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MS HoloLens
- Thread starter cyberheater
- Start date
I suppose it's down to interpretation. Aren't holograms technically flat plates with a 3D image recorded on them? So even the interpretation that holograms are real 3D objects projected into space aren't accurate, yet that is an accepted use of the term.
Assuming these glasses give the wearer exactly the same experience as looking at a real hologram, then what is wrong with using that term? It gets the idea across easily and quickly.
GeordieMark
Member
Regardless of how well it works right now, I'm all for cool new tech and companies being ambitious. It remains to be seen if this will ever take off, but I admire the vision.
UnluckyKate
Member
yes but in the video of the girl building the drone, it's 100% fake. They try to show you what you would see through glasses but it's never shown through the glasses of the wearer, only through the AR system of the camera and that cancels the biggest flaw of RA : input lag. That's already one big trickery if not fake setup.
And for the other promo video, well... It's promotional videos selling a concept, a vision, so we are in Project Natal level of bullshit but we are used to that. I just wished gamer and press would know that too and see what is real and what is not. What can be done and what is totally bullshit
I'd agree, except for two things:
- It would be almost unreasonably difficult to show the view through the demo person's eyes, and it wouldn't represent what she sees anyway. The AR camera is a nice way to show that.
- press hands-on impressions were generally positive about things like the AR stability etc.
I don't doubt the tech, but I do doubt how close the on-stage device is to what the press saw through the much clunkier tethered prototypes.
It has a lot of potential. I work from home and hot desk at work, and it would be great not to need a big monitor and space used up in my house, instead possibly having a nice big monitor on my wall without it actually being there. Likewise being able to have my personalised setup even if I'm not sitting at the same desk every time would be very useful.
Many impressions said their was zero input lag.
DryvBy
Member
You have a link to one of those impressions?
So the mars demo covers the entire field of view but it's opaque? Sounds distracting as fuck. Maybe if they had some clip on shade add-on to block out light it would be cool, but does it even work in the dark?
Also, as for the lightening of AR objects... are they affected by real world light? What I mean is, if you have a minecraft castle on your nightstand, and and it's very bright with the lights on in your home, when the lights are turned off will the castle still be the same brightness? If so that sucks, it'll be weird as fuck seeing something that's not affected by real world lightening conditions. The castle should be cast in shadow just as much as anything else in the room, unless there are virtual lights near the castle. But then it'll be weird seeing light come from this virtual object not affect anything else in room as well. Say, there's a paper on the nightstand beneath your virtual castle, if your castle lights do not illuminate the paper, that's annoying.
Also, as for the lightening of AR objects... are they affected by real world light? What I mean is, if you have a minecraft castle on your nightstand, and and it's very bright with the lights on in your home, when the lights are turned off will the castle still be the same brightness? If so that sucks, it'll be weird as fuck seeing something that's not affected by real world lightening conditions. The castle should be cast in shadow just as much as anything else in the room, unless there are virtual lights near the castle. But then it'll be weird seeing light come from this virtual object not affect anything else in room as well. Say, there's a paper on the nightstand beneath your virtual castle, if your castle lights do not illuminate the paper, that's annoying.
For some reason this brought Heavy Rain and agent Jayden's glasses to mind. Remember this: http://youtu.be/Ga22yQ1e7Jo
Tactile feedback would be nice.
lighthouse777
Member
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/hands-on-with-hololens-making-the-virtual-real/
Hands-on: Microsofts HoloLens is flat-out magical
2015: the year that sci-fi becomes real.
It looked for every bit like the holographic projection we saw depicted in Star Wars and Total Recall. Except that's shortchanging Microsoft's work, because these virtual objects were in fact far more convincing than the washed out, translucent message R2D2 projected, and much better than Sharon Stone's virtual tennis coach. The images were bright, saturated, and reasonably opaque, giving the virtual objects a real feeling of solidity.
Using Skype
A Skype demo was intriguing. I, with the headset, was talking to a person using regular Skype on a Surface Pro 3. The person was helping me wire up a light switch (and it seems that, yes, it was a real light switch with real mains electricity running through it). My assistant saw the world through my eyes; I saw him on a floating Skype pane that I could pin in place, where his head would remain. Using his Surface Pro 3 pen, the assistant drew diagrams showing me how to wire the switch up, pointing out which tool I should use for each task.
Mission to Mars
Our third and final demo took me to the surface of Mars. I walked around a 3D world constructed from data captured by the Curiosity rover. (NASA intends to use HoloLens to explore data from Curiosity and collaboratively make decisions on how the rover should spend its time.) The experience reinforced just how immersive this kind of augmented reality can be; the Martian imagery obliterated most of the room I was in, except for a computer workstation. I joked that I was surprised to see a computer desk on the Martian surface, because that's what I was seeing.
The Mars demo extended the HoloLens experience in a few ways. In Minecraft and Skype, the interactivity was provided by a mix of voice command and hand gesturea sort of finger wag serving as a mouse clickwith the cursor driven by the direction I was looking. On Mars, I could use a mouse cursor to perform finer manipulations.
On Mars I was also joined by a second person, who appeared before me as a sort of golden apparition. This other person was using HoloLens too, and so I could see a gaze line emanating from the face, showing me exactly what was being looked at. The apparition talked to me about some of the rocks and how they indicated that we were likely standing in what was once a lake bed.
Hands-on: Microsofts HoloLens is flat-out magical
2015: the year that sci-fi becomes real.
It looked for every bit like the holographic projection we saw depicted in Star Wars and Total Recall. Except that's shortchanging Microsoft's work, because these virtual objects were in fact far more convincing than the washed out, translucent message R2D2 projected, and much better than Sharon Stone's virtual tennis coach. The images were bright, saturated, and reasonably opaque, giving the virtual objects a real feeling of solidity.
Using Skype
A Skype demo was intriguing. I, with the headset, was talking to a person using regular Skype on a Surface Pro 3. The person was helping me wire up a light switch (and it seems that, yes, it was a real light switch with real mains electricity running through it). My assistant saw the world through my eyes; I saw him on a floating Skype pane that I could pin in place, where his head would remain. Using his Surface Pro 3 pen, the assistant drew diagrams showing me how to wire the switch up, pointing out which tool I should use for each task.
Mission to Mars
Our third and final demo took me to the surface of Mars. I walked around a 3D world constructed from data captured by the Curiosity rover. (NASA intends to use HoloLens to explore data from Curiosity and collaboratively make decisions on how the rover should spend its time.) The experience reinforced just how immersive this kind of augmented reality can be; the Martian imagery obliterated most of the room I was in, except for a computer workstation. I joked that I was surprised to see a computer desk on the Martian surface, because that's what I was seeing.
The Mars demo extended the HoloLens experience in a few ways. In Minecraft and Skype, the interactivity was provided by a mix of voice command and hand gesturea sort of finger wag serving as a mouse clickwith the cursor driven by the direction I was looking. On Mars, I could use a mouse cursor to perform finer manipulations.
On Mars I was also joined by a second person, who appeared before me as a sort of golden apparition. This other person was using HoloLens too, and so I could see a gaze line emanating from the face, showing me exactly what was being looked at. The apparition talked to me about some of the rocks and how they indicated that we were likely standing in what was once a lake bed.
There is various existing work out there in AR about modifying virtual lighting parameters based on a measure of the real world lighting environment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olx8XKV-P2g
The reverse is probably easier still. Although there's obviously a continuum of sophistication for these techniques and may be application dependent.
Turin Turambar
Member
I usually trust Ars, and they said
That said, the version they could try was more clunky than the presented on stage... AND it was tethered to the ceiling (power?) AND it was tethered to a "neck computer". And some other articles mention the fov isn't that wide, so all it's done in a "window" in front of you, nor you could pin virtual objects on reality, so I suspect the MInecraft demo was very set up for that particular room. Could it work if you would do it in another room? In theory yes, in practice I suspect it's still too green.
Microsoft is doing a great Research job with these technologies, but don't expect it to have it really working as they staged until 4 years or so, as you can't solve the computing and power needs just clasping your hands. And the most advanced stuff from their concept video will be still further away.
lighthouse777
Member
Microsoft's HoloLens to help NASA scientists explore Mars
http://mashable.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-hololens-mars/
Of all the announcements Microsoft made during Wednesday's Windows 10 event, HoloLens, the company's new virtual reality headset, almost immediately dominated the news.
But it's not just gamers and developers who have ambitious plans for the device. NASA also plans to use the futuristic tech to allow scientists to explore the surface of Mars with its HoloLens-enabled software called OnSight.
See also: Windows Holographic: Microsoft goes full throttle into virtual reality
Microsoft and NASA scientists at the organization's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California teamed up to create the software, which works in conjunction with the HoloLens.
Scientists who wear the headsets will see a holographic simulation of the surface of Mars based on data collected by NASA's Curiosity Rover. When multiple people use it at once they can interact with the Curiosity, the Martian landscape and each other.
JPL is slated to start testing OnSight With Curiosity this summer and hopes it will be ready to start controlling rovers on Mars with it by July.
http://mashable.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-hololens-mars/
Of all the announcements Microsoft made during Wednesday's Windows 10 event, HoloLens, the company's new virtual reality headset, almost immediately dominated the news.
But it's not just gamers and developers who have ambitious plans for the device. NASA also plans to use the futuristic tech to allow scientists to explore the surface of Mars with its HoloLens-enabled software called OnSight.
See also: Windows Holographic: Microsoft goes full throttle into virtual reality
Microsoft and NASA scientists at the organization's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California teamed up to create the software, which works in conjunction with the HoloLens.
Scientists who wear the headsets will see a holographic simulation of the surface of Mars based on data collected by NASA's Curiosity Rover. When multiple people use it at once they can interact with the Curiosity, the Martian landscape and each other.
JPL is slated to start testing OnSight With Curiosity this summer and hopes it will be ready to start controlling rovers on Mars with it by July.
Ah. Neat. How is it easier for an AR object to illuminate an real world object though?
Well, you know exactly the position and spec of the virtual lights, and you can post-process parts of the image to brighten or color it accordingly based on the (real world) surface info from your depth cameras or whatever.
Illuminating virtual objects based on real lights depends on less precise/noisier measurement of those lights via your sensors... you don't have quite the same easy access to data about the lights as you do with virtual ones.
Though one could argue that on the other side, it is easier to coherently/convincingly blend virtual light with virtual objects than virtual light with either live video or on a transparent overlay of the real world.
Yup.
I posted this in the other thread, but it's pretty much relevant here too:
I might have a very narrow view point on this, but from what I've seen leaves me VERY excited.
I'm imagining Hololens spawning a huge 60"+ screen somewhere in my room - I assume it's position would be either user defined or could 'float' with you as you move your head/body. Given that Windows 10 is integrated into HoloLens, I imagine the Xbox app would be available. I would run that and start the streaming service from my Xbox One to the spawned screen I have in front of me.
Then, while having my game up, I could then spawn a Netflix screen to the side, or Spotify. Perhaps when a message comes through Xbox Live, I could access it via a separately spawned window and reply to it, probably with voice recognition (given how accurate the demonstrations of this was during the briefing).
I could load up Spartan (or whatever web browser), and load up a youtube video of a particular area of a game I'm having difficulty with and let that play, side by side with my game. Maybe even a Twitch stream....
The possibilities of this tech are MINDBLOWING - and I haven't even touched on the potential games that could be developed which supports this natively. Can't believe people are so quick to dismiss this.
I might have a very narrow view point on this, but from what I've seen leaves me VERY excited.
I'm imagining Hololens spawning a huge 60"+ screen somewhere in my room - I assume it's position would be either user defined or could 'float' with you as you move your head/body. Given that Windows 10 is integrated into HoloLens, I imagine the Xbox app would be available. I would run that and start the streaming service from my Xbox One to the spawned screen I have in front of me.
Then, while having my game up, I could then spawn a Netflix screen to the side, or Spotify. Perhaps when a message comes through Xbox Live, I could access it via a separately spawned window and reply to it, probably with voice recognition (given how accurate the demonstrations of this was during the briefing).
I could load up Spartan (or whatever web browser), and load up a youtube video of a particular area of a game I'm having difficulty with and let that play, side by side with my game. Maybe even a Twitch stream....
The possibilities of this tech are MINDBLOWING - and I haven't even touched on the potential games that could be developed which supports this natively. Can't believe people are so quick to dismiss this.
hotnheavyload
Banned
Yes in 20 or 30 years it could completely negate the need for a screen at all. Very cool, the 'holo' race starts here.
And because of this, whatever they are showing on the floor right now, and whatever you get in the future (which will probably require kinnect) I'm sure will be different.
lol that is like saying when the wright brothers were making their planes: yeah flying is nice and all, but also kinda played (Langley, Weisskopf etc,.)
No, press tried it and we base our opinions around their impressions.
What I could gather so far:
Works better than expected, especially the Mars thing.
FOV is still too narrow.
Some glitches.
Might be a problem for people with glasses.
It's nice but I really wish they didn't keep using the word "hologram" as this has nothing in common with holography. I'm not sure they'd even be allowed to sell it using that word as it's clearly false advertising.
This is little more than what we've been seeing from augmented reality for years combined with a VR headset. Considering all the work that Sony has done with AR I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing happening with Project Morpheus when it's out. Possibly Oculus Rift too although I'm not sure if they've shown anything with AR?
What they're showing certainly isn't bad but it really feel like Project Natal when they were selling the concept of Natal rather than the product itself and then people end up with something that's sort of interesting but nowhere near as interesting as the concept itself.
I think this is very much a microcosm of the entire Windows 10 event, it's sort of OK but there's nothing particularly new and you know it's not going to live up to the concept they're selling.
Not writing this off in any way but there's nothing particularly enticing for me as a gamer.
This is little more than what we've been seeing from augmented reality for years combined with a VR headset. Considering all the work that Sony has done with AR I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing happening with Project Morpheus when it's out. Possibly Oculus Rift too although I'm not sure if they've shown anything with AR?
What they're showing certainly isn't bad but it really feel like Project Natal when they were selling the concept of Natal rather than the product itself and then people end up with something that's sort of interesting but nowhere near as interesting as the concept itself.
I think this is very much a microcosm of the entire Windows 10 event, it's sort of OK but there's nothing particularly new and you know it's not going to live up to the concept they're selling.
Not writing this off in any way but there's nothing particularly enticing for me as a gamer.
Gormenghast
Member
*Especially* on these matters, never trust the media.
They only wait for sensational news, and they never are relevant news in the end.
Of course this won't stop the internet to spread pointless, childish excitement for the next several years. Until reality comes crushing down.
They only wait for sensational news, and they never are relevant news in the end.
Of course this won't stop the internet to spread pointless, childish excitement for the next several years. Until reality comes crushing down.
In Service
Member
This. I am aprehensive about that. I could aways get my eyes lasered. Maybe that will be an offer bundled by MS closer to the time - one free laser surgery with every headset.
I want the spooky Kipman guy to narrate a horror movie/mini-game which takes place in the dark with the AR headset in my own home. That sounds awesome.
Phat Michael
Banned
yes we should trust biased forum posters who havent experienced the product first hand.
And those wo did not use it spread pointles, childish depreciations.
And start developing for it... shit I might make a HoloLens game idea thread, why not!
I have a friend who is working on a game for it and he told me it just works. I trust him. And he never really liked Kinect.
maquiladora
Member
Oh god. The media hyperbole. Comparisons to the Lumière brothers....
It's AR, not the second coming of christ.
It's AR, not the second coming of christ.
TheLegendary
Member
Everyone loved the aspects of illumiroom that allowed the game to go beyond the screen. Is there any reason they couldn't imitate that with this set up? Your main focus is still on the game on your tv screen but using the glasses couldn't they augment the space around it, ie explosions causing smoke/fire around your room, or rain falling along your wall, expanding game world geometry beyond tthescreen, etc. ?
I feel like there's a way to implement this into a more typical gameplay experience in some cool ways.
I feel like there's a way to implement this into a more typical gameplay experience in some cool ways.
HoloLens may have better use for it in the real world than Oculus. Just looking at the video of HoloLens teaching you how to fix something by showing arrows and step-by-step instruction is... just fucking incredible.
For gaming? It will be hard to tell. Adaptation of current games with HoloLens will be hard compare to Oculus, where it just puts you inside of the game and... that's it. Game developers may have to be creative with HoloLens and that's why I'm loving the hell out of this right now.
I can't believe future is already here.
For gaming? It will be hard to tell. Adaptation of current games with HoloLens will be hard compare to Oculus, where it just puts you inside of the game and... that's it. Game developers may have to be creative with HoloLens and that's why I'm loving the hell out of this right now.
I can't believe future is already here.
I wonder what engines it supports? Maybe Unity support or even UE4? I do wonder how graphically the unit can be pushed.
I wanna see Swery make a weird AR game.
People are correct to be skeptical. From a commercial standpoint, this technology some years away, and when it does finally arrive, I doubt it will be inexpensive or have the faultless precision shown during the carefully arranged demo. On the other hand, people pointing out hyperbole in order to dismiss the tech entirely are going too far.
I could see people attending Build getting early access to HoloLens.
Maybe some developers at GDC as well, but Build seems more likely.
UE4 do support iOS, so I don't see why it shouldn't support a device like HoloLens with Windows 10.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I think you could be right. I think folks would be more comfortable where they can see their environment and stuff "projected" onto it rather then the Oculus Rift experience of being in a totally dark closed off environment.
Personally, I'd prefer the Rift but I can see of HoloLens would be better for a lot of folks.
Scully Scully Scoo
Member
i am having trouble comprehending all this tech. seems too good to be true. what is the estimated price point?
Here's the HoloLens thread on the Oculus General Discussion forum:
Microsoft HoloLens Mind BLOWN
https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19490&hilit=HoloLens
Microsoft HoloLens Mind BLOWN
https://forums.oculus.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=19490&hilit=HoloLens
oldergamer
Member
The press got to try it out. Not fake at all from what they tried. Try doing a little reading next time. Its not traditional AR.
It is promising however the videos show what can be done using their tech, i.e. the videos are just a theoretical introduction. I don't say those can't be done but this is microsoft. Remember when they first introduced kinect (as project natal). Kinect has barely reached that level with xbox one. For this, i can say it won't probably provide everything introduced at least for this gen.
This feels more like Kinect was the test bed and Hololens is basically a head mounted Kinect for the tracking etc.
Press got to try this out. Go read some articles. And it's not theoretical. It's already here.