Microsoft HoloLens [Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms]

[eastmen]

So do you think there will be two versions of this ? Stand alone with an apu and hpu and then an xbox 1 with just an apu or something ?

I could see a benfit for the xbox one to have the hololense handle the hud rendering and some for-ground stuff. It be cool to give your screen real depth when playing

 

[AzBat]

Personally I'm not sure we'll see a game version now. A lot of the things I've read & watched about HoloLens make note that this used to be a game-targeted device. That was until about 6 months ago when they demoed it to Satya Nadella & he told them that the project had much more promise for much more than games. I suspect once it's released as it's currently planned they will want to wait to see how it's received before attempting to make a separate game version. However, I just don't see them succeeding with what I expect to be such an expensive device($1000+). And that's why I think that will be the death of the game version. For me that's really sad since I had high hopes for a low-cost game device. I guess we'll have to wait & see.

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

1k? I think its going to be $500 or so.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I think it's better off as a more general purpose device than as strictly a gaming device. I also expect it to be closer to 1k because of the multitude of sensors, RAM, storage, custom silicon and funky display.

 

[liquidboy]

Personally I'm not sure we'll see a game version now.

Xbox Boss Ponders HoloLens' Potential on Console and PC

Personally I find it difficult to imagine the Xbox team NOT incorporating this into their gaming experience .. Seems like most of the leaked Durango roadmap is coming to pass..

 

[eastmen]

I think it's better off as a more general purpose device than as strictly a gaming device. I also expect it to be closer to 1k because of the multitude of sensors, RAM, storage, custom silicon and funky display.

I posted before (I think before the thread split so I don't know where it went) but if you look at the costs of a cell phone the note 4 has a pretty capable apu and it pops in at $50 the ram at $5 (3gigs) and the storage 32gig at $10.

All the connectivity (modem/wifi/Bluetooth) comes in at $10. So together your looking $75 or so. Lets say the hpu is another $50 in silicon your at $125. Maybe 64 gigs in nand ? So $20 there. The note 4 3220 mah battery is

What else do we think is in there that will warrant the cost ? I wouldn't imaging the optics costing that much . Even if they put a full Kinect 2 inside the head set your looking at under a $100 for that. In the pictures it looks like each side has 2 camera's in it like Kinect 2. So even if we double that we are still looking at under $300 for the whole kit outside of the lenses. And that pricing of the Kinect 2 includes its own ram and apu inside of it. Which I doubt will be in the hololens so the cost should be cheaper there.

6 months ago this was going to be gaming and phil has said this is still gaming related. There is no way this thing is going to be 1k not when your going to be competing with VR that will cost $300 or so per head set.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That was until about 6 months ago when they demoed it to Satya Nadella & he told them that the project had much more promise for much more than games...

Curiously, iThing was never about the games yet that's its biggest market and most used feature. Even if intended for things bigger than gaming, the games will come!

I posted before (I think before the thread split so I don't know where it went) but if you look at the costs of a cell phone...

What else do we think is in there that will warrant the cost ? I wouldn't imaging the optics costing that much

You know how they work then? Because the rest of us have little idea, hence pricing it is impossible.

6 months ago this was going to be gaming and phil has said this is still gaming related. There is no way this thing is going to be 1k not when your going to be competing with VR that will cost $300 or so per head set.

You also said Kinect 2 probably had a BOM of $50, yet it's standalone price is $150. ALso, you're Note 4 teardown has a BOM way below it's high street price. That should prove the point to you, BOM != retail price. You charge as much as your market is willing to spend. Maybe it would have been $500 when it was about the games (which I highly doubt), but as a professional device, it'll charge a premium even at the same BOM.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Microsoft need to push this as a corporate and enterprise device before anything else. Sell at a profit to large corporations at $1000+ in high volumes to get the manufacturing costs down.

The corporate use cases are legion. Imagine the benefit of being able to have virtual meeting spaces where different meeting attendees can dial in from various sites across the globe, and you can see an image of their avatar sat at your meeting room table. Imagine being able to open up a window mid-meeting with a flick of the finger, to display graphs and data that appears right in front of people's faces, rather them having to squint at a white board at one end of the room. There's so much you can do with it, for visualisations and graphing. You could use it as a tech for doing product demos to potential clients and a whole host of other things. As a marketing tool it would be golden. There's just so much that can legitimately be made better and more producitve with this.

MS knows corporate much better than the consumer spaces anyway. So firmly integrating this tech into Office/Windows is a great start. If the go this way, I can't see how the device won't suceed.

I would also like to see if they can incorporate this tech into something like a motorbike helmet. Essentially a realtime HUD showing speed info., GPS tracking and everything else you need. THAT would be glorious!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I disagree with the legion of possibilities. It's more impactful than a tablet, but not really more capable. For product demos, show the new product on a tablet, rotatable and zoomable. Likewise, show the graphs and presentation on the personal tablets - no need for whiteboards or projections. The real benefit of this is where you need hands free information or you want virtual interactions. Labelling organs while performing surgery, for example (not that any surgeon would need that! God forbid we have a future of technicians instead of trained professionals, following instructions on their VR headsets instead of getting trained. But in emergency situations, say emergency services, it'd be excellent). The motorbike example is a good one. For cars, windscreen projection is a better fit.

 

[fehu]

Motorbike helmets must be changed any 2/4 years for security reasons

 

[Prophecy2k]

Motorbike helmets must be changed any 2/4 years for security reasons

Well that's not outside of the average life of most consumer electronic devices.

MS and other companies could simply offer a subcription service where you send in your HoloLens bike helmet every 2-4 years for servicing. Spreading out the cost over that kind of time period could make it even more compelling tbh

 

[Prophecy2k]

I disagree with the legion of possibilities. It's more impactful than a tablet, but not really more capable. For product demos, show the new product on a tablet, rotatable and zoomable. Likewise, show the graphs and presentation on the personal tablets - no need for whiteboards or projections. The real benefit of this is where you need hands free information or you want virtual interactions. Labelling organs while performing surgery, for example (not that any surgeon would need that! God forbid we have a future of technicians instead of trained professionals, following instructions on their VR headsets instead of getting trained. But in emergency situations, say emergency services, it'd be excellent). The motorbike example is a good one. For cars, windscreen projection is a better fit.

Point is that with this tech you could enhance the experience over a tablet by doing things like: giving the user additional info. about meeting attendees (the obvious one being displaying name and title above the person's head), being able to display multiple virtual windows with multiple information streams/feeds. There are lots of uses for people in industry, not just for meetings and virtual workspaces.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Point is that with this tech you could enhance the experience over a tablet by doing things like: giving the user additional info. about meeting attendees (the obvious one being displaying name and title above the person's head), being able to display multiple virtual windows with multiple information streams/feeds. There are lots of uses for people in industry, not just for meetings and virtual workspaces.

Those that justify the expense are limited to where you need your hands free though. For a business that cares about economical, AR doesn't offer a great deal of benefit for the added expense for most of them, seems to me. So I'm not sure this is a product for business. It's better for professionals and possibly education, although pretty expensive and exclusive education!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Curiously, iThing was never about the games yet that's its biggest market and most used feature. Even if intended for things bigger than gaming, the games will come!

Apple had an iPhone user base of 20-25 million iPhone owners when they App Store launched over a year after the first phone and 3 months after the first SDK was introduced to developers on the quiet.

Unless Microsoft are going to bank roll early games, developers probably aren't going to be investing much in development for HoloLens unless there is significant user take-up. It's the catch 22; users will come when the software is there. Software will come when the users are there.

What makes HoloLens tremendously exciting (it appearing to be a credible AR implementation) is also what makes it incredibly risk, because it's a new interaction paradigm and developers and users are going to have to learn this thing and to get the best out of the hardware you're going to have to write software specifically for it. This takes time and time is money.

You know how they work then? Because the rest of us have little idea, hence pricing it is impossible.

The million dollar question. Maybe when they launch this thing it will sell itself for $2,000. Maybe it'll be a viable or outright better replacement for existing technology.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Those that justify the expense are limited to where you need your hands free though. For a business that cares about economical, AR doesn't offer a great deal of benefit for the added expense for most of them, seems to me. So I'm not sure this is a product for business. It's better for professionals and possibly education, although pretty expensive and exclusive education!

Depends how much it ends up costing.

In terms of industry I can definintely see some good justifications for this.

E.g. process operators in a control room, can have a live pictographic representation of the plant, with key operating perameters appearing clearly in their view. For people like maintence staff, you can have a live feed of gas analysis data, temperature and pressure readings whilst you're out in the field working and maintaining equipment. You can have a virtual process oerlay on your HoloLens as you walk around the plant, which will let you click on various bits of piping, equiment and machinery to get live sensor reading data from the process intrumentation. Tech, like this could even let you control the entire process remotely from off-site. Would be incredibly powerful.

 

[Alucardx23]

I guess Microsoft should now be able to make the goal of the IllumiRoom project a reality.

 

[eastmen]

Curiously, iThing was never about the games yet that's its biggest market and most used feature. Even if intended for things bigger than gaming, the games will come!

You know how they work then? Because the rest of us have little idea, hence pricing it is impossible.

You also said Kinect 2 probably had a BOM of $50, yet it's standalone price is $150. ALso, you're Note 4 teardown has a BOM way below it's high street price. That should prove the point to you, BOM != retail price. You charge as much as your market is willing to spend. Maybe it would have been $500 when it was about the games (which I highly doubt), but as a professional device, it'll charge a premium even at the same BOM.

Not always.

The only place to get hololens software is through presumably through the windows 10 app store built into the device. So ms can break even or take a hit on the hardware to make money thorugh software sales. We've seen it time and time again.

The retail price in the usa for a note 4 is $700 but with a contract I can get it for $300 which is only $40 more than the bom tear down.

The Kinect 2 has BOM tear downs at $75 or so. They sell it for double the price stand alone but that's because it has very little software in which to make back money on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In terms of industry I can definintely see some good justifications for this.

So can I. just not as many as I think others see.

E.g. process operators in a control room, can have a live pictographic representation of the plant, with key operating perameters appearing clearly in their view. For people like maintence staff, you can have a live feed of gas analysis data, temperature and pressure readings whilst you're out in the field working and maintaining equipment. You can have a virtual process oerlay on your HoloLens as you walk around the plant, which will let you click on various bits of piping, equiment and machinery to get live sensor reading data from the process intrumentation. Tech, like this could even let you control the entire process remotely from off-site. Would be incredibly powerful.

However, that's implementable now with AR on handsets. Not as convenient, but still doable. Point your phone at the pipe (more realistically look at a barcode/QR code or swipe an NFC tag) and get some readings. Also a lot of these visions aren't factoring in the set-up cost, which involves mapping and documenting all the info you want. When the whole world has been mapped and can be streamed, it'll be awesome. Until then, someone is going to have to do all the mapping and set-up. And things like that up the cost over a clip-board and paper map and coloured tags on pipes, sort of thing.

Hololens and AR is the future, but I don't think it'll be an explosive success. I think Hololens will represent a niche of the AR market, the top 10% or so or AR applications. The majority will come to handsets, is my guess.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Why does the world have to be mapped?

Kinect has a depth buffer that would be good enough for what you're looking at. Once an object is placed in real world space, it's anchored to a location, regardless of what the room dimensions are like. For example, you pin a window in the air. You don't need to remember that it's pinned beside a wall. You just need to know where in the air it's been pinned. As long as the device can know the location of the hologram to itself, you don't need to know the dimensions of the room. It's actually easier that way. You're the origin in a 3D plot. As you move the hologram locations are translated relative to the origin. You don't really care where the walls are.

 

[wco81]

So can I. just not as many as I think others see.

However, that's implementable now with AR on handsets. Not as convenient, but still doable. Point your phone at the pipe (more realistically look at a barcode/QR code or swipe an NFC tag) and get some readings. Also a lot of these visions aren't factoring in the set-up cost, which involves mapping and documenting all the info you want. When the whole world has been mapped and can be streamed, it'll be awesome. Until then, someone is going to have to do all the mapping and set-up. And things like that up the cost over a clip-board and paper map and coloured tags on pipes, sort of thing.

Hololens and AR is the future, but I don't think it'll be an explosive success. I think Hololens will represent a niche of the AR market, the top 10% or so or AR applications. The majority will come to handsets, is my guess.

I've tried AR apps on my phone. Really didn't work that well. After the initial wave, there seems to be no more AR apps so there may not be a huge demand for them.

A lot of people would settle for maps apps. with more enriched data. Not necessarily new apps but Google for instance gradually adding more and more data about various POIs just about anywhere in the world.