Occluding light is easy enough, I think the problem is occluding it at a specific focus distance such that the dark dots are actually in the same plane of focus as the virtual image, and doing that while somehow seeing the rest of the world without any distortion introduced by the optical path that's manipulating the occlusion filter.
Microsoft HoloLens [Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms]
Yes, for HoloLens to ever work as advertised, they'd need both subtractive and aditive display. Maybe pairing different tech that can do each is the way.
Of course, once you have a great aditive display, the subtractive one might as well just be a binary 100% black or 100% transparent mask, with the aditive display addinf the desired color on top of it. That might increase the necessity for absolute precision in the alighnent of both displays and of the AR image with the real world one (both from display side, rendering and tracking)
Say, you want to supperimpose an object to the world, which also casts a semi-transparent shadow. If you only have a binary light mask for subtraction, the additive display has to add both the colors of the rendered object, but it also has to RE-draw the real world image that is suposed to be behind the object's shadow on top of the hard full black one to make it look transparent and fuzzy. Imagine the ground at wich the shadow is projected has a well defined and contrasty pattern. Say, a tiled floor with different colours. Any mismatch between the re-added image and the real world one will make the ground look lumpy or distorted.
For an even harder problem, imagine the main object itself you are rendering is made of a colored partially transparent material like glass (although in this one the distortion's might pass as a feature, as simulated optics of light refraction...) or thick dark smoke with very smooth edges...
For this to introduce no mismatch between what the user is actually seeing through the display and what holo lens thinks he is seeing, holo lens has to reproject the footage it gets from the camera into the exact perspective of the user's eye, in real time, with parallax adjustment and all. Tracking precision and lag will also be made even more necessary, or, it's failings will introduce even more glaring artifacts.
EDIT: Also, fuzzy (like soft shadows penumbra or Smoke or even edge AA if you wanna go ambitious) edges of any kind will also require extremelly precise calibration of camera, additive display, shadow mask and even the lenses transparent material so that resulting colors match closely enough for soft transitions like those to be completely seamless. It's hell!
If you're able to composite perfectly realistic visuals over the real-world image, you may as well just use opaque glasses and video displays for the real world with virtual content superimposed.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Composited sounds better, 'superimposed' is from the 80s!
Haven't kept up-to-date with Hololens 2 since it was announced, but I happened to come across this...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/hand-menu
That's actually pretty cool.
Tommy McClain
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/hand-menu
That's actually pretty cool.
Tommy McClain
yes that is pretty cool. hololens has been rolling out to select devs , i think its going a bit wider in the fall. I think 2022 hololens 3 will get shown off
I wonder if hololens will ever be a true consumer product? not in the sense that your average Joe wont be able to buy one but a device thats targeted to individual consumers. It seems that the current iteration of hololens is limited to military/commercial uses.
Might be misremembering but Klobrille put out some information on games in development/that had been developed, at Microsoft last year I think it was, and that the project code name for the conker game that asobo did for hololens was getting a sequel that would start development soonish.
I do think if the goal of hololens is to be a consumer product they need to get on with it, wont be long until someone like apple comes along and 'reinvents' VR.
Might be misremembering but Klobrille put out some information on games in development/that had been developed, at Microsoft last year I think it was, and that the project code name for the conker game that asobo did for hololens was getting a sequel that would start development soonish.
I do think if the goal of hololens is to be a consumer product they need to get on with it, wont be long until someone like apple comes along and 'reinvents' VR.
cheapchips
Veteran
What can a home user do with Hololens that wouldn't be better served by a VR headset?
I dont necessarily mean that consumers would be buying one for their kids for Christmas, but that it could practically be purchased/used by Engineering students/hobbyists/artists, that sort of thing. I do think that blending the digital and physical world is potentially compelling for the general public but who knows, in any case the price has to get waaaaay down, like $100 ish.
I know it wont happen but I could see them making something akin to google glass, and use that as their entry into the mobile market that they so handily lost. The benefit being that they wouldn't suffer from the lack of app support compared to competitors, as there are no apps that are designed for AR interaction in a widespread sense yet.
hololens will keep getting smaller while the screen fov and resolution gets higher. At some point ar systems will replace tvs and monitors and then phones. Actually with wifi direct they could just use the phone as its processing unit
Looks like they might be going more of a 5G route ahead of a wifi direct strategy, which is a good idea imo, especially as they are not a platform holder in the handset space, not a good idea to be at googles beck and call.
Microsoft hires Apple 5G chief to develop new HoloLens and AI products | VentureBeat
Hopefully this is a sign that Microsoft is doubling down on the surface brand, I think its on the cusp of being a bigger player in the laptop space.
Somewhat related but why hasn't Microsoft bought the rest of Nokia yet? its 5G business in combination with all the 5G networking stuff they are doing in Azure makes it seem like a no brainer purchase for them.
Surface brand is very important as is windows 10 x. MS's plan for andriod is to make it more windows as their own fork like what they are doing with Chromium /edge and what Amazon is doing to andriod. at least imo.
5g isn't the answer , 5g is going to be amazing for the first couple years and then every single product is going to be 5g capable and people are going to slowly kill 5g with shit pulling down shit constantly. That new watch , phone , tv , stove , fridge , bed , door bell ? All 5g all pulling down data and uploading across all people
Is this what the android app emulation thats coming to windows about? Eventually you will run your android apps from your surface phone natively on your pc, with some way for the android emulation to use your phones playstore ID/ google account or whatever it is. Seems like a good time to go all in on a fork on android, playing up the privacy angle, but for that they would need a cheap and cheerful 'surface mono'.
Just announced that MS has won a AR HMD contract with the Army worth over $2 billion a year -- $21.9 billion over 10 years.
So Hololens for controlling weapons at enemy targets?
Or non-battle things like overlays for mechanics to fix vehicles and weapons systems needing maintenance/repair?
Sounds like it may be the former:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html
OK, it's a big boon for Microsoft's AR ambitions, if they could leverage the work they do on this contract for consumer products, the Holy Grail pursuit of the next big paradigm in tech after search, mobile, that MS missed out on.
But this big win may not be without controversy, even within MS:
I don't think there will be some big exodus of employees over this. But OTOH, $2 billion a year is not that significant to MS financials. That is unless they turn Hololens into the Next Big Thing and dominate the AR/VR/MR markets.
So Hololens for controlling weapons at enemy targets?
Or non-battle things like overlays for mechanics to fix vehicles and weapons systems needing maintenance/repair?
Sounds like it may be the former:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/31/microsoft-wins-contract-to-make-modified-hololens-for-us-army.html
OK, it's a big boon for Microsoft's AR ambitions, if they could leverage the work they do on this contract for consumer products, the Holy Grail pursuit of the next big paradigm in tech after search, mobile, that MS missed out on.
But this big win may not be without controversy, even within MS:
I don't think there will be some big exodus of employees over this. But OTOH, $2 billion a year is not that significant to MS financials. That is unless they turn Hololens into the Next Big Thing and dominate the AR/VR/MR markets.
Imagine a visor that will display where your people are through walls and buildings and a mini map. Can use the cameras to also tag where the bad guys are . Couple that with real time drone and satellite data updated constantly.
Take it a step further and combine it with watch that takes your metrics and everyone else metrics. Medics can see the health of the units in real time , get additional help from experts for on the scene triage of injured soldiers.
Then you have everything recorded from everyones POV to study later on .
Its a great thing esp when you see the next generation of Hololens.
Take it a step further and combine it with watch that takes your metrics and everyone else metrics. Medics can see the health of the units in real time , get additional help from experts for on the scene triage of injured soldiers.
Then you have everything recorded from everyones POV to study later on .
Its a great thing esp when you see the next generation of Hololens.
I'm sure by the middle of the project it will work well. I doubt it will be on public azure , they will most likely (my speculation) create a special azure cloud for the government and the government will put it in space on satellites
the main thing for MS is they get to make a lot of the expensive lenses for the government and get to drive down costs for that . The next hololens is going to be even better for fov , lighter and have almost 6x the cpu/gpu power
I've been looking at the IVAS and how it differs from the standard hololens 2, would you say its fair to consider the IVAS system a 'hololens 2.5'? From what I have found the IVAS headset has substantially higher FOV because it uses twice as many screen projector module things
If xbox ends up having a VR accessory it will be very interesting to see how it has been influenced by hololens, I am certain that it wouldnt have any AR capabilities, beyond the camera feed pass through system that something like the HTC Vive has, but taking the hololens frame and lens mount and swapping the AR screens with regular panels seems like a good option.
