liquidboy
Regular
as opposed to a $700 mandated iPad or Surface that schools these days require ?! ...
Microsoft HoloLens [Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms]
as opposed to a $700 mandated iPad or Surface that schools these days require ?! ...
The FOV will probably be poor enough for Minecraft and table-top style gameplay to be troublesome. When I look at that stage demo and imagine the Hololens user looking through a window the size of a laptop held at arm's length, I'm not so sure if I'd find it comfortable to play that way. You'd probably need to be standing 15 feet away from the table in order to see the entire scene that's visible to the stage camera.
Ultimately the BOM of Hololens is pretty dependent on how much is MS willing to invest in the technology up front. Huge contracts with long term commitments can bring down the cost of a technology fairly dramatically. Its one thing when a market is mostly restricted to prototyping or small scale operations producing products targeted at narrow applications with limited userbases. Its another when major players are willing to pluck down billions to commericalize the technology on a mass market level.
MS doesn't seem to be rushing Hololens and has it on a path of slow roll out. But if technology ends up being licensed out to third party manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo and others, those manufacturers rush out to build out products and most importantly consumers adopt the products on a massive level, BOMs cost will fall rather sharply.
I'm not so sure I agree on the slow bit. See how fast they have been going from backpack prototype to something that looks nicer than most VR headsets and from fake Minecraft to buying Mojang to having it actually up and running. They will likely be a year out, but I am getting the impression they intend to be nearer to the VR launches than we might think. Also, the technology may be less expensive than we realize, or they organize getting a good cut from the software to be sold on it, we'll see. They can easily still mess this up, but I think this is not going away ever again, the tech is too useful. Run away success is to be seen, sure, but it will be 'a thing'.
I don't understand this line of thought.
THIS IS GAMING!!!
Gaming has a way of easily overcoming technological barriers because ultimately games are limited by the imagination of the developer and the requirement of being fun.
This is the reason its easier to develop and produce a game for a three year than it is to develop and produce a spreadsheet application for the little guy. Its the same reason why we can game by going out and buying a high end PC with an i7 and Titans in SLI or by going out to ToyRUs and buying a pocket racer with a monchrome display running on a processor mostly found in cheap calculators.
Outside of the requirement of being fun, there are no rigid ruleset to produces games that make it undesirable for certain consumer technology, which is why gaming is a popular genre on PCs, consoles, smartphones and other devices.
So the narrow FOV may restrict Hololens from mainstream acceptance because of its overall utility, but if mainstream acceptance is gain, games will probably end up well represented on Hololens regardless of a narrow FOV.
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Understand what line of thought? I'm pointing out that the demos being shown are not reflective of what the actual product is capable of now, or likely will be for the foreseeable future, and that people should adjust their expectations accordingly. That doesn't mean Hololens as-is is useless for any/all applications, just that sitting at a table and seeing a 4 foot tall Minecraft gameworld spring out of it isn't a reasonable expectation. The FOV wouldn't even be large enough to see a Monopoly game board in its entirety without moving your head - let that sink in.
The ideal that it will be troublesome for Minecraft to have a limited FOV placed on it by Hololens. Its not troublesome that Minecraft is currently limited to anywhere from 3.5 inch to 80 inch virtual window. Its currently limited to a keyboard, touch controls or console controller depending on the device you use. Where the utility offered within Minecraft is limited by the device you choose to play on. The PC offers far more in terms of features and better controls yet the skins and bones version on a tab or smartphone with its limited touch controls still sells well.
There always exists limitation and restriction when it comes to technology. And Minecraft seems to be the least affected by form factor as its been well accepted across a bevy of products. Why should Hololens be so different?
All Hololens is a virtual transparent display that will map visuals on top of the real world. If I took a 10 inch ipad, strapped into 1 foot from my head and used the on board camera to create the same AR Minecraft, does the reality that the AR visual disappears outside the edges of the display ruin the experience?
It would be nice to have all encompassing FOV but doesn't mean its a requirement that Minecraft needs to be immersive and engrossing.
A monopoly board is 20" X 20". Is 400 square inches worth of display real estate needed to comfortably play Monopoly as a computer game?
Where gaming exists comfortably on physical displays from anywhere from a few square inches to 100 inches worth of projection displays, why does offering a virtual display with AR abilities suddenly make wide and ample FOV a requirement?
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Outside of VR and AR, Minecraft has never been played from a perspective correct virtual window, but rather from a wide angle projection offering somewhere in the range 10x-20x the visible frustrum that a true virtual window should. When was the last time you played Minecraft at a rendered FOV comparable to what the Hololens offers (approximately 30x17deg)? Is it even possible to set Minecraft to use an FOV that low to get a feel for it? The minimum Minecraft FOV offered in the settings screen is "30", and while that should match the horizontal FOV, the FOV in Minecraft seems to be calculated by vertical so at 16:9 with the lowest FOV setting, you're still seeing almost 4x the frustrum that you would on Hololens.
Who says there won't be a VR version of Minecraft?
Considering how many of them own iphones and ipads... I'd say a lot of them.
Yes. Some of them already have an iphone, most of them already have an android phone.
To make calls, go on the internet, emails, twitter, facebook and google maps. Added value is games, but that's not why the money was spent.They also had it as part of a carrier plan, because they need a phone. What does $500 adds to this utility? A different way to play minecraft?
Come on you can dream bigger than that.
I could imagine writing a paper with the helmet on and it spell checking for me or suggesting different words from a thesaurus , or making grammer suggestions . Or it seeing that your doing a paper on Ceaser and it brings up a map with relevant information.
With math work it could help offer sugestions when your doing your work or bring up lessons on how to do it.
You could skype with friends and do study projects together
Then there is all the stuff they have shown so far in demos.
Games is just one part. It also wont be $500 for long.
But I'm sure you think parents will spend $400 on a ps4 and then another $200-$400 for a Morpheus.
Your awkward segue into Morpheus makes me realize how this thread has absolutely fuck all to do with consoles.
Your use cases can work with any of the dozen competitors, they are not really AR, they need a camera and a screen, either HMD or a smartphone. Watch the google glass video from 2-3 years ago. It's a tiny clip on, not a big helmet. It can do everything you just said and it's a very very primitive AR. The other AR are much more evolved, and can do what MS is showing off.
There's no camera facing the user. How do you use skype on this?
Why would a 6/7/8 grader work on dead tree material (math or paper on ceasar or otherwise) if he's got a tablet that can auto-correct, offer suggestion, and display tutorials?
My question is, (and I have my own answers, please do not assume to know what I think) What use case makes this big helmet, or it's competitors in this space, a better solution than this? :
Your use cases can work with any of the dozen competitors, they are not really AR, they need a camera and a screen, either HMD or a smartphone. Watch the google glass video from 2-3 years ago. It's a tiny clip on, not a big helmet. It can do everything you just said and it's a very very primitive AR. The other AR are much more evolved, and can do what MS is showing off.
There's no camera facing the user. How do you use skype on this?
Why would a 6/7/8 grader work on dead tree material (math or paper on ceasar or otherwise) if he's got a tablet that can auto-correct, offer suggestion, and display tutorials?
My question is, (and I have my own answers, please do not assume to know what I think) What use case makes this big helmet, or it's competitors in this space, a better solution than this? :
Surely they'll call it Holocraft?
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why AR/minecraft is even a concept. When you actually play minecraft it's rather hard to see how AR would actually be useful. VR "could" be immersive/useful if it wasn't nauseating, but AR has no obvious synergy.
The more natural genre is something like 'hearthstone' or 'football manager'. The problem with both genres is that currently there is no way to interact with the hologram, which kindof invalidates the whole point of having it
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And again, as a huge Minecraft player, playing the game in the third person is a terrible experience. If you're using Minecraft as some kind of block building engine and abandon the avatar, third person is pretty good. But third person crafting using an avatar is terrible. TERRIBLE!
HoloLens will be a poor experience to *play* Minecraft. The moment you lose first person or close third person usability for careful crafting goes out the window. HoloLens is probably good to observe/spectate but even then how will it work when there are many people and some are in structures and / or underground?
Looks good, plays bad.
Did you watch the demonstration? They didn't strip out the normal way of play. They just added more ways to view and interact with the game.
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I know but then why is it better than a monitor? I think for HoloLens to succeed it's got to be a far better option than existing experiences. There is no denying the technology is impressive but Microsoft need to find practical applications that are better than what we're doing now. Just doing it different sprinkled with some niche cool will be a hard sell.
Yes, I watched the demonstration but I've played thousands of hours of Minecraft and what they showed isn't how the majority play Minecraft - evidenced by the type, quantity and popularity of mods and ridiculous number of Minecraft videos on YouTube.
Have you played Minecraft much?
