Microsoft HoloLens [Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms]

Microsoft showed mouse & keyboard support on Hololens in January with the NASA Mars demo...

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http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/26/7878735/nasa-mars-exploration-holograms-microsoft-hololens

BTW, anybody read about the Halo 5 tech demo on Hololens? :D

http://gizmodo.com/a-holographic-halo-5-soldier-just-briefed-me-inside-mic-1711740678
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/06...+twitter&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Tommy McClain
 
Yeah, I remember that as well as them saying that it was running on Windows 10 which I took to mean that almost input device you used on a PC would work on Hololens. So I assumed controllers would work as well.

I'm sure Stylus Pens wouldn't work unless tethered to some kind of writing pad, but wouldn't that be interesting as well.
 
THe difference is that its just there. A phone is horrible for AR , I've used it before and something like card board takes away your view and you will need to buy a new headset each time you get a phone unless your lucky and they all match up with where the camera is

Glass as it is now doesn't give anywhere near the same experience. Hololens is in your face , glass is this thing that's off to the side. I've used both , glass doesn't hold a candle.

The user case is all of those and known brands like minecraft , halo and so much more.

MS is going to continue making the case for hololens this year. And aside from google and apple , ms has many times the money of the other companys. They want to be the OS for AR and they are going to push for it. When you see the final release of hololens you will be a believer too

Google cardboard is used to develop the apps without expenses, it partly solves the chicken and egg problem. The hardware for glass v2 is secret and is not out yet.

Glass is 3 years old, and was an experiment trying to make the smallest and lightest device wearable all day. It's all about compromises. The software and API are one thing, and the hardware is another. You don't seem to understand it's just a choice of making a huge headset or a tiny one. Android will have many many vendors giving all the choices just like they did with phones.

You misunderstand my position. I absolutely believe in AR, it's the next frontier after VR. But I think I understand at least some of the technologies and the limitations involved. I studied diffraction and interference when I was yonger, and I still have my Argon laser (with a stupidly heavy 1000 watt power supply), which was my go-to laser to study optical stuff. When I say study, I mean play. Play with fricking lazer beams and diffraction gratings and holographic plates.

For hardware there are still major compromises that MS didn't solve. In fact MS just made a headset. They are stuck with the same compromises as everybody else.

For software and platform, I don't see a vendor lock in as a plausible scenario for wide spread adoption. I don't see what windows 10 can do to stop the Android freight train.

The technology that will unlock AR is magic leap. It is years away. In the mean time we play with what is available.

Please don't forget you were the one who thought oculus would be 4k per eye, and I said it wouldn't be more than 1440p split in two. It ended up 1200p split, barely 12% better visual acuity than morpheus. Because there are absolute limitations that applies to everybody in the field.
 
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Video from tonight's Xbox E3 Daily show where Kiki Wolfkill talks about using Hololens to brief gamers on playing the Warzone mode in Halo 5...


Looked like the future. LOL

Tommy McClain
 
Google cardboard is used to develop the apps without expenses, it partly solves the chicken and egg problem. The hardware for glass v2 is secret and is not out yet.

Glass is 3 years old, and was an experiment trying to make the smallest and lightest device wearable all day. It's all about compromises. The software and API are one thing, and the hardware is another. You don't seem to understand it's just a choice of making a huge headset or a tiny one. Android will have many many vendors giving all the choices just like they did with phones.

You misunderstand my position. I absolutely believe in AR, it's the next frontier after VR. But I think I understand at least some of the technologies and the limitations involved. I studied diffraction and interference when I was yonger, and I still have my Argon laser (with a stupidly heavy 1000 watt power supply), which was my go-to laser to study optical stuff. When I say study, I mean play. Play with fricking lazer beams and diffraction gratings and holographic plates.

For hardware there are still major compromises that MS didn't solve. In fact MS just made a headset. They are stuck with the same compromises as everybody else.

For software and platform, I don't see a vendor lock in as a plausible scenario for wide spread adoption. I don't see what windows 10 can do to stop the Android freight train.

The technology that will unlock AR is magic leap. It is years away. In the mean time we play with what is available.

Please don't forget you were the one who thought oculus would be 4k per eye, and I said it wouldn't be more than 1440p split in two. It ended up 1200p split, barely 12% better visual acuity than morpheus. Because there are absolute limitations that applies to everybody in the field.

The hololens isn't dependent on anything however. The rift , Morpheus and even cardboard are . The hololens is all self contained and yes its in a helmet that is actually quite light.

I've used both the belt and headset version of the rig and they are certainly moving in the right direction.

I was wrong on the rift I'm quite sad about it too. I can go out and buy 2 fury x's soon and have what 16tflops of gpu power in my case for VR but i'm still limited by hdmi 1.3 on the rift for an odd reason.

I guess we will have to see the prices of those solutions,

But see that is the killer feature of hololens. I can put my headset on and walk around the real world and interact in the real world and with the headset. I can't do that with Morpheus or the rift. I'm tethered by relatively large hardware units.

Whats cool to me and a killer app. I can get on the train to work and play a game projected through my hololens and enjoy myself and still see when its my stop or see who is sitting next to me.
 
But would you want to? Until Hololens is much less obvious, I don't see myself wearing it outside of the work or home environment.

Heck, I still feel weird when the wife gives me the "look" when I am gaming with a headset on. I wonder if that is why I rarely engage in convos on-line :devilish:
 
But would you want to? Until Hololens is much less obvious, I don't see myself wearing it outside of the work or home environment.

Heck, I still feel weird when the wife gives me the "look" when I am gaming with a headset on. I wonder if that is why I rarely engage in convos on-line :devilish:

I don't see a problem. People have gigantic beats head phones that look tacky and people are holding up giant iphones and notes now to their heads to make calls.

I rather a headset. Xbox one controller + southpark + hololens = amazing commute to work
 
Just the Hololens itself, if fast enough, could provide for some interesting navigation information heads up displays and/or AR overlays.
 
DevKit and price please !
I want !
So many opportunities, gaming being just one of them...
 
Lol wow this thread went awol. As someone who experienced hololens (edit for poor phrasing) let me just say the answer that you all seek: hololens use case is that it provides another perspective. End of story.
It won't improve your gaming performance and neither will VR but it most certainly changes how you experience it.
And that is what it comes down to.
Trying to write out use cases as to why we need to experience something different makes no sense; it's all most people are in search for: an experience they enjoy.
AR is just another experience, it may not be for everyone but it's certainly accessible, and it's certainly a cool way to experience the digital world.
 
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Wait this is actually going to be for sale? I always thought it was a tech demo, not a real product. You sure?
It's real. SDKs were out by \\Build\. I wasn't able to get into the SDK session, but a few friends did and were able to follow tutorials for it. The headsets work, enough for development for sure, certainly further along than the first Oculus MKI prototype I was given.
 
Lol wow this thread went awol. As someone who experienced hololens (edit for poor phrasing) let me just say the answer that you all seek: hololens use case is that it provides another perspective. End of story.
It won't improve your gaming performance and neither will VR but it most certainly changes how you experience it.
And that is what it comes down to.
Trying to write out use cases as to why we need to experience something different makes no sense; it's all most people are in search for: an experience they enjoy.
AR is just another experience, it may not be for everyone but it's certainly accessible, and it's certainly a cool way to experience the digital world.

I think it has potentially even more benefit than that for professional applications. The demo they showed at the initial announcement where they showed collaborative work onto a motorcycle has the potential to really shorten time to market. I think that it also saves funding in the fabrication because you have the opportunity to view a product in the space you are designing it for.

If it becomes easy enough to user create, I can see home interior designers using the product to show customers their vision. My wife and I watch a lot of these redesign shows like Fixer Upper, Property Brother and others. Sometimes the buyers have trouble translating the 2D vision from the monitor to the actual space. I can see Hololens solving or at least making this translation much easier.

As excited as I am for the product, I don't see myself picking up the 1st-gen consumer version if/when it comes out. I tend to wait for 2nd or 3rd gen so that most of the bugs are worked out and usually at a more convenient price point.
 
I think it has potentially even more benefit than that for professional applications. The demo they showed at the initial announcement where they showed collaborative work onto a motorcycle has the potential to really shorten time to market. I think that it also saves funding in the fabrication because you have the opportunity to view a product in the space you are designing it for.

If it becomes easy enough to user create, I can see home interior designers using the product to show customers their vision. My wife and I watch a lot of these redesign shows like Fixer Upper, Property Brother and others. Sometimes the buyers have trouble translating the 2D vision from the monitor to the actual space. I can see Hololens solving or at least making this translation much easier.

As excited as I am for the product, I don't see myself picking up the 1st-gen consumer version if/when it comes out. I tend to wait for 2nd or 3rd gen so that most of the bugs are worked out and usually at a more convenient price point.
I'm almost positive this was the main intention for Hololens. They didn't specifically tell us what apps we should be making, but all the demonstrations were made with industry and professional applications as the concept. The strongest use case was being able to rapid prototype something in digital space, and being able to see that overlaid in real life.

This has a lot of implications in the construction and design space, you really get to see it before it's built. It's quite a different perspective than VR because VR you have nothing to compare it against, and images are still you imagining it in scope and scale. Hololens solves both of these problems as it draws in scale to size (using CAD, or whatever professional software you want) and you see it as such. It's understandable that as the viewport improves, this device becomes applicable to a wider audience.

The move to showcasing it for E3 was likely once again, a PR stunt to get people to associate this device with MS, and that it's coming, what ideas can you think of. Gaming is always a great area to be involved in because gaming tends to be often pushing the boundaries of technology.
 
This has a lot of implications in the construction and design space, you really get to see it before it's built. It's quite a different perspective than VR because VR you have nothing to compare it against, and images are still you imagining it in scope and scale. Hololens solves both of these problems as it draws in scale to size (using CAD, or whatever professional software you want) and you see it as such. It's understandable that as the viewport improves, this device becomes applicable to a wider audience.


Wha...? In VR you are in the space, you walk around in it, it is fully rendered. With this holothingy, it is overlayed with the room you are in, how does that not confuse the person who sees real and imagined spaces together? Look there is the imagined door to the right of my real door? AR is typically small things placed into your real world, not full scale stuff smooshed into your room.
 
Wha...? In VR you are in the space, you walk around in it, it is fully rendered. With this holothingy, it is overlayed with the room you are in, how does that not confuse the person who sees real and imagined spaces together? Look there is the imagined door to the right of my real door? AR is typically small things placed into your real world, not full scale stuff smooshed into your room.

Hololens would over lay everything with the new design. So you go and tour the house as it is and with the hololens it will show how it will be covering it all up
 
Wha...? In VR you are in the space, you walk around in it, it is fully rendered. With this holothingy, it is overlayed with the room you are in, how does that not confuse the person who sees real and imagined spaces together? Look there is the imagined door to the right of my real door? AR is typically small things placed into your real world, not full scale stuff smooshed into your room.
But you have no sense of self, you don't see yourself or the objects in the room. You cannot use existing physical areas as boundaries for where AR should begin and end in VR. But in AR and with Hololens it's constantly detecting the space you are in.

AR when I experienced it were full size life like objects. Granted to get a full view of it you would have to stand really far back if you want to see it all in your view port. But if you stand right up to it, you see what you would see to scale.
I was manipulating the position of human sized doors and looking at sewer tubes that we're all to scale.
 
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