In science fiction movies, a repeating trope is the virtual window. You’ve probably seen this: In some distant future, people living in a tiny apartment have a magnificent view, which turns out to be completely artificial.
Essentially, their window is a hologram, which creates the illusion that the apartment’s inhabitants are surrounded by nature. When in fact they are probably living five levels underground in an overcrowded future megalopolis.
I have long wondered when the technology will exist to implement such a window for real. A simple engineering analysis, which I conduct every few years, tells me that we are still far from being to make that virtual window a reality.
But such a thing is indeed theoretically possible, given the right future breakthroughs in micro-optics. I wonder if or when we will ever get there.