holographic pasture fences? Because the horses would walk right through them.
I didn’t read the article, but the idea sounds really stupid. From a practical point of view and from a horse’s point of view, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
at first i was thinking the same as everyone else. the horse won’t be able to see it, light issues, weather etc, how to get the horse to jump when they can run through, yadda yadda yadda.
then i remembered the modern pentathlon riders……
i wonder if we can set them up with holographic horses as well?
If events think the frangible pin system is too expensive, why would they invest in holograms for “safety”?
there would be no set up time for the jump. but how would you be able to tell if a horse nick a jump usally you hear the ping of a hoof…. and holgrams sound crazy! maybe they use them for track and field for humans…horses would figure out they can just run through them..i mean horses do it anyway but my horse would just haha ah no dont have to do more work then necerssary…..but maybe in other non horses related events….
I think this technology would be great for human sports like pole vaulting. Horses need to be able to feel hitting the pole to tell them to jump a bit higher next time or to tuck their legs in more.
Seems ok, but horses need the solid fences. When they hit them, they will learn to be morse careful next time. Otherwise, they will just learn to run through them.