Microsoft HoloLens [Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms]

[Shifty Geezer]

Maybe that's part of the reason why they constrained the field of view? Forces you to look straight at it.

It's not that constrained. As previously estimated, it's about the same FOV as my monitor. With that example I look around the screen with my eyes, not my head. Hololens must be pretty accurately mapping. As long as you have the correct eye FOV and the centre of the virtual camera placed at the back of the eye, it should align nicely.

 

[eastmen]

http://www.neowin.net/news/irides-microsofts-project-to-create-a-better-virtual-reality-headset

Enter Project Irides, which is designed to test some of Microsoft’s technologies and see whether VR HMDs could be significantly improved. Irides uses the Kahawai technology, which we’ve detailed a couple of days ago. In a nutshell, Kahawai offloads some of the GPU rendering to the cloud and then streams it back to the headset with higher quality graphics.

But Irides goes beyond that. By leveraging, or rather pushing Kahawai’s technology to its limits, it takes advantage of super low-latency and low-bandwidth, as well as predictive graphical processing to offer a superior mobile experience on virtual reality headsets.

Irides also does this with a technique called “likelyhood-based foveation” that renders higher quality parts of an image and ‘gracefully degrades’ others, all based on where the user is likely to look. It also uses a spherical mesh for said image. In a sense, this sort of mimics the human eye, and offers the user lower latency and higher quality at the same time.

This is interesting

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Mostly because it pertains to VR headsets rather than AR/Hololens. I'd say this was the wrong thread for it.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Mostly because it pertains to VR headsets rather than AR/Hololens. I'd say this was the wrong thread for it.

Well, the article does speculate that the research is more likely to find use in HoloLens than an actual MS VR headset. Unless we hear something about a VR headset from MS at E3 this year, I think it's doubtful that MS will attempt to make a VR headset product.

Then again, this could potentially be what Phil Harrison's new company has licensed from MS. VR we knew MS was researching. But the client/server rendering approach and foveated rendering are interesting twists on that.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

I only posted it here cause I really didn't want to crap up the Morpheus thread and we don't have a MS vr thread nor do I think this information would sustain one

 

[AzBat]

Since Project Irides was originally posted here I felt posting this video here was best...

Irides: Attaining Quality, Responsiveness and Mobility for Virtual Reality Head-mounted Displays

In this video, we present Irides, a stereo HMD system that simultaneously attains quality, responsiveness and mobility. Irides achieves this by offloading rendering work to a (possibly WAN) high-end GPU. The HMD client is mobile and only requires a wireless network connection, yet receives high quality and responsive visuals. Irides leverages prior work to overcome WAN latencies. It employs speculative execution on the server, and compensates for misspeculation on the client.

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=246323

This speculative execution system is called Outatime & I've posted more about it on the Cloud Gaming thread...

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...ud-really-possible.54209/page-66#post-1850978

Very interesting tech videos. Could shed more on Microsoft's cloud gaming initiative & it's place with Oculus.

Tommy McClain

 

[eastmen]

yup a lot of this stuff will be interesting. MS can just make always online required for VR.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

yup a lot of this stuff will be interesting. MS can just make always online required for VR.

No can do, as there are many people that are always online that will complain about the requirement to be always online.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

No can do, as there are many people that are always online that will complain about the requirement to be always online.

Regards,
SB

People will complain about anything MS does.

Oh ms gave everyone who owned an xbox one a million bucks.... well screw MS they should have given a million to every pc gamer !

 

[BRiT]

Lets not turn this thread into an argument over always online and system availability, there is a dedicated thread for that already.

Thank you.

 

[Cyan]

Phil Spencer has said that partnering with Oculus lets them focus on Hololens.

http://www.ibtimes.com/microsofts-x...ring-oculus-vr-lets-us-focus-hololens-1963263

IBTimes: How will this partnership impact the Hololens, the augmented reality headset Microsoft announced earlier this year?

Spencer: This partnership allows us to focus on a space that's different from them with our Hololens, which has a lot of things still to be figured out. This partnership seemed like the right for me. The whole Hololens team sent me a picture -- they actually watched the briefing with the Hololens on, streaming the picture on the wall. It's like the most surreal thing, but they were all really excited about the show.

 

[Rikimaru]

Oculus will be expensive, Hololens even more.
Those are not mass market devices. I hope Sony does right thing with $299 Morpheus.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Either Oculus will be more expensive and likely far better. Or the same price and similar quality to Morpheus. There likely isn't any magic hardware cost reductions available to one and not the other. That said, I have a feeling Morpheus won't be matching Oculus minimum rendering requirement of 90 hz. Not on the PS4 without greatly reducing visual IQ anyway. However, without a high rendering rate, visual acuity will be compromised as well as the potential to make people sick. So Sony may be forced to support higher FPS at the expense of lower graphical IQ.

Then again Oculus does have rather modest minimum requirements so many games may not be graphically intensive anyway. Although unlike Morpheus it isn't limited to those minimum requirements, so the potential is there for far greater visual IQ and immersiveness.

That said, I don't expect Oculus to be used much for XBO in the near future (if ever) so it's irrelevant in the console space. Sony basically have the VR market all to themselves in the console space with Morpheus. If it succeeds, great. If it doesn't, Sony have noone to blame but themselves as there won't be any competition.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rikimaru]

Either Oculus will be more expensive and likely far better. Or the same price and similar quality to Morpheus. There likely isn't any magic hardware cost reductions available to one and not the other. That said, I have a feeling Morpheus won't be matching Oculus minimum rendering requirement of 90 hz. Not on the PS4 without greatly reducing visual IQ anyway. However, without a high rendering rate, visual acuity will be compromised as well as the potential to make people sick. So Sony may be forced to support higher FPS at the expense of lower graphical IQ.
Regards,
SB

Oculus will be more expensive and better. Morpheus screen is 120Hz. Titles on PS4 will be 60fps + timewarp to 120Hz.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Either Oculus will be more expensive and likely far better. Or the same price and similar quality to Morpheus. There likely isn't any magic hardware cost reductions available to one and not the other.

As mentioned in the Morpheus thread, OVR needs to have profitable hardware. Sony can get away with selling at cost as long as they can sell plenty of VR content.

Plus OVR on XB1 is moot at this point. So far all that's been shown is streaming XB1 games to a VR room running on PC. There's no announcement of OVR on XB1 as a VR headset.

In fact, has Hololens even been announced as an XB1 peripheral?

 

[cheapchips]

Then again Oculus does have rather modest minimum requirements so many games may not be graphically intensive anyway.

The Rift min specs struck me as being about parity with ps4 1080p60 but at the Rift's higher res and framerate.

 

[Arwin]

Phil Spencer has said that partnering with Oculus lets them focus on Hololens.

http://www.ibtimes.com/microsofts-x...ring-oculus-vr-lets-us-focus-hololens-1963263

IBTimes: How will this partnership impact the Hololens, the augmented reality headset Microsoft announced earlier this year?

Spencer: This partnership allows us to focus on a space that's different from them with our Hololens, which has a lot of things still to be figured out. This partnership seemed like the right for me. The whole Hololens team sent me a picture -- they actually watched the briefing with the Hololens on, streaming the picture on the wall. It's like the most surreal thing, but they were all really excited about the show.

Their involvement does look completely placeholder, and almost negative to the point where they clearly indicate the HMD thing is where they expect and hope to dominate and profit. Understandably so, but a risky bet.

 

[iroboto]

In fact, has Hololens even been announced as an XB1 peripheral?

it has not
I don't see it happening as a XBO peripheral. But I can't rule it out either. The easiest method would be to stream the games to your headset much like they are doing with Oculus and the theatre room.
Realtime AR games have likely not progressed far enough to announce anything so soon after getting the working prototypes going. However, the SDK being reliant on Unity does help.

 

[Cyan]

Their involvement does look completely placeholder, and almost negative to the point where they clearly indicate the HMD thing is where they expect and hope to dominate and profit. Understandably so, but a risky bet.

No pain no gain, sure. You don't spend a single pennie though. Sony and Oculus guys are sheer hardware experts, they know their stuff in that regard. A VR venture when it could only benefit the Xbox and the console isn't able to run games at 120 fps -well, if games looked like Dreamcast ports, maybe, I wouldn't mind, honestly, if they achieved 120 fps that's what matters-.. I just don't know..too risky maybe?

it has not
I don't see it happening as a XBO peripheral. But I can't rule it out either. The easiest method would be to stream the games to your headset much like they are doing with Oculus and the theatre room.
Realtime AR games have likely not progressed far enough to announce anything so soon after getting the working prototypes going. However, the SDK being reliant on Unity does help.

I can easily see it as a XO peripheral, but expect full integration and functionality by the time the next Xbox arrives.

 

[pjbliverpool]

The Rift min specs struck me as being about parity with ps4 1080p60 but at the Rift's higher res and framerate.

It's a bit more than that since the GTX 970 varies generally between 2 - 2.25x faster than the R7 265 (which is basically the same GPU that the PS4 uses) while the additional load from the higher resolution and framerate is only a maximum of 87.5%.