We demonstrated a number of exciting new scenarios, made possible through HoloLens powered by Windows 10. Among other things, we announced that for the very first time, we would provide an opportunity for thousands of developers at Build to experience our hardware.
So far, the feedback we have received has been pretty incredible and the possibilities that we asked people to imagine are coming to life. The era of holographic computing is here and today I’m honored to share more information about our HoloLens hardware and how it works to make holograms real.
Awesome stuff. Yesterday at Build, they demonstrated how regular Windows 10 universal applications load up just fine inside HoloLens, with ‘windows’ that you can move around and place around your environment. Pretty neat.
You remember how awesome those Project Natal demos were, don’t you? And then they released Kinect 1.0 …
There are no holograms there. Holographic computing would be a breaking technology.
But, speaking about the video of this article: you would be able to watch the images seen in that video… only if you wore a headset, and you would see them drawn in the screen of the headset. And this technology has been going since years ago.
> “The era of holographic computing is here”
This is not holographic. There are no holograms there. That is false advertising. Why are they been trusted? Have people learned nothing?
Edited 2015-04-30 21:16 UTC
I think that’s the second oldest question in the world, right below what’s the meaning of life.
Neat! What’s it called? Where can I buy it? Is it affordable? What applications / types of usage does it support?
Some call them “virtual reality headsets”, some call it “augmented reality”, “head-mounted displays”, “mixed reality”, etc. But not holograms, which are a entire different technology, and would be a radical advance.
People have seen similar products developed and/or sold by Samsung (Samsung Gear VR), HTC (HTC Vive), Sony (Morpheus), Oculus Rift, Valve, Sega, etc. for plane pilots, car drivers (the Mini company has shown its headsets), video gamers, etc. There is information from a product from 1994: http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/issue21/flooks/vfx1.html
Those are recent news:
http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/29/unreal-engine-4-htc-vr-support/
Edited 2015-05-01 16:48 UTC
There are more recent news, with a lot of information:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/05/augmented-real…
Anyone know when this device will be out? Having played with the Oculus DK2 I can’t wait to try a device that overlays the output on top of the real world.
Also, anyone know what resolution its display uses? The DK2’s biggest problem in my opinion is that its 1080p resolution simply isn’t high enough for a clear picture when it covers your entire field of vision.
P.S. while it sounds fancy to draw the redirection surface of any Windows app onto the real world, I really hope someone comes up with far more cool things to render in real 3D. An app needs to be built specifically for this device before it really becomes interesting in my opinion.
dpJudas,
I agree, it’s pretty pointless to keep a screen a few cm in front of your eyes if your just going to be running generic apps. Augmented reality could be useful with the right applications though.
Apps in the classroom where multimedia aids show up beside experiments in a lab, to show the molecules interacting in a chemical reaction, or show calculations updated in real time right next to an experiment. Or even let elementary students tap on words to look up their meanings.
Maybe in industry / carpentry / engineering there could be digital yardstick apps that can take real world measurements in real time, displaying them immediately and recording them for future use. Solve the age old problem of installing picture frames in the perfect spot.
For shopping, it could be used to render instore items into the room. Say a fan, light fixture, bed, shelves, etc. Maybe you can dress up a virtual manikin of yourself with clothes you find at the store.
For cheap & local vacations, it might be able to let you experience distance places you otherwise wouldn’t get to experience.
Surgery, a dentist/doctor can zoom in and superimpose xrays on your body while performing an operation.
At sporting events, concerts, or plays, see different angles & close up shots in real time.
The real driver of course will be the porn apps. No need to elaborate…
In all these cases I could see the potential for being genuinely useful, at least if it wasn’t so clumsy and awkward. People today already complain that cell phones are bad enough, this would be much worse. And what would be the point of being somewhere in person, ie a sporting event, if your just going to experience it using a helmet? At some point one might as well do away with the augmented reality portion and just do full virtual reality back home. After all, if all your friends are wearing a similar helmet, then you might as well just interact with them virtually instead of in person.
The main use I can immediately see for this device is any kind of 3D editing, viewing or gaming.
I’m not so sure I see much point of using it socially with others – such uses seem as pointless as Google Glass to me.
As for just going full VR I think that’s a completely different use case. The main drawback of the Oculus is that once you wear it you are pretty much stuck in location. I imagine this device to be far more interesting for editing things in say 3D Studio Max.
Hi,
Most of your examples assume a shared experience – e.g. anyone can create a “hologram” that everyone else sees. Creating that shared experience (and the security implications) is a technical challenge that I don’t think HoloLens solves (I think people using different computers see different/separate augmented realities that are not shared).
– Brendan
Currently you can take your phone out of your pocket and install Metaio SDK or Vuforia demo apps on it and see for yourself how 3D assets are laid out over real world coming from the camera. MS HoloLens simply puts the phone screen in front of your eyes, projects whatever you want on the screen and thats about it. Of course having the glasses on leaves your hands free to be tracked by MS Kinetic and adding the manipulation part which is mostly missing on the phone app. In addition there is probably some clever algorithms used to track your surroundings for better “projection” to make you believe that the 3D asset is truly sticked on the wall even if you move from one room to the next.
The current AR solutions have an array of “markers” and the AR works by actively searching for the predefined markers and once detected, the 3D asset is rendered relative to the marker.
So the AR on the phone is the reality today and the glasses concept is welcome (Google tried it though with their Google Glass and failed) so lets see how the crowd accepts the concept.
Regarding the use. Yes the video watching is probably the worst possible use for it but for example some geo hiding game sorta thing would be much cooler. No need to play behind a conputer anymore.
But please stop calling this a holographic solution. Its nothing but augmented reality.
Edited 2015-05-01 21:23 UTC