Today's the day to go 'Back To The Future'!

For today's the day Marty McFly went to when he travelled forward in time in a modified DeLorean powered by rubbish to stop his own children's lives going drastically off the rails.

To anyone watching Back to the Future II when it came out in 1989, the world of October 21, 2015, seemed a heck of a long way off.

For the past few years people have been counting down to 'Back To The Future Day' and tens of thousands of people have 'liked' a Facebook group dedicated to it.

But what came true, and what's about as likely as using a lightning bolt to generate the 1.21 gigawatts needed to power a flux capacitor?

1. Biometric technology – Characters are seen opening doors and paying for goods by simply placing their fingerprints on a keypad. Well anybody who has an iPhone with a TouchID sensor will know how that technology is already with us.

2. Video glasses – Marty Junior wears video glasses to make and receive phone calls. But, frankly, that all seems a bit 20th century, especially when it's compared to Google Glass and more recently Facebook's Oculus Rift and Microsoft's HoloLens.

3. Flat-screen TVs mounted on walls – Back in the 1980s, the wall-mounted screens of Back To The Future seemed like the ultimate extension of this principle. Fast forward the VHS player 30 years, and they are the industry standard.

4. Hoverboard – One of these days somebody will rock up on Dragons' Den with a pitch for the technology which will make this a reality, but in the meantime it remains a pipe dream. The closest anybody has come is probably the Hendo Hover.

5. Flying cars – They have been pretty much a staple of every futuristic time-travel show since the 1950s. Prototype road-planes do exist that can be driven and flown – called The Terrafugia Transition and AeroMobil 3.0. But both are light years away.

6. Weather control – The idea of being able to control the weather has been around since it featured in The Avengers in the mid-1960s. Let's just say that if that technology was available, we wouldn't be moaning about yet another wash-out summer.

7. Video communication – In one scene in the McFly house of the future, we see the family having face-to-face conversations through their television set. A bit like video conferencing services such as FaceTime and Skype then.

8. Hands-free video games – When Marty visits an 80s-themed cafe, the youngsters are scornful when he plays a game called Wild Gunman. Well, hands-free gaming has been with us for some years, with PlayStation Eye, Xbox 360 and Kinect.

9. Tablet computers – Remember how Marty saved the clock tower by signing a hand-held tablet? A bit like the sort of devices that parcel couriers have been carrying for years. And way beyond the capabilities of the tablet computers we have today.

10. Food Hydrators – The McFlys happily tuck into a pizza made full size by the Black & Decker Hydrator. In a way, it is just a hi-tech extension of powdered egg and coffee whitener, but for some reason it has never really caught on.

When you think of Back to the Future, hoverboards inevitably spring to mind. In the film they are skateboards that floated without wheels, like miniature hovercraft only much cooler.

Marty McFly gets hold of a little girl's board to make his escape from some future bullies, triggering one of the film's best known and most iconic chase sequences.

In the movie they're made by the toy manufacturer Mattel (maker of Barbie and Hot Wheels). Something called a hoverboard does indeed exist, but it's basically a Segway without a handle. They're banned from the roads.

Car maker Lexus has, however, developed a real one. But it involves the use of magnets so it's not quite the great means of escape Marty would have needed.

Video glasses are one innovation that rings true today.

When Marty Junior sits down to eat dinner with the family, he complains that his video glasses only let him watch two TV channels at the same time. Meanwhile his sister wears a pair around her neck that light up with the word 'phone' when a call comes in.

Ever imagined what would happen if the Back to the Future DeLorean suffered a flat tyre in its journey through time?

Shropshire businessman Andy Lawrence did, and has now made a short film to capture the moment.

Mr Lawrence, who runs Shrewsbury-based mobile tyre service Hometyre, teamed up with a friend who runs a video production company to make a short movie in tribute to the classic film trilogy.

The film shows the DeLorean picking up a puncture on a car park in Walsall, and Hometyre technician Dave Morgan travelling back in time to help.

Mr Lawrence sourced a DeLorean car, complete with a Doc Brown lookalike behind the wheel, and recruited his two daughters Ella 14, and Sadie, 13, to operate the smoke machine and assist with the lighting.

Mr Lawrence said: "It's one of those memorable iconic films that people grew up with and most people who grew up in that era are fans.

Of course we already have the Google Glass, which does all of this and a lot more. Google stopped working on its prototype in January this year, however, but said it remains committed to producing other versions of the Glass. But at £990 each, they just made it look as though the wearer had more money than sense.

Of course, the Back to the Future films are dated by their view of the world – and the future – at the time they were made.

In 1989 a fax machine would have been the height of sophistication and a must for any self-respecting business person.

To emphasise just how fired Marty senior was, his boss sent him a fax that printed out on machines all over the home. This was an era when the internet was in its infancy, of course. But the same sequence also predicts, accurately, the rise of video conferencing.

Skype and Facetime have made it much easier to speak face to face from far away. Not that Marty senior will have appreciated that at the time, given what he was being told.

Power laces are another innovation that haven't quite become a reality. Forget Velcro.

When it comes to tying your trainers, the power lace is the only way to go if you're too lazy to do it yourself, but in too much of a hurry to do some exercise. It looked as though we might have to just chalk this one up to 'fantasy' but Nike refused to be beaten.

Designer Tinker Hatfield is working with a patent involving a weight sensor triggering a tying mechanism.

He already created 1,500 pairs in 2011 which sold online and raised millions of dollars towards the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, but they don't actually tie themselves in the way they do in the film. None of the makers of Back to the Future could have predicted just how sophisticated computers and gaming cosoles would be come October 2015.

In one iconic scene from the films, a kid in an 80s-themed café was about as disappointed with the Wild Gunman game as one who had just been handed a ball in a cup with string attached, exclaiming: "You mean you have to use your hands?"

The prediction of how computer games would turn out in 2015 was spot on thanks to the likes of the Xbox Kinect and its motion sensors.

Ironically, there is also a craze today for early games like PacMan and Space Invaders – all because gamers miss the hands-on experience.

Food is another rich source for the Back to the Future films, from the diners of yesteryear to the TV dinners of tomorrow. In one scene from Back to the Future II, Marty exclaims: "Boy, oh boy, mom you sure know how to hydrate a pizza."

Imagine bunging your dinner in your back pocket, then shoving it in a little oven not much bigger than a George Foreman grill and having it come out a perfectly formed, piping hot pizza.

Alas this final nail in the coffin of the concept of a home-cooked dinner is still little more than a product of the imagination, which is probably a good thing – although we do have Pot Noodles to enjoy in 2015.

And finally, the Back to the Future films' most iconic gadget is, of course, the flying car.

Anyone stuck on the M54 would fantasise of being able to escape skyward, but it will not happen any time soon.

There's a company in Woburn, Massachusetts, called Terrafugia that has been working on a design for a car that can take off vertically. But it's been in the design stage for a decade.

As a bit of a stop gap the company has a car with folding wings.