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Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles
- joezydeco 12y agoThat's pretty evil/clever of them to throw Minecraft into their marketing images.
- _random_ 12y agoThey have a vision, Minecraft was fitting that vision. So they consumed it. It was smart. Project Spark makes more sense now as well.
- mynameisvlad 12y agoApparently one of the demo experiences is HoloLens Minecraft, so it's not really evil/clever but actually what it can be used for.
- freehunter 12y agoIt seriously took me several minutes to realize this wasn't a joke. Even Peter Bright on the Ars live blog had to stop and say "wat".
- kemayo 12y agoThe name doesn't quite sound right, which triggered the same response in me.
- mattmurdog 12y agoProbably because it's more AR than Holo. But meh, still wicked cool.
- mnglkhn2 12y agoNow it makes sense that Google just announced that they're stopping Glass from being sold retail. They did not want to have their device compared to the new product from MS. Actually I see this new device as more prone to success than the Glass. These devices are competing for the same markets: healthcare, education and entertainment. And here Glass is somewhat underpowered.
- psbp 12y agoGoogle's response would presumably be their partnership with Magic Leap.
- _random_ 12y ago1 year to product announcement, but the whole retina-projection thing might be game changing.
- crucialfelix 12y agoI met a guy in 1998 who had done his Ph.D building full color direct to retina projection. He was doing VR with it back then. That's how long this technology has been in development. He did it at MIT and if I understood correctly, the US military bought everything (he had no say in the matter).
- higherpurpose 12y ago"holographic", "cinematic reality" - all just words used to describe augmented reality.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- cma 12y agoDo any of the Google Ventures investments ever have partnership terms, or cross licensing?
- sz4kerto 12y agoKey feature: see-through glasses. The eye strain was a major problem with Google Glass, that's not present here.
- _random_ 12y agoYes, and Oculus Rift is now less relevant as well (good timing for selling it to Facebook). Why buy a dedicated heavy wired non-see-throw helmet? To shit yourself when someone is tapping your shoulder?
- watty 12y agoTo get fully immersed in another world. For example, playing games or watching a movie. I go to an IMAX theatre because it engulfs my senses, audio all around me, most of my field of view watching the screen. If the screen were translucent it simply wouldn't be the same. This will no doubt have some incredible applications, most of which augment reality. Not quite the same goal as Occulus.
- publicfig 12y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but couldn't Microsoft just release (or ship this product with) a sort of blinder to put around these glasses to make the dedicated sight come from the glasses themselves while darkening everything else?
- ryandvm 12y agoOr just turn out the lights.
- hirsin 12y agoIf the speculation about creating opaque holograms is correct, you can just use a virtual blinder as well - a black hologram that obscures or creates a virtual stage.
- bentcorner 12y ago
- admyral 12y agoThe future is here.
- r109 12y agoholographic nipples everywhere
- Animats 12y agoIs it really "holographic", or just stereoscopic?
- jayrox 12y agothe demo looked very holographic
- sp332 12y agoIt's "augmented reality", so multiple people can walk around and see the display from all angles at the same time. So it's beyond stereoscopic, but it's not a traditional hologram. (It's much better than the Tupac "hologram" which was a single 2D image!)
- carapace 12y agoIt works by stereoscopy. There maybe something "holographic" in the math used to compute what to show each eye, but there is no projection of light into space to form holographic images that people can walk around.
- jameshart 12y agoNor is there with holograms. Holography requires creation of light fields from a flat surface - each point on the surface reflects a different amount of light depending on what angle it is viewed from, exactly mimicking the way light would pass through that plane if an object were there. No 'projection of light into space' is involved. Since images are formed on your retina by focusing real lightfields, a true holographic display which produced a complete lightfield would be much more realistic and comfortable to view than a flat stereoscopic image is.
- carapace 12y agoI don't know enough about holography to agree or disagree, I was under the impression that the "lightfield" has a 3D structure that e.g. the light coming from a movie screen doesn't. In any event I don't think that the "holographic" goggles are actually projecting a complete lightfield. I'm pretty sure they just shine two more-or-less normal images into your eyes although the math to compute those images might, uh, be holographic.
- baby 12y agoIt was demoed just right now here: http://news.microsoft.com/windows10story/ http://news.microsoft.com/windows10story/ It looks really really really impressive! It's a see through pair of glasses so not like Occulus and they said they invented a new technology: HPU. The glasses will have their own GPU, CPU and HPU and will be wireless.
- KeytarHero 12y agoHPU isn't really much of a "new technology". It's just a custom coprocessor, not all that different from the motion coprocessor in the iPhone (except designed for video processing, so presumably a lot more powerful).
- trsohmers 12y agoExcept Apple's motion coprocessor is just an ARM Cortex M3 microcontroller...
- daemonk 12y agoIt starts around 1:37 Live demo starts around 1:53
- darkmighty 12y agoAny information on whether it truly is holographic? For me this is only satisfied if it has: 1) binocular disparity, 2) accomodation, i.e. it reproduces a light field like a real hologram does.
- fenaer 12y agoWhat sort of use case is this for? The demos talked about in the article seem rather specific. I don't see how this will appeal to mass consumers.
- josephpmay 12y agoTen years ago, I would have said the same thing about a consumer smartphone.
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- pconner 12y agoBoth portable cell phones and PDAs existed 10 years ago. The smartphone was a logical extension of those paradigms. AR Glasses (for lack of a better term) are still very young.
- icebraining 12y agoTen years ago, HTC had phones with touchscreen, WiFi, camera, installable apps and miniSD support.
- bentcorner 12y agoI'd imagine that the target is a replacement of the PC. You could (theoretically) have the same utility as a PC with a wireless keyboard/mouse paired with the headset. On top of that is all the holographic applications that will be figured out.
- dvcc 12y agoI know this is the future, and I feel somewhat weird in saying this but I am not quite happy. I feel like technology is coming to replace the physical world instead of augment and improve on our actual experiences. Either way it's some awesome work that was done.
- freehunter 12y agoThis is 100% designed to augment our actual experiences. That's why they said "this is not VR". It's putting digital objects in the real world. That's augmenting actual experiences.
- ramidarigaz 12y agoThis discussion is happening quite often in the VR world. Essentially the accepted opinion is that 1) AR is harder than VR and 2) solving the problems that VR has will get us closer to usable AR
- brosky117 12y agoWhat are your thoughts about this? I'll tell you mine. I just watched Google slowly, painfully, realize that Google Glass isn't commercially viable (in it's current form and to the general public). I can't help but feel that this is a larger, albeit more immersive, version of Google Glass. I only make this point in regards to any plans for a sci-fi, everyday wearable HUD. There is obviously a great demand for this kind of immersion within the gaming community (although I would argue that Oculus will have market control for the forseeable future). My opinion is that the kind of augmented reality that we all dream of, that sort of matrix-like constant data download, won't become a reality until someone figures out how to take it (visibly) out of human interaction, i.e. with smart contacts, etc. The current tech is just too intrusive in normal human interaction. My understanding is that this kind of tech is still a long way off. I'd love to be wrong though!
- josefresco 12y agoI think this product hits the sweet spot between the Oculus which covers/masks your eyes completely and Google Glass which had a relatively "small" and non immersive screen. The glass front allows these holograms to appear more naturally to the user all the while still being aware of your surroundings. The real challenge is not the hardware, but the software and "experiences".
- dewiz 12y agoWhat I find interesting is Microsoft launching this technology just after Google dropped it. I think the focus on business is the right way to go in this case, not everything can start from the consumer, e.g. look at how PC started from a geeky thing for scientists and is now in our pockets and wrists.
- guardian5x 12y agoI didn't know Google Glass combined a 3D Camera with full augmented reality vision.
- tjbarbour 12y agoI think this is all about how it's showcased. Google Glass was to be used in personal interactions and that put a social barrier in the way of what was some cool technology. It seems that it was way too awkward to be 'glassing' in public no matter how useful or cool the technology was. HoloLens is pitched to be used in the home and in the workplace, where you can comfortably immerse yourself in that experience without the social implications. This allows the technology to be judged on its own without mixing in the social implications. I have high hopes for this, at least its a very different experience than what most others are doing (though its obviously taking cues from VR, augmented reality/Google glass etc.) I agree for this to get 'really big' the form factor has to be a lot more portable, but this is a great stop-gap.
- gavanwoolery 12y agoVideo of it in action here (?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiTfdqCUIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIiTfdqCUIY
- rndn 12y agoHere is the product website with three promo videos on it: http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us
- GrantS 12y agoIt's interesting how they go out of their way to describe this as NOT augmented reality when... that's exactly what it is. The only time the term appears on the product page is here: "Microsoft HoloLens goes beyond augmented reality and virtual reality by enabling you to interact with three-dimensional holograms blended with your real world. " I understand the marketing reasons for this, but contrast this with the fact that Oculus embraces the term "virtual reality" despite the baggage that comes with it and the fact that they can't trademark it. I guess AR never caught the public imagination like VR did.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoAR is traditionally a 2D projection on 3D space. This is a 3D projection that you interact with. Sure, its still AR on some level, but I think differentiating the product makes a lot of sense. My idea of AR is a boring HUD-like system that fits in with things like flying fighter jets. This holographic projection is different and notably so. MS could find the middle ground between lush 3D VR-like environments and the real world. I find things like the Oculus and other HMDs to be terribly claustrophobic and dizzying. Not to mention really asocial. I don't want to mount a tissue-box size thing to my face that removes the real world. I'd prefer having the real world still here with the digital world tied to it. There just seems to be something wrong with giving software my entire field of view. I don't want to stare into the same Unity3D generated environments. I want to augment my real world life, not replace it.
- plingamp 12y agoHow is this different than the Meta AR glasses? I have a pair, and I think they did a great job with the display and interaction.
- angersock 12y agoHey, did those end up being any good? I wanted to buy some to develop on, but they didn't really seem to have their act together.
- plingamp 12y agoI think they have potential, they are very clunky right now. But they have most of the same features at the Microsoft ones. It was really cool to "touch" a 3d object.
- sand500 12y agoI tried some out at a hackathon and they look cool, the technology still has a long way to go. The resolution and display quality is pretty shitty.
- Metaglasses 12y agoHey! We're having our first Meta AR Hackathon in SF Feb 20th-21st. Come and hack on our Meta Glasses! Register here - goo.gl/b6BIWN
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- jfoster 12y agoThey were the first thing I thought of when I saw this. Seems a direct competitor with Meta more than it is with Google Glass.
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- angersock 12y agoThis is really cool, but I'm kind of wondering when Microsoft will cancel the project. Because, you know, that's what they do.
- be5invis 12y agoIt will definitely stamp its name on the page of history.
- saosebastiao 12y agoI might be ignoring something, but this appears to be the first ahead-of-the-pack innovation from Microsoft that I've seen in at least 20 years. Congrats to them.
- Coincoin 12y agoKinect was pretty surprising too, especially at that price point. EDIT: Granted they didn't develop 100% of the tech themselves, but still: depth perception, human skeleton recognition, in real time, on a crappy 360, for 150$? That was impressive.
- eps 12y agoSame guy behind this and the Kinect project though - Alex Kipman.
- mortenjorck 12y agoSo many questions. I can understand light reflecting into the eye from a microdisplay (using the same principle as a car HUD), but are they actually creating opaque imagery as well? How is that physically possible? Then there's 3D spatial interaction: In my experience with Leap Motion, Kinect, and other competing tech, the level of accuracy still limits interactions to broad gestures. If they've made a big enough leap in this domain to enable precise object manipulation, that's a major achievement on its own.
- devindotcom 12y agoAs I understand it, the light is not merely being projected or reflected, but dispersed on a coordinate system, so the display actually illuminates where it was transparent before. That would interfere with natural light coming through (it's tinted as well) allowing the 'hologram' to obscure the real world. I could be wrong, though.
- mortenjorck 12y agoUnless there is some curious property of light I don't understand (and given my perplexity at radial polarization, there may well be), there's no way that external light coming into the glasses can be diminished by internal light emitted by the glasses. For instance, if you're looking at a white wall in the real world, there's no way to render a black shape in front of it. You can only add luminance to it, in the same way a video projector can only add luminance to the screen it's projecting an image onto.
- wlesieutre 12y agoThis is correct. That's a big part of what Magic Leap is supposedly working on, being able to black out the background so that objects don't have the ghostly hologram look.
- devindotcom 12y agoCertainly you can only add luminance, but consider that the goggles themselves are tinted, and the brightness of a display an inch from your eye will likely be far higher than the light bouncing off the wall. So while you can't "render" black, you should be able to simulate the darker part of the spectrum using negative space. That's not ideal, of course, but it's something.
- mentos 12y agoWhat is the killer app that will get people to go out and buy these? I don't think Holo Studio is it. Where is your imagination racing to?
- jobu 12y ago"I sculpt a virtual toy (a fluorescent green snowman) that I can then produce with a 3-D printer." This sounds amazing! She didn't go into a ton of details on this, so I wonder if it's as cool as I imagine. If done well it could be a game changer for 3D printing (and a "killer app" for many families).
- dlp211 12y agoThey designed and printed a working quad copter. So there's that.
- Finster 12y agoAfter seeing that Autodesk is finally iterating on some of their software to support the rapid protoyping/3D printing community in major ways, I'd like to see what kinds of tools Autodesk could come up with. I see Holo Studio as the MS Paint of "Holographic computing" or whatever we're calling it now. Is that a killer app, I guess not, but if this HoloLens device is really running Windows 10, and the API's are baked into the OS, that puts it MILES ahead of where Google Glass was, and developers will be able to do something more interesting than take photos and share them on Google+.
- rasz_pl 12y agoSculpting in Virtual Reality : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnqFdSa5p7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnqFdSa5p7w
- jwcooper 12y agoDepending on the resolution, it could replace your monitors at work (assuming the headset is light, comfortable, etc). Using a wireless keyboard and mouse, you'd have your computer with you anywhere in the home or office. As a developer, having a wall of holographic desktop screen space in front of me would be amazing. My home office would look much better too! I have no idea how far away this version of HoloLens is from that reality though.
- calebm 12y agoThis looks just like Magic Leap.
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- benmorris 12y agoWell I'm impressed. I wasn't initially in the stock promo videos but once she put the actual device on and you could see the quality of the hologram, the spatial tracking, etc, pretty impressive. We're also not getting a feel for the sound system built into it. They mentioned in the demo the sound is also projected virtually from where the hologram is located. I'm curious what the price tag will be? Battery life?
- devindotcom 12y agoApparently there will be both consumer and enterprise pricing, whatever that means. I'm guessing $500 to start at consumer level with lower resolution, less battery life, etc. Twice that for Holo Pro. Sound is easy enough - a pair of decent headphones can produce fairly decent 3D sound, and combined with the illusion of depth provided to your visual system, I suspect it will be extremely convincing.
- CmonDev 12y agoShould cost at least like kinnect and oculus combined.
- hirsin 12y agoI'd assume for sound that it doesn't use headphones so much as bone conduction so that it doesn't get in the way of natural sounds. From the design, it seems that there's some kind of device-skull contact most of the way around.
- vesinisa 12y agoFrom the Q&A session that followed: Q: Will HoloLens be priced as a consumer product? Nadella: It'll be priced for both enterprise and consumers to use it.
- mynameisvlad 12y agoThe craziest part about this is that they were embargoed for four months.
- vxNsr 12y agoYeah, I'd guess that someone leaked to wired accidentally or on purpose (but the person wasn't cleared to leak) and to keep any info from getting out they gave Wired an exclusive on condition that Wired keep it's mouth shut until today.
- arcticfox 12y agoIt was almost certainly just an embargo in exchange for exclusivity until launch.
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- pearle 12y agoThey're calling it "HoloLens".
- coldcode 12y agoUnlike the usual meme, in this case the goggles do something. Be interesting to actually try one.
- billconan 12y agoI wonder why they didn't demo an outdoor use case. I'm curious if this technology is closer to oculus rift than to google glass. I'm thinking maybe they use a front-facing camera to capture the scene and render the 3D stuff on top of the camera view? a user simply sees the composite scene via a display similar to oculus rift.
- donniefitz2 12y agoI'm pretty sure he said in the demo that it did not use a camera.
- billconan 12y agoseeing something like this without knowing how it works drives me crazy!
- zith 12y agoMaybe the tracking of hands for the controls do not work outside. At least with the kinect, the IR projection that it depends on to map the 3d space will not work well (or at all) in direct sunlight. When I was working with robotics that had kinects mounted for 3d vision we always had to put the blinds down when the sun was shining into the office.
- arcticfox 12y agoThey're translucent lenses. They presumably use the mounted cameras to map the world, but they don't use them to actually display the world to you.
- mahyarm 12y agoWhat is the resolution of the device? I really doubt it will be as HD as the promo video that they created.
- dlp211 12y agoIn the live demo it wasn't has high, but it was still really good.
- taeric 12y agoWhy do I get the feeling this is more akin to the trailer to a movie. One that I really really want to like. And with decent editing to fit in a small demo looks bloody awesome. But on arrival will mostly just be boring. I also feel that the videos give a very misleading sense of what it will look like to see someone using something like this. Unless, I suppose, they have worked out the "shared" experience would be like. (That is, two of these in the same room.)
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- aquark 12y agoIt looks impressive, but it would help to be able to tell the hype from reality: "Sensors flood the device with terabytes of data every second" ... somehow I doubt the aggregate bandwidth of the device is > 1TB\s Makes it harder to know how much of the rest of the 'explanations' are accurate.
- nsxwolf 12y agoCould the sensors be indeed flooding the device with terabytes of data, but the device can only sample that data at a more reasonable rate?
- snops 12y agoTo give an example, a raw 4K stream at 12 bit is about 500MB/s, so unless it has 2000 4K cameras, unlikely.
- AaronFriel 12y agoI think you forgot to multiply by a frame rate, otherwise you don't have a "per second" unit. At 60fps, it's 29.66 GiB/s.
- semi-extrinsic 12y agoWell, from that perspective, an analog temperature sensor is flooding your ADC with infinite GB/s. For further comparison: the fastest CPUs you can get nowadays have an aggregated memory bandwidth of ~ 90 GB/s using four lanes.
- 8note 12y agoif you have enough pins, a custom asic can do just about whatever you want. the data flowing into the HPU is likely huge, but it is processed down into something the CPU can deal with.
- semi-extrinsic 12y ago
- AndrewKemendo 12y agoI think Microsoft re-branding Augmented reality as "holographic" is hugely impactful and, with the new wave of AR and CV products that are coming onto the market [1] might be the thing that makes people take it seriously. It's just so much easier to explain to people what it is if you say Holographic vs Augmented Reality - even though it is technically wrong. Kudos to MSFT for making that leap. [1] Shameless plug for (http://www.visidraft.com http://www.visidraft.com), my AR CAD company.
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago>even though it is technically wrong. Pretty much everything in this space is incorrect on some level. People casually call the Oculus "VR" when its just a HMD. The VR is going to be the software that works with the HMD. This is like calling a joystick a game. Personally, I like the hologram branding. Its like the Star Trek holodeck, which invokes a really neat sense of futurism.
- woodman 12y ago> People casually call the Oculus "VR"... What people? Things I've never heard anybody say: "Can you hand me my Oculus air quotes VR?" "Dude, I spilled deer urine all over my Oculus virtual reality!" I can imagine a northern european saying it in english, but those guys kind of sound like lolcats anyway: "Sven, can I has Oculus virtual reality?" Personally, I dislike the hologram branding - yet another corruption to spread confusion. I understand the motive, I just don't like it.
- Gurkenmaster 12y agoOculus VR is the name of the company. Oculus Rift is the name of the product.
- beloch 12y agoIt makes no sense at all if you think of an actual hologram, but makes perfect sense if you think of a Star Trek hologram. This is like a wearable holodeck. Just add a haptic body suit (no doubt in the works)!
- beloch 12y agoVR is going to be a real game-changer for entertainment, but it's AR that's going to change how we work and live our everyday lives. The key to making VR work is reducing lag, but this is even more important for AR, which carries additional complexity in sensing and blending the virtual with the real. The difficulty of sensing and correctly modelling the real world in real-time is immense. There aren't many companies I'd believe could make the leap directly to functional, useful AR, but MS's experience in gaming, with the Kinect, gives them a huge head-start. This could be the real deal!
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago>VR is going to be a real game-changer for entertainment I think the jury is still very much out on this. Personally, I hate VR. Its claustrophobic, asocial, dizzying, and I do not like the idea of giving software my entire field of view either. Cheap HMDs are going to be nice, but I don't know how well they're going to do outside the hardcore gamer demographic. I can't imagine watching a movie with friends with each of us wearing these things or even playing a console game with the other players in the room. AR gaming, on the other hand, isn't something that gets much press, but I can really see some novel uses. Imagine playing something like "Gone Home" but in your home. Clues hidden in your real-life closets, drawers, etc. Or peering into the mirror in your bathroom and seeing the main characters face instead of yours. Or something in the background that's not really there.
- wlesieutre 12y agoI wouldn't watch a movie in the same room as friends with a HMD, but I could watch a movie with someone in a "virtual theater" when they're 1000 miles away. I don't think we should write it off so quickly; it's like saying "Text messages are pointless, they don't carry inflections and emotion like phone calls. I can't see myself texting anyone." There are things you can do in real life but not in VR and there are things you can do with VR that you can't do in real life.
- discardorama 12y agoI tuned out when I read this: "Sensors flood the device with terabytes of data every second, all managed with an onboard CPU, GPU and first-of-its-kind HPU (holographic processing unit)." I'm sorry, but there is no wearable device which can handle terabytes of data per second. Heck, my brand new Haswell has a peak memory bandwidth of 17GB/s; even to the L1 cache, its theoretical max is 700GB/s. This sounds like a puff PR piece.
- arcticfox 12y agoMaybe the article is, but the product isn't puff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCCXZ8ErVag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCCXZ8ErVag
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- seanv 12y agoI got the impression that it was a write up of the demo video, not actually hands on... It's a confusing article and there's no 'real time video or images' of anyone actually interacting with it. I'm actually quite confused as to what this is, bad PR piece - more like a mocumentary on discovery channel... I'm confused Wire - please clarify
- tripzilch 12y ago> I got the impression that it was a write up of the demo video, not actually hands on... That's not really an excuse to dumbly repeat something which sounds so amazingly far-fetched (see other comment elsewhere, what sensors even produce TBs of data per second?), it verges on the physically impossible, reporting it without even blinking an eye--such as "yes, you read that right, we think it's hard to believe too", or preferably some explanation of how it can even be possible. How did the reporter not go "Wait what--terabytes per second?!!".
- rsp1984 12y agoThey probably confused that with GB. Not sure which sensors would even put out Terabytes per second. Let's assume they have a brand new high dynamic range RGB-D camera that has 32 bits per channel at 60 Hz. To reach 1 TB/s that camera would have to have approx. 1 Gigapixel. --> Not very likely.
- dr_zoidberg 12y agoThe HoloLens description reminds me of the VR technology depicted in Arthur Clarke's "Light of Other Days". Its interesting to see how many of things he predicted of the future we have achieved, through different means than what he imagined.
- pkaye 12y agoKind of explains why they bought Mojang for Minecraft!
- BobMarz 12y agoSkeuomorphic UI design makes a comeback ;) Ironic that after they push for flat UI that this device is going back to 3-D UI (obviously 3-D is the whole point). It might look bad if light sources of the rendered objects are not consistent with your surroundings.
- MrDom 12y agoThis makes me want to get a dev kit and create a prank exploit that puts a 3d clippy in the corner of your view that you can't get rid of. :D
- Mizza 12y agoWas anybody else slightly disturbed by the Raytheon product placement? http://i.imgur.com/ekogOBL.png http://i.imgur.com/ekogOBL.png
- brakmic 12y agoGoogle Glass made you look like an idiot. HoloLens does the same but if you believe their product video: you _are_ an idiot.
- DigitalSea 12y agoWow. This looks seriously impressive and based on everything we know so far, it looks far better than Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus. I can't really afford such purchases at the moment because of an upcoming wedding, but I am definitely going to get one of these when they become available. Seriously, look at that Minecraft demo, impressive. Looks like Microsoft has just upped the virtual reality goggles race. My mind is racing with excitement over all of the applications this could serve. The tech behind how these glasses actually work is also pretty clever, I don't entirely understand it, but it seems to be more than just a OLED diplay, lenses and a driver like existing solutions. I legitimately feel more excited for this than I have been for Oculus and Morpheus. Another little clever thing Microsoft have done here is calling it a holographic headset, not a VR headet. The different wording not only separates Microsoft from other competitors refering to their headsets as virtual reality headsets but it also makes much more sense (from a technical and branding perspective).
- oliyoung 12y agoIt makes the Minecraft purchase make a whole lot more sense now. I mean, it made immediate sense it's a cash cow, but long-term Minecraft is perfect, it's simple, easy, forgiving and fun - a perfect entrance into VR/AR
- 72deluxe 12y agoThe technology looks very impressive but I do not see how this will be widely useful. The necessity to hold your arm out as far as it will go will only cause Gorilla Arm, and is the reason touchscreen desktop PCs are always abysmal failures. You need to move your arm far more than with a keyboard and mouse, so you'll never be productive. The technology looks impressive but I can't see it being useful unless used for holographic weather reports where excessive gesticulation is apparently mandatory. 3D modelling with that would be exceptionally painful. Perhaps gaming or something, but I wouldn't want to be sat there on my armchair waving my arms around like I am suffering some sort of uncontrollable seizure (no offence intended btw, just the best way of describing my actions to onlookers).
- swalsh 12y agoI'm going to take a guess, Microsoft is going to give out these to devs at build this year.
- majc2 12y agoAnyone fancy a game of dejarik? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6M4ngKRp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO6M4ngKRp0
- Lich 12y agohttp://qz.com/330921/this-is-the-difference-between-microsoft-and-apple/ http://qz.com/330921/this-is-the-difference-between-microsof... More closeup picture of the device in that link. There's some sort of camera/light emitter above the left and right eyes. Two panes, and some sort of smaller HUD in front of the right (and left?) eyes, but it actually might be a part of the second glass pane.
- bd 12y agoHere is fresh "back-to-reality" report from Engadget journalist who just tried working HoloLens device prototype (at the same event where it was announced): --------------- "Does it work? Yes, it works. Is it any good? That's a much harder question to answer." "I say this in the nicest way possible: Using Microsoft HoloLens kinda stinks. In its current form, it feels like someone is tightening your head into a vice. The model being shown today on Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus isn't what you saw onstage, but a development kit. The demos begin by lowering a tethered, relatively small, rectangular computer over your head, which hangs around your neck by sling." "You can literally feel the heat coming off the computer's fans, which face upward. It feels like you're wearing a computer around your neck, because you are." There doesn't seem to be full hand tracking (as suggested by the demo on stage). Instead it uses something they call AirTap which uses gaze for pointing and hand only for clicking: "By looking at any of them and using "AirTap" (hold up your hand in front of your eyes, tap with your pointer finger), I could select any contact to call." "While the effects of interaction were impressive, the actual interaction was less so. Rather than picking up a sheep with my hand by literally just grabbing it with my actual hand, my only means of interaction were voice (pickaxe! redstone torch! etc.) and the aforementioned "AirTap." Overall impression is kinda mixed (especially compared to how well were received even very crude Oculus Rift early prototypes): "HoloLens is clearly very early, and kinda sucks right now. It's uncomfortable. It's cumbersome. It looks and feels like a piece of hardware that's far from final." "Is it bad? No. Lord no. Stop it. It's very impressive, but it's a brand new entry in a market that basically doesn't exist yet." --------------- http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-hololens-hands-on/ http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-hololens-hands-... --------------- Given Engadget description of the actual device, here is a screenshot from Microsoft promotional video that probably captured it: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B76axLVIUAA4egZ.png:large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B76axLVIUAA4egZ.png:large https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmAwvmOXKM&t=12m21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPmAwvmOXKM&t=12m21s --------------- Another journalist impressions (Andy McNamara from Game Informer): "Important first impression. In the videos I thought it filled your entire field of view, but it's more like a screen floating in space." "I'd say it's like a 16x9-ish monitor floating about 7 to 8 inches just in front of your face." https://twitter.com/GI_AndyMc/status/558039828328357888 https://twitter.com/GI_AndyMc/status/558039828328357888 --------------- Gizmodo report was more enthusiastic, especially about ability of display to hide real view, though noted "tiny" field-of-view: "It's one of the most amazing and tantalizing experiences I've ever had with a piece of technology." "It's not like the Oculus Rift, where you're totally immersed in a virtual world practically anywhere you look. The current Hololens field of view is TINY! I wasn't even impressed at first. All that weight for this? But that's when I noticed that I wasn't just looking at some ghostly transparent representation of Mars superimposed on my vision. I was standing in a room filled with objects. Posters covering the walls. And yet somehow—without blocking my vision—the Hololens was making those objects almost totally invisible." http://gizmodo.com/project-hololens-hands-on-incredible-amazing-prototy-1680934585 http://gizmodo.com/project-hololens-hands-on-incredible-amaz... --------------- Verge folks also liked it: "... you look down at the coffee table and there's a castle sitting right on the damn thing. It's not shimmery, but it's not quite real, either. It's just sitting there, perfectly flat on the table, reacting in space to your head movements. It's nearly as lifelike as the actual table, and there's no lag at all. The castle is there. It's simply magic." http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7868251/microsoft-hololens-hologram-hands-on-experience http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7868251/microsoft-hololens...
- 20kleagues 12y agoI think Microsoft just gained back its cool factor. Now lets hope .Net also becomes 'cool' to use among developers. The current perception is pretty bleak.
- lukeholder 12y agoThey should have gone all in on ironruby and it would have been a huge competitor to jruby to hip coders for the enterprise.
- prawn 12y agoMight allow them to reinvent their "Windows" theme when people start interacting with their environment through some sort of lens. It will act as a 'window' to the world.
- dlp211 12y agoI watched the live demo and was really excited about this and Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrot got to use it and are really excited about this. They also mentioned that it will be released this year. They talked about it on TWiT. Paul said that it looks as good as the pictures on the holo website.
- mshenfield 12y agoThis is one of the very first times I've been happy to be a .NET developer.
- Metaglasses 12y agoHey! We're having our first Meta (YC S13) AR Hackathon in SF Feb 20th-21st. Come and hack on our Meta Glasses and have a hands-on AR experience! goo.gl/b6BIWN
- zerny 12y agoNow, this is going to be the most exciting news of 2015 for me. Well done, Microsoft.
- kh_hk 12y agoPromotional videos look impressive. The demo, thought, not so much: gesturing seemed awkward, clicking in the air is not an interface. I guess this could easily be improved using haptic feedback. Of course, the naysayer in me is just thinking this is a PR move to tell investors and stakeholders everything is alright and that MS got their backs covered by stepping into the future. Which is not that unusual, Google and Amazon are doing it too.
- calgoo 12y agoI just finished reading Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End [1], and then this comes out!! I want it now!!! This is so the way to go. If you are a SciFi fan, you have probably heard of Vernor's books, if not, I really recommend them. They have actually given me a brighter outlook on the future of humanity :) Apart from Rainbows End, check out Zones of Thought[2] if you want a outlook at what space travel could become in the future. Back to the AR subject, I much prefer AR over true matrix style VR. Let us stay in the real world, move about the real world, extend it with the virtual. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Vernor-Vinge/dp/0812536363 http://www.amazon.com/Rainbows-End-Vernor-Vinge/dp/081253636... [2] http://www.amazon.com/A-Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/0812536355/ref=pd_cp_b_0 http://www.amazon.com/A-Deepness-Sky-Zones-Thought/dp/081253... [Edit: Grammar]
- chrissyb 12y agoI'd settle for that holographic puppy at the end of the video!
- TheAwesomeA 12y agoI don't understand why there is no comment about the probably most important aspect: The image quality. Is it low resolution or really high def and you can't see single pixels?!
- rasz_pl 12y agoengadget: -field of view is extremely limited. There's a rectangular area in the center of your vision that acts as your "window" -image was relatively transparent -HoloLens is clearly very early, and kinda sucks right now.
- jamies888888 12y agoI can't see this becoming a consumer product.
- zaroth 12y agoI'm so excited to see this. I cannot wait to try one of these on for the first time. I'm going to bet writing apps for this kit will be a lot of fun. And all the C# .NET developers can say again, thank you Microsoft since they have committed to one platform, one store, all device types. I think it will be a while yet before there are thousands of developers working on this, but it will grow exponentially for a while. If this is comfortable for extended wear, it's just going to further increase the value of remote workers. You can't beat time zones, but for everything else, there's holograms. I really, really want to understand how high fidelity this is. One point is we aren't seeing it used for video conferencing between two people each wearing a band. Probably because face-on you look pretty silly in it. So it's not quite a natural way to meet people. Just yet. I think it has world changing potential. But in 2016 or whenever, this will not be selling for $499 or $899, it's more like $3299 I would guess. And really, that's more like the price level we expect for a very high quality gear. Actually, you could realistically go upward of $10k if the quality truly reflects that price. So of course the next thing I did was check MSFT stock price. $382 billion market cap. This is a $100 billion idea, might be a good time to get back in. I guarantee you, the market has not fully priced in holograms. Just saying it, you know it's true. For now I will choose to believe the hype, because eventually, absolutely, this is all possible.
- CmonDev 12y ago"the market has not fully priced in holograms" Did you factor in the potential disruption by Magic Leap? Retinal projection could be a better bet long-term.
- zaroth 12y ago"Developer, developers, developers." But imagine picking up an original iPhone today and comparing it to v6. Now imagine HoloLens going through that refinement process. If the platform is as powerful as it sounds, and you can openly develop software which effectively leverages that platform, how is that not awesome? I mean, it's an entirely new hardware form factor that we all get to hack on and play with, and it's not a sure thing, but if it goes well, it could become mainstream and open an entirely new era of computing. That's the vision anyway... like I said, I'll choose to believe the hype because it's more fun that way. Thinking about the design a bit, it's interesting all the compute is on the band, and not broken out to a separate box communicating over wireless. They mention fans blowing hot air away from your head, and then add in the battery too... how long can it run? I think their use cases are a little weak. There are much more impressive things you could do with this kit. Also, what does it look like in a dark room?
- marknutter 12y agoIt was a bit irritating to see the kid running up to the model of the rocket ship with excitement and no goggles on. Why lie and make it seem like you'll be able to see these "holograms" without the goggles on? Everyone walking around with these big ski goggles strapped to their head seems worse than Google Glass, which is awkward enough as it is.
- personlurking 12y agoI understood from the video that it had been 3D-printed
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- SiVal 12y agoIs the plan that you develop apps for this thing using C# (or any .Net language) plus special libraries? Or will the somewhat real-time nature of 3D imagery integrated with the real world using a lightweight mobile device require something closer to the metal?
- zaroth 12y ago"Developers can target all these device types, with one platform and one store. And stay tuned later while our device types expand." They will not abandon that mission, they just committed to it! (video 3:00)
- jesusgaben 12y agoYour all plebs
- jesusgaben 12y agoYour all plebs
- harisamin 12y agoThis is truly amazing. I’m super excited. It might be time for me to get my hands dirty with C# again :)
- radiorental 12y agoCurious about skype (inc Lync which will be rebranded to Skype) Seems like a strong use-case but how will they render people on the call if participants are wearing a headset?
- uchooseyourself 12y agoThis has the potential of making being rich kind of...obsolete. Think of it like this: can't afford an iphone? There's a Holographic iPhone you can download. Can't afford a fancy big screen TV, there are thousands out there you can download, etc. This will all depend on the quality / ease of use of Holographic Windows, but I can already see it's the future of computing.
- erroneousfunk 12y agoThe last few major purchases I made with my relatively plentiful disposable income: A pair of Doc Martens, two plane tickets to Kenya, yearly membership fee to my concierge medical clinic. None of these could be replaced by this technology. Arguably, I could make it look like I'm wearing new shoes when look down, and I could load up "Kenya" mode on my Holographic Goggles -- but nothing will replace the feel and protection of good shoes, or replicate the smells, tastes, and adventure of actual travel. Also, I still own an iPhone 5 and don't have a particularly fancy TV... Your same argument has been made (to a greater or lesser degree) with the advent of the industrial revolution, the Internet, cheap processors, 3D printers. There is no technology that will make wealth obsolete.
- sambeau 12y agoA problem I have with this is that blocks so much of the face that it hinders subtle facial gestures. Notice that on all the video calls they show the other person isn't wearing one? (That and it is rather ugly, too.)
- alexvr 12y agoSomeday there could be gloves that allow you to feel these "holograms" using cables that prevent your fingers from moving up/down, etc. I also think this could be a short-term way to introduce full-body physical constraints in full-on virtual reality. (In the more distant future, we will probably know how to stimulate the brain directly to produce these sensations.) I envision a full-body suit (fitted to the user with near perfection) with a bunch of cables going in every direction. So if you try to push a virtual wall, the proper cables will be set to resist. Doesn't seem very practical, but the glove version might be.
- arpitverma007 12y agoIts very first move by Microsoft in virtual reality field. Hope they will make something good
- kengray41 12y agoAnyway, it's Microsoft and it will spend a huge amount of money for the marketing this new gadget. We will see the results in next 6 months I guess.
- ha292 12y agoOnce again, Microsoft is slow to produce a product. In this case, the product is a "moonshot" at changing the UI. No wait, the product is a PR event that just says. "We can innovate too, you know" If this fails, they will be late again in canceling a VR/Augmented reality product that should not have made it past beta. See Glass, Google.
- kevincrane 12y agoHaha alright Captain Buzzkill, let's give it more than one day before we start burying this one.
- lurcio 12y ago"all the fun of schizophrenia in a hat" ?