3 ms·

The biggest thing I can think of that MS research delivered in the last few years is the kinect. They hinged a lot upon that being the next thing in gaming, but

by gottam 11y ago

The biggest thing I can think of that MS research delivered in the last few years is the kinect. They hinged a lot upon that being the next thing in gaming, but what is it now really? Their competitors aren't exactly in a rush to copy it... because once again, its a gimmick for a niche market. Now just look at VR on the other hand... there's many big companies investing in that and there's a lot of hype around it. Heck even Facebook is on board and Microsoft is nowhere to be seen. There's yet another technological revolution that they're missing out on.

WorldMaker 11y ago
The connective fabric is that Microsoft has always been investing in VR, or at least AR/Holograms: the Surface Table/PixelSense was a step towards physically touching digital spaces, the Kinect was a step towards physically touching digital spaces, the HoloLens will be a step towards physically touching digital spaces. All of those steps have learned from the past steps and build on sensors and software built for the previous step. (Crudely, the Kinect moved the table's sensors into a platform that could be attached to an Xbox and the HoloLens is now strapping those sensors to your face.) I don't think that Microsoft is missing out on the VR revolution: I think that all this time Microsoft has been trying to baby step/bootstrap their way towards some very cool things. I think it's useful to take a step back and appreciate the incremental/evolutionary approach Microsoft has been taking here. I still think it's kind of brilliant that MS/MSR was able to use gaming to commoditize the Kinect (what was a lab's worth of sensors is now available in every Wal-Mart for a reasonable cost).
- Seventhson74 11y ago
  Is anyone here aware of Hololens? I am not understanding why people are claiming ms is missing out on the vr revolution, unless you consider AR to be so wildly different that it doesn't qualify as similar?

by gottam 11y ago

WorldMaker 11y ago

The connective fabric is that Microsoft has always been investing in VR, or at least AR/Holograms: the Surface Table/PixelSense was a step towards physically touching digital spaces, the Kinect was a step towards physically touching digital spaces, the HoloLens will be a step towards physically touching digital spaces. All of those steps have learned from the past steps and build on sensors and software built for the previous step. (Crudely, the Kinect moved the table's sensors into a platform that could be attached to an Xbox and the HoloLens is now strapping those sensors to your face.) I don't think that Microsoft is missing out on the VR revolution: I think that all this time Microsoft has been trying to baby step/bootstrap their way towards some very cool things. I think it's useful to take a step back and appreciate the incremental/evolutionary approach Microsoft has been taking here. I still think it's kind of brilliant that MS/MSR was able to use gaming to commoditize the Kinect (what was a lab's worth of sensors is now available in every Wal-Mart for a reasonable cost).

Seventhson74 11y ago
Is anyone here aware of Hololens? I am not understanding why people are claiming ms is missing out on the vr revolution, unless you consider AR to be so wildly different that it doesn't qualify as similar?