Windows Holographic & Microsoft HoloLens

[Mercedes]

Announced on stream. Yes, this is really a thing. NASA had a hand in it, too.

I'm not exactly clued up on this kind of technology, but it works as a mixture of lots of different things all working in conjunction with one another; holograms are created and the headset is used to see them, as explained in depth below, with a Kinect-like sensor used to judge where your hands are in combination with the holograms and allow you to interact with them.

There's no wires and you don't need a phone or PC, with the sensor having it's own CPU, GPU, and "HPU" (holographic processing unit). It'll also work with all Windows 10 builds, which is free for any Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 users.

Here's what we see, as observers:

And here's what the user sees:

It's still in very very early stages but it seems to at least work, and work well! Wired's hands-on article can be found below and I've cut some bits out. Here's an explanation into what exactly is happening:

Project HoloLens’ key achievement—realistic holograms—works by tricking your brain into seeing light as matter. “Ultimately, you know, you perceive the world because of light,” Kipman explains. “If I could magically turn the debugger on, we’d see photons bouncing throughout this world. Eventually they hit the back of your eyes, and through that, you reason about what the world is. You essentially hallucinate the world, or you see what your mind wants you to see.”

To create Project HoloLens’ images, light particles bounce around millions of times in the so-called light engine of the device. Then the photons enter the goggles’ two lenses, where they ricochet between layers of blue, green and red glass before they reach the back of your eye. “When you get the light to be at the exact angle,” Kipman tells me, “that’s where all the magic comes in.”

And some hands-on impression from Wired editor.

Kipman hands me a HoloLens prototype and tells me to install the switch. After I put on the headset, an electrician pops up on a screen that floats directly in front of me. With a quick hand gesture I’m able to anchor the screen just to the left of the wires. The electrician is able to see exactly what I’m seeing. He draws a holographic circle around the voltage tester on the sideboard and instructs me to use it to check whether the wires are live. Once we establish that they aren’t, he walks me through the process of installing the switch, coaching me by sketching holographic arrows and diagrams on the wall in front of me. Five minutes later, I flip a switch, and the living room light turns on.

Another scenario lands me on a virtual Mars-scape. Kipman developed it in close collaboration with NASA rocket scientist Jeff Norris, who spent much of the first half of 2014 flying back and forth between Seattle and his Southern California home to help develop the scenario. With a quick upward gesture, I toggle from computer screens that monitor the Curiosity rover’s progress across the planet’s surface to the virtual experience of being on the planet. The ground is a parched, dusty sandstone, and so realistic that as I take a step, my legs begin to quiver. They don’t trust what my eyes are showing them. Behind me, the rover towers seven feet tall, its metal arm reaching out from its body like a tentacle. The sun shines brightly over the rover, creating short black shadows on the ground beneath its legs.

Norris joins me virtually, appearing as a three-dimensional human-shaped golden orb in the Mars-scape. (In reality, he’s in the room next door.) A dotted line extends from his eyes toward what he is looking at. “Check that out,” he says, and I squat down to see a rock shard up close. With an upward right-hand gesture, I bring up a series of controls. I choose the middle of three options, which drops a flag there, theoretically a signal to the rover to collect sediment.

After exploring Mars, I don’t want to remove the headset, which has provided a glimpse of a combination of computing tools that make the unimaginable feel real.

Wired, via NeoGAF

do want. This is the kind of future tech I always love to see.

 

[Snow Queen]

This is the future I have been waiting for. Bring on the holographic meat loaf!

 

[Mipha]

Oh. My. Gosh.
THAT IS FRIKIN EPIC!
THIS BETTER COME OUT SOON

 

[Mercedes]

Oh. My. Gosh.
THAT IS FRIKIN EPIC!
THIS BETTER COME OUT SOON

Agreed! Not sure on the timings and there's been absolutely no release date mentioned, but current projections is that this will be in developer hands by Spring!

 

[Mipha]

Yay!

 

[Ventus]

Sounds like there will be issues with lighting. That aside, this is definitely a good thing. I will have absolutely no need for human social interaction with the commercial release of this; unfortunately, it probably won't come out until 2020 at the earliest. not even Rift is out in commercial.

 

[Emma]

This is Microsoft we're talking about. I expect we'll get something like we did with the Kinect. Not even approaching what they promised. Even doing anything at all. With early reviews proving to have been all made up. What I expect we'll get is a headset with a huge amount of glaring flaws. I am reasonably certain that it's only going to work properly in rooms that meet extremely strict conditions of shape, configuration, contents, and lighting. Things that are not feasible to control in a real setting. So while it might work in strictly controlled test rooms, it will not work anywhere else. Exactly the problem with the Kinect. And it's almost certainly going to have an extremely short battery life. I may be cynical, but it's what I've come to expect from Microsoft's "vision of the future". A lot of empty promises that never turn out. They do a much better job with their tried and true stuff, but never on actually innovating.

 

[Mipha]

Watched preview. My mined is blown. I'm gonna find a way to make a hyrule or Equestria simulator. Or to record what I see to make Zelda or ponies in real life videos and take them to a whole new level.
It's gonna be dang expensive...isn't it?

 

[Mercedes]

Watched preview. My mined is blown. I'm gonna find a way to make a hyrule or Equestria simulator. Or to record what I see to make Zelda or ponies in real life videos and take them to a whole new level.
It's gonna be dang expensive...isn't it?

Hopefully not too expensive. As people continually forget Microsoft does have a new CEO and there's been a lot of restructuring so we've no real frame of reference. Nadella is proving himself to be a great thing for Microsoft so I hope they price this thing fairly. Under Ballmer MS had a habit of pricing stuff too high, but hell, under Nadella they're basically giving Windows 10 away for free so I have hope yet!

And yeah the previews are incredible. And this is just an early prototype. There's so much applications available, I really hope this kicks off in a big way and we see some cool stuff. I want a Minority Report-style puzzle game!

 

[octorok74]

Seems so cool. Hopefully they can get it working right and can provide us with what they showed us. But I would totally want this.

 

[Justac00lguy]

With the way Microsoft price things, you'll probably have to pay an arm to get this.

 

[Jamie]

Oh boy, it's like my Playstation Camera came to life!

Looks silly as hell to me. I don't want to play Minecraft on top of my Religion textbook. Not sure how you can even see what the hell is going on. I prefer a nice crisp LCD TV screen, where I won't have to navigate Link through the curious and expansive dungeon that is my sock drawer.

 

[Mercedes]

Oh boy, it's like my Playstation Camera came to life!

Looks silly as hell to me. I don't want to play Minecraft on top of my Religion textbook. Not sure how you can even see what the hell is going on. I prefer a nice crisp LCD TV screen, where I won't have to navigate Link through the curious and expansive dungeon that is my sock drawer.

Well, that Minecraft thing is just a demo to show off what it can do and it was pretty much just virtual LEGO to show that you can interact with the holograms, move and place blocks anywhere. I love LEGO so with this you could have INFINITE PIECES!! This isn't meant to be a gaming peripheral like Kinect or the PS Camera, it's designed for general computing, it'll probably not even work with Xbox One, so this won't replace playing games on a TV and it doesn't attempt to. If anything it could be used like the Snap function of the Xbox, so you're playing games on a TV and can have a Skype call or a web browser floating beside you and can close/control them by swiping your hands, not taking up any space on your screen. Quality of the Skype video calls was apparently quite good.

The tech seems solid and all previews have been positive, there's 2 main hurdles I think; price, and how comfortable to wear it is. Needs to be cheap enough for everyone to buy, and comfortable enough for people to happily wear it for extended periods. Eurogamer's preview guy mentioned he felt sick after using Oculus Rift for a while, but didn't have such a problem with this, so there's that, but I guess we'll see.