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MS HoloLens

Vallen Chaos Valiant said:
Microsoft had never demonstrated Kinect on stage, EVER. Not for motion control and not for voice activation. Kinect was only ever portrayed with staged, fake effects.

You know when you can tell when a company is being honest? When Sony's demonstration of live Assassins Creed gameplay crashed. Or when Nintendo couldn't get Wiimote to work properly because all the mobile phones in the audience was interfering with the signal.

Microsoft is terrified of showing reality. They prefer to lie 100% of the time than to let their hardware speak for itself. Deception is easier.
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Well, BAM!
 
I love the idea of playing Minecraft with it but I'd rather be able to pick up the blocks like Lego rather than their 3d pointer. Looks promising.

One little niggle, what are they using for hardware that this thing is pushing terabytes of data per second? That part grabbed me as marketing speak.
 
Looks pretty cool, but I think most people are going to prefer VR to AR. Personally I rather sit down and be immersed in a game environment not stand up and prepare an area for an AR game. It just seems to be much more limited than what is possible with VR.
 
Pimpbaa said:
Looks pretty cool, but I think most people are going to prefer VR to AR. Personally I rather sit down and be immersed in a game environment not stand up and prepare an area for an AR game. It just seems to be much more limited than what is possible with VR.
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In terms of possibilities VR is more limited, but what VR does it does very well.
AR, or at least this approach, is at least limited to it's real time rendering capabilities.
 
Pimpbaa said:
Looks pretty cool, but I think most people are going to prefer VR to AR. Personally I rather sit down and be immersed in a game environment not stand up and prepare an area for an AR game. It just seems to be much more limited than what is possible with VR.
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I think I may be one of the few who takes toward AR more than VR.
 
Pimpbaa said:
Looks pretty cool, but I think most people are going to prefer VR to AR. Personally I rather sit down and be immersed in a game environment not stand up and prepare an area for an AR game. It just seems to be much more limited than what is possible with VR.
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I'd say that VR probably has more application in games (or at least, game as we know them). AR definitely seems to offer more possibilities overall though. I haven't used either, but my current thoughts on what I'd use each for currently is basically "VR = games (and maybe movies), AR = pretty much everything else".
 
Vallen Chaos Valiant said:
And? How does that change the fact that they STILL used a fake demonstration for their promotion? Just because they acted like they are showing the real deal, doesn't mean they are. I still remember that Deomstration of a girl allegedly touching and interacting with a CGI tiger cub using Kinect. Or that voice activation demonstration that ends up shutting down the Kinects of the online stream viewing public but magically didn't affect the hardware on stage... Because there WAS NO HARDWARE ON-STAGE.
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How are you so certain it was a fake demonstration? There was more than enough jank shown on stage to convince me it was real.

notoccupanther said:
By deduction, from what percentage of Microsoft's project Natal came into fruition , (Hint: a camera in a box that is Kinect and a few shoddy Games) ... around 10% of this tech could be usable within the next 5 years mayhap.
I hope to be proven wrong, but it is MS Marketing we're on about here
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He claimed it will be released in the "Windows 10 timeframe". Which is super vague, but 10% of the tech in the next 5 years is an extreme lowball.
 
Raide said:
Hrmm.....it could be the one that seems like a wider use product and VR is fairly niche at this point. MS need to show why AR cover more than just a gaming base.
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IF Microsoft really is behind PC gaming, they will have both VR and AR for their Xbox brand.
 
JonStark said:
Basically, are we heading towards a AR vs VR future for games ?
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Near-future = VR will be king for enthusiasts due to the immersion and AR needing far more work to be utilized properly.

Distant future = AR imo as there are pretty much infinite possibilities what one can use it for. Virtual ads, clothing, markers for maps, prototype design, architecture, art and the list just goes on and on.
 
JonStark said:
Basically, are we heading towards a AR vs VR future for games ?
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I don't really think so. They're pretty complementary with large areas of overlap technologically. In the end, one or other may have larger application, but I don't think either supersedes the other. Unless the technology is simply too early, both will be around indefinitely.
 
Ape said:
IF Microsoft really is behind PC gaming, they will have both VR and AR for their Xbox brand.
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Yeah, I do see them trying to be a bit of everything. MS are hardly going to block OR etc working in Windows 10. More tech exposure for the better!
 
JonStark said:
Basically, are we heading towards a AR vs VR future for games ?
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Nah. Despite what many people on gaf seem to think, gaming isn't narrowing itself to a single tech, it's expanding in different shapes and platforms.
Several decades of gaming evolution introduced 3D, CGI/live action cutscenes, motion gaming of different kinds, touch games, VR, AR, mobile, online (massively or not), mobile gaming, all kinds of peripherals (driving wheels, dancing mats, motion wands, cameras, guitars/drums/...), but we can still play 2D platformers like we did in the beginning.
In the future there will be VR games, and AR games, and regular games, and all of those will coexist in the same world.
 
JonStark said:
Basically, are we heading towards a AR vs VR future for games ?
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VR for games, AR for life. They will both have games but the way I see it VR will be the console PC experience where the bulk of big good games are. AR will be for everyday life and will cater to the mobile crowd and will have more casual game experiences much like mobile phone games are now.
 
Alx said:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=148614533&postcount=453

The final experience probably won't be as smooth as what is pictured in the videos, but there's nothing unreachable there.
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But that's precisely the issue. Kinect might have in the end had (nearly) all the "options" originally proposed, but their execution was nowhere near as seamless, deep and varied.
Sure, you can "talk" to a character, but not like Milo or that KungFu master dude.
Sure, you can control an avatar with your body, but it wasn't nearly as fluid or detailed as the fighting thing, or the Star Wars demo.

I mean it's like you get an ad for a car that basically tells you it's gonna be as awesome as the latest Ferrari, and in the end you get a crappy Fiat 500 from 20 years ago. It's still a car yeah, you can drive it. Not quite the same thing though.
 
Raist said:
I mean it's like you get an ad for a car that basically tells you it's gonna be as awesome as the latest Ferrari, and in the end you get a crappy Fiat 500 from 20 years ago. It's still a car yeah, you can drive it. Not quite the same thing though.
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Well ads embellish the product, I thought everybody knew that.
But there's a gap between saying "it's not as cool as I thought it would be" and saying "they completely lied about those features that never existed", especially when the latter is factually wrong.
 
Why do people keep ignoring the fact that holo supports controllers and m/kb. It's like some people are bent on proving this to be limited, when it's really the opposite. I'm confused.
 
GarthVaderUK said:
Rock, Paper, Shotgun have tried it:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/22/minecraft-hololens-minecraft-reality/
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When I describe HoloBuilder to my roommate after the Microsoft event, she tells me about how much she loved to build vast Lego worlds as a child, her blocky civilization slowly spreading over couches, tables and every other surface in her home that she could find. Eventually, when her worlds grew too vast—and the danger of a bare foot stepping painfully on a Lego block too great—her parents would tell her it was time to pack them up and put them away.

“What if I could have built them digitally and kept them forever?” she asks.
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Heh, that's exactly what crossed my mind the second I saw the Minecraft part in the concept video. And I'm not even a Minecraft player. :P It reminds me of all these hours sitting on the floor and assembling Lego, putting or running my creations everywhere I could.
 
GarthVaderUK said:
Rock, Paper, Shotgun have tried it:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/22/minecraft-hololens-minecraft-reality/
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Nice. Answers some questions:

When I walk towards a nearby desk with a computer, I notice that that Martian landscape disappears beneath it, rather than projecting over it; users can designate areas where they don’t want holograms to appear, which is especially useful if you want to interact with the holograms using a computer. They encourage me to hold the mouse, and when I move the cursor off the screen, it appears suddenly within the holograph as though the Martian landscape has become an extension of my desktop.
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Despite augmented reality’s reputation for faint, shuddering images, everything I was seeing through the HoloLens was surprisingly crisp and offered little lag. The man points out a distant rock, and suggests that I tag it, so that the Rover can analyze it with its ChemCam laser, something he says NASA will actually be able to do via the HoloLens. I hold my arm out within my field of vision, lifting and retracting my index finger like that little kid from The Shining, a gesture they call air-tapping. It plants a flag on Mars.
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It seems like this will be great as a "building" tool. Sculpting, though? Not sure. Regardless, this is cool, and I am fascinated how the brain gets confused over AR vs reality.

In the next demo, we’re introduced to HoloStudio, a program for building 3D objects. While one man gives a quick speech about the finer points of the tool, another stands in the middle of the room, pointing and moving his fingers in empty space, like he’s conducting an invisible orchestra. On several nearby screens, we get to see what he’s “really” doing: building a three-dimensional koala with a jetpack from a series of preset shapes that he shrinks, enlarges, copies, pastes and colors. Eventually, he says, you’ll be able to send whatever you build off for 3D printing with a click of a button, and receive it in the mail with the ease of an Amazon package.

When he finishes with his creation, the man wearing the HoloLens digitally picks the koala in his hands and set it down on a nearby couch, right next to a 3D printed car that was also designed in HoloStudio. Shortly afterwards, the man walks over to the couch, moves the car out of the way, and sits down. For a moment I feel disoriented, like the muscles of my brain are stretching in an unfamiliar way. Why did he move the car and not the koala? I wonder for a moment. Because the car is real, and the koala isn’t, I remind myself.

There’s something about the HoloLens experience that seems to blur these edges between real and unreal in strange and sometimes exciting ways. Unlike VR headsets, which plunge you wholesale into an immersive and completely different world, the HoloLens feels more like shining a digital spotlight—directed by your gaze—that scrapes away the real world and reveals a new one glimmering underneath it.
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Minecraft/"Holobuilder" sounds like a fucking trip:

The HoloLens has the ability scan a room to map objects and surfaces, turning the world around you into the terrain of the game. After donning the headset again for the HoloBuilder demo, a gentleman from Microsoft suggests that I look under a nearby coffee table. When I kneel down and peer beneath, a charming little Minecraft castle reveals itself. Shadows—presumably from the table above—cover the castle, and I drop a little redstone torch beside a man on the drawbridge. The area around him fills with light.

I notice a small band of Minecraft zombies lurking nearby, and decide that it’s time for them to die. “Shovel,” I say, and the cursor transforms into a digging tool. Before my Microsoft guides can give me further instructions, I click a block beneath one of the zombies, and he disappear through the hole like I’ve opened up a trap door beneath him. I laugh. What I’m actually supposed to do, however, is switch tools and drop a torch near several blocks of dynamite, setting off a chain reaction and blowing all the zombies to hell. I happily oblige. Shortly after the explosion, a virtual lacuna opens up in the coffee table; when I walk closer and peer downward, I see the zombies tumbling into a sea of lava.

I’m enchanted. I want to plop down, sit cross-legged on the floor and play for hours with the secret world that I just discovered, but the time allotted for the HoloBuilder demo is tragically brief. My Microsoft guide directs my attention elsewhere (and with the HoloLens, directing someone’s attention feels a bit like pointing them to the X on a treasure map). I find three blocks of dynamite affixed to the wall, almost like little curios. Naturally, I blow them up.

As the wall detonates, bats fly out from the breach directly towards my face. The Microsoft reps tell me that the HoloLens has spatial audio, “so we can hear holograms even when they are behind us.” Which, P.S., is a creepy thing to say.
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When I describe HoloBuilder to my roommate after the Microsoft event, she tells me about how much she loved to build vast Lego worlds as a child, her blocky civilization slowly spreading over couches, tables and every other surface in her home that she could find. Eventually, when her worlds grew too vast—and the danger of a bare foot stepping painfully on a Lego block too great—her parents would tell her it was time to pack them up and put them away.

“What if I could have built them digitally and kept them forever?” she asks. She’s not a gamer, but she seems excited too. And what if you could have shared them your friends? I ask. We agree that this would have been amazing. And, really, it still is.
Click to expand...
 
Alx said:
Well ads embellish the product, I thought everybody knew that.
But there's a gap between saying "it's not as cool as I thought it would be" and saying "they completely lied about those features that never existed", especially when the latter is factually wrong.
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but it not "it's not as cool as I thought it would be"
its "it's not as cool as they said it would be"
 
Anton Sugar said:
Nice. Answers some questions:





It seems like this will be great as a "building" tool. Sculpting, though? Not sure. Regardless, this is cool, and I am fascinated how the brain gets confused over AR vs reality.



Minecraft/"Holobuilder" sounds like a fucking trip:
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That sounds way too awesome. Really have to reign in my hype. The lego thoughts sounds amazing. The Minecraft stuff also sounds like a load of fun.
 
Seanspeed said:
This is 1000% wrong.
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Personally I have seen nothing outside of First Person view games that work. I have seen no RTS or RPG stuff, driving seems to be focused around in-car views to simulate a person driving (I suck at in-car view haha)

I just cannot wrap my head around something that emulates seeing through your eyes into a virtual world and having anything other than first person. Seems like a weird disconnected idea that I cannot figure out.
 
Alx said:
Random Hololens idea of the day : remember those ads for X-ray glasses that see through clothes ? If the embedded hardware can do the same skeleton tracking as a regular Kinect, it would be easy to emulate those. ^^
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This would take a hell of a lot of setup both during installation of all this stuff in a house and for the device, but I think it would be incredibly cool if you could see the bones of your house with this thing. Look at a wall and swap between seeing studs, wires, duct work, plumbing, etc.
 
So, has there been a hint of when we'd actually see a release of HoloLens? And if so, what platform are they targeting? Xbox Two? PC?
 
Raide said:
Personally I have seen nothing outside of First Person view games that work. I have seen no RTS or RPG stuff, driving seems to be focused around in-car views to simulate a person driving (I suck at in-car view haha)

I just cannot wrap my head around something that emulates seeing through your eyes into a virtual world and having anything other than first person. Seems like a weird disconnected idea that I cannot figure out.
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You would be Lakitu in Mario 64. Third Person gaming will be incredibly easy in VR.
 
cakely said:
So, has there been a hint of when we'd actually see a release of HoloLens? And if so, what platform are they targeting? Xbox Two? PC?
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They said in the life of Windows 10, so that could mean anything. :D

Hopefully this year they will let Insiders at leads pay OR style and get access to kits.

ChronotriggerJM said:
You would be Lakitu in Mario 64. Third Person gaming will be incredibly easy in VR.
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I guess that is essentially what third person is but I just cannot wrap my head around it. I have not seen any videos that show it working but I might not have hunted around enough, :D
 
cakely said:
So, has there been a hint of when we'd actually see a release of HoloLens? And if so, what platform are they targeting? Xbox Two? PC?
Click to expand...

No date yet. And the device is its own Platform. But since it's part of the whole Windows 10 hoopla, I suppose it should at least support communication with devices running with that OS.
 
JaggedSac said:
Holy shit. I could play that in the yard. I would look dumb as fuck and probably be killed by the cops, but damn, that would be cool.
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I wonder what the limits are to environment mapping. Range, memory, detail, etc.

The possibilities of using this OUTSIDE the house are pretty exciting to me. In the comfort of my own property, of course :)
 
Anton Sugar said:
I wonder what the limits are to environment mapping. Range, memory, detail, etc.

The possibilities of using this OUTSIDE the house are pretty exciting to me. In the comfort of my own property, of course :)
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i bet you need a room to make the data set less insane...it can scan a room...but scanning an outside environment might be beyond what it can do
 
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