Microsoft HoloLens [Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Holograms]

[Scott_Arm]

Are any of these ideas even original? I mean, this is stuff that's been written about in Science Fiction or speculated by technology people for decades.

 

[Deleted member 86764]

What's to say MS haven't purchased patents off that company? They could have still made a considerable profit.

 

[Cyan]

Well like I said, things can be done in isolation with no knowledge of the other. That meta kickstarter was 2013, they were probably developing it before then.

This device has been under development IIRC 7 years. From Wired:


That's a long time.
If the software stack is the same, it may have been coincidence, it may not have been, perhaps they arrived to the same conclusions, perhaps they didn't, it's hard to say.

That's what I was going to quote too, 'cos another forumer mentioned that in a different post. Still, even if it was Project Fortaleza, it has been in the works since 2011 or so, according to the leaked Xbox One documents where they planned to release some kind of AR glasses for games and Kinect (Illumiroom?) in 2015.

I still wonder about its usefulness for games. I mean, you will be able to do a lot of things in games, that's for sure, if used well. But if the lenses are filtered and dimmed, the immersion of what you see on screen compared to what you see with your own eyes when watching your TV wouldn't be the same.

 

[iroboto]

What's to say MS haven't purchased patents off that company? They could have still made a considerable profit.

I don't think this makes sense. Did you mean something else? ie. MS bought their patents from another company that is not Meta?

MS, as Cyan points out earlier, owns many patents for the development of this Project B.

 

[Scott_Arm]

New York Times, First mention of resolution that I've seen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/t...s-a-sensational-vision-of-the-pcs-future.html

All those caveats aside, the HoloLens is wondrous. It blew me away. And it suggests that interacting with holograms could become an important part of how we use machines in the future.

The HoloLens isn’t a gimmick. Microsoft has clearly put a great deal of engineering work into this project. When you put on the device, which looks a lot like ski goggles, you see three-dimensional digital controls — like buttons, lines and pictures — as well as the sheep from the video game Minecraft superimposed on the world around you.

The holograms did not have very high resolution, and sometimes they were a little dull. Yet they were crisp enough to instantly create the illusion of reality — which was far more than I was expecting.

Edit:

This is just incredibly awesome.

In one demo, a Minecraft scene was displayed over a real living room. A Microsoft minder asked me to select a virtual hammer (a tool in the game) and start smashing the coffee table in the room. She wanted me, in other words, to use a digital object to interact with a real one. I did so and was stunned by what happened: Before my eyes, the real coffee table splintered into digital debris, and then it was no longer there. HoloLens had perfectly erased the coffee table from the environment.

 

[Cyan]

What's to say MS haven't purchased patents off that company? They could have still made a considerable profit.

In this article from March 2014 it was news that they purchased 80 AR patents, plus the article talks about the existence of Fortaleza and the leaked documents in 2012.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/456343/microsoft-acquires-string-of-augmented-reality-patents/

I created a thread on the matter back then:

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...eality-patents-for-150-million-dollars.55566/

 

[Scott_Arm]

And Time magazine

http://time.com/3677692/microsoft-hololens/

 

[Deleted member 86764]

In this article from March 2014 it was news that they purchased 80 AR patents, plus the article talks about the existence of Fortaleza and the leaked documents in 2012.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/456343/microsoft-acquires-string-of-augmented-reality-patents/

I created a thread on the matter back then:

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...eality-patents-for-150-million-dollars.55566/

That's exactly what I'm getting at. Could Meta have been one of these companies?

 

[iroboto]

That's exactly what I'm getting at. Could Meta have been one of these companies?

Meta just kickstarted last year 2013. So if MS bought their patents, Meta would have to pay royalties to MS to develop and sell the Meta SDK, which if I understand correctly they are still selling today. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The royalties from Meta would never amount to anything for MS.

edit: Oh right. Well clearly I got my dates wrong.

The purchase of patents basically acquired this company
Osterhout Design Group.
http://www.osterhoutgroup.com/products

Their website basically was cleaned out since the acquisition.

This product looks familiar
http://gizmodo.com/these-augmented-reality-glasses-are-james-bond-worthy-1677094990

 

[Deleted member 86764]

Meta just kickstarted last year 2013. So if MS bought their patents, Meta would have to pay royalties to MS to develop and sell the Meta SDK, which if I understand correctly they are still selling today. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The royalties from Meta would never amount to anything for MS.

I was understanding the comments on this thread that suggested that Meta came way ahead of Microsoft with their technology. If Meta only kickstarted in 2013, then it's safe to assume MS came first since theirs have been in development for longer.

 

[iroboto]

I was understanding the comments on this thread that suggested that Meta came way ahead of Microsoft with their technology. If Meta only kickstarted in 2013, then it's safe to assume MS came first since theirs have been in development for longer.

No you were right. In the end it just wasn't Meta, but another company. I edited my comments above.

 

[babybumb]

I would be amazed if the battery life isnt horrible

 

[Scott_Arm]

Eurogamer
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-22-microsoft-hololens-impressions

In 1895, the Lumière brothers made a short film about a train pulling into a station calledL'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat. Legend has it that people ran to the back of the theatre screaming as they thought the steam engine would smash into them - a scene popularised in Martin Scorsese's film Hugo. "Fools!" I'd think as they overreacted to something that wasn't even there. Then, earlier today, I did basically the same thing when I walked through a hologram of NASA's Mars rover.

I clipped through it of course. Of course!Right? But at that moment, even though I knew I was in an open space, I tensed up preparing to stumble over everyone's favourite space-exploring robot.

This is the future, ladies and gentlemen. Holograms are real and they do more than resurrect dead rappers for music festivals.

More on glasses and more opinion of the "holograms" not appearing to be fake.

Furthermore, while the units can fit over glasses, this is far from an ideal solution. I didn't even bother as I didn't want to risk scratching my lenses, while I overheard heard another person complain that it pressed her glasses into her nose too much and she found it more enjoyable eschewing her spectacles altogether. My vision isn't terrible - I'm somewhat near-sighted with astigmatism - and I found it worked mostly very well with the exception of trying to read text during the Skype demo.

But that's not bad! Comparatively, the first time I tried Oculus Rift it left me quite ill (as it has continued to do in the times I've tried it since). HoloLens, however, didn't make me even the slightest bit dizzy. I could walk, crouch, look around, stroll through illusions that weren't there and touch seemingly invisible walls. Based on my dozen or so minutes with HoloLens, I'd say it's strange, surreal and full of possibilities. And unlike in Robert Zemeckis' prediction of 2015, the holograms here don't look fake. It may be over a century since L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, but we're still finding new ways to make people flinch.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Mashable mentions glasses briefly

http://mashable.com/2015/01/22/hololens-hands-on-experience/

Before this, they had measured the distance between my pupils with a special device straight out of an optometrist's office (future HoloLens will do this measurement on their own). They used this measurement to preconfigure the HoloLens and then asked me to push my glasses up against the bridge of my nose so they wouldn’t be in the way.

...

But forget your peripheral vision for a moment, as your brain is bound to do anyway when faced with such a sight; this 3D representation of Mars is shockingly convincing. As I mentioned before, I slowed down upon apprehensively attempting to walk through the holographic rover in front of me. The strawberry blonde hue in the air is far more lifelike that the grainy images seen elsewhere, while I was free to walk around the three augmented reality sites manifested for this demo.

 

[Scott_Arm]

The only complaint I've found is that the device was cumbersome and ugly, basically being a flimsily rigged development device. Some people mention that the gesture control is primitive. Overall, I think every impression I've read of the display tech is overwhelmingly positive, despite limited field of view.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Sounds pretty awesome, looks like I'll be spending a lot of money of headsets over the next year or two!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The only complaint I've found is that the device was cumbersome and ugly, basically being a flimsily rigged development device. Some people mention that the gesture control is primitive. Overall, I think every impression I've read of the display tech is overwhelmingly positive, despite limited field of view.

It is the epitome of a prototype, device; a proof of concept of the technology. The challenge will be shrinking it down and removing the tethered computer, battery pack and addressing the ergonomic issues.

Somebody mentioned battery life and his would appear to be the hardest issue to solve. If they're using technology that generates and manipulates photons, it's going to hit a battery hard and have to run gauntlet of health and safety regulation. You're not a mile away from equipment subject to nuclear regulation because your using elementary particles in a consumer device. I'm not sure why they've opted for such elaborate and exotic image generation technology.

 

[Cyan]

Sounds pretty awesome, looks like I'll be spending a lot of money of headsets over the next year or two!

You can use the money you are going to save yourself now that you won't have to purchase Windows 10.

I shudder at the thought of reinstalling all my PC games again tho -I have a LOT of GoG games, a few Steam games, Origin, and from Gamestop's online shop too-

 

[Scott_Arm]

Sounds pretty awesome, looks like I'll be spending a lot of money of headsets over the next year or two!

It seems like there is room for both AR and VR. I could see myself with both in five years.

So far, I haven't tried out a good VR set. I definitely want to give it a go. One of the articles linked mentioned the idea of moving the world in AR, and the Microsoft people said it would be possible. Depending on how lifelike the experience is, and any issues the display might have with fast movement, they could potentially provide the VR experience as well. Right now, it seems like field of view would be an issue, and we haven't had an example of it using a fast moving scene.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It is the epitome of a prototype, device; a proof of concept of the technology. The challenge will be shrinking it down and removing the tethered computer, battery pack and addressing the ergonomic issues.

Somebody mentioned battery life and his would appear to be the hardest issue to solve. If they're using technology that generates and manipulates photons, it's going to hit a battery hard and have to run gauntlet of health and safety regulation. You're not a mile away from equipment subject to nuclear regulation because your using elementary particles in a consumer device. I'm not sure why they've opted for such elaborate and exotic image generation technology.

Whatever it's doing, it's probably just using LEDs. I still don't really understand how the lenses work, but they have essentially RGB layers to reconstruct the image at your eye. They had to measure people's eyes and manually adjust something to get the image to come into focus. Later devices will make the measurement and self-adjust.