Microsoft Unveils Hololens Headset, Windows 10 Device Streaming for Xbox One

There is a live demo that more accurately represents what the device can do, instead of this BS video. I pity the fool that believes that video is an accurate representation.

Windows 10 as a free upgrade in it's first year? Forget about the Holostuff, but this blew my mind.

@cornbredx: If you read the Wired article, apparently this was conceived/pitched 7 years ago and it had been worked on for the past 5 years.

Still, good thing MS is working on something that is more feasible in more real world applications.

Reading the article that Alex tweeted today http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microsoft-hands-on/ makes the whole thing seem a bit more interesting. The tech behind this hololens thing seems pretty damn interesting. I'm pretty damn cautious about this cause of how the Kinect has panned out, but at the least, watching TV with it seems good enough.

The one thing that this thing has over other VR goggles is that it seems easy to use and much more approachable. Jeff mentioned it on the Bombcast - the Oculus is a big hulking thing that requires a certain degree of knowledge to use. This seems like any one can use it, and ultimately, that might put it ahead of the others.

This is a HUGE point! In the much more plausible video that someone linked above (which I'll just post below) you can see that something as simple as selecting an icon from a menu seems awkward, as the woman's finger appears behind the thing she's trying to select.

The other odd thing is how reliant their software seems to be on voice commands. It's a great idea, but as we've seen from kinect, even if it works 80% of the time, that can still be frustrating enough to stop using it entirely. And especially if you have to use it to use these programs effectively, rather than just searching Netflix or whatever. Like if your browser only registered four out of every five mouse clicks, you would never use it again.

There is incredible potential here, but I'm completely sick of companies like MS relentlessly promising the world when any rational person can see through their bs polished marketing spin.

Lest we forget, this odd nugget is from SIX FUCKING YEARS AGO...

So if this was able to place the users fingers in front of the objects and spring up a UI, it would be easy to operate without the use of voice commands. Think the UI from something like Minority report, or even anime stuff like Sword Art Online. Not being able to project the objects behind your hands so that you can, for example, just AR project a keyboard onto a surface seems like a HUGE drawback.

Before people shit on Hololense, maybe they should read some of the impressions of people who have gone hands on with it. It sounds like they are actually delivering on what the video shows.

Note how the video goes out of its way to avoid showing a normal straight-on shot of anyone wearing the thing.

It's almost like they know nobody will want this once they know how they're going to look wearing it.

I see a lot of people here throwing out a lot of hate about the hololens like its fake but they literally showed a live demo of it at the event and then proceeded to let everyone there try it out so I'm not really sure how this isn't something awesome.

@brad3000: Those are just words, I don't think that they can convey the experience all that well. I trust the live demo, definitely not that overproduced video.

Are those Imagine Dragons lyrics at the end Microsoft's subliminal way of telling us they invested critical amounts of money into this thing?

After the complete letdown Kinect was I really have my doubts about this. We're just getting VR right now we're jumping to holograms already? I don't know you guys...

Well, it's definitely more interesting than trying to sell me Simpsons skins for Minecraft.

Augmented reality is the future, I look forward to the day when this tech fits in a pair of glasses.

Also god dam for some reason i'm reminded of the microsoft courier, why did they kill the most interesting idea they had in years while simultaneously vomiting out kinect, Poor J Allard.

Not interested until it projects from a stationary device, not some stupid goggles on my face.

Considering the amount of times my neighbours hear me shouting "Xbox ON you stupid piece of shit", I'm going to err on the side of caution with this...

Can't wait to name my virtual pet Densuke.

@joshwent: Whenever MS promises anything, I think back to Milo and how we were just bald-faced lied to. So fuck them and fuck Peter Molyneaux while I'm at it.

@physicalscience: Bulletproof.

@giganteus: yea I'm not saying it's bulletproof but holy fuck the narcissism here is through the roof. Sorry that showing a live demo, letting every journalist there try it, and letting wired write a huge article detailing the experience means you should immediately write it off as bullshit and not even be slightly excited that it could be something cool. I swear sometimes people seem to love to act like teenagers in high school who are only cool when everything is "bullshit".

This technology is literally the opposite of what a hologram is. The idea behind a hologram has always been projection on or into the world i.e. the object is viewable by anyone in the room. Goggles or Classes that project onto your eye are the exact opposite. This is AR. I guess they are trying to avoid association to Google Glass.

You know... somehow I doubt it will work out the way they want it to, but I'm really excited to see what actually happens.

Some of them might be teenagers in highschool...

It's crazy how jaded everybody is now, who gives a fuck if it's perfect right now it's fucking real life star trek. I think it's amazing even as a prototype, the applications for something like this is way beyond games and entertainment.

Hololens looks like a total pipe dream. I hate this kind of marketing video - it just comes off as disingenuous, like they're trying to bamboozle their clueless investors.

I'm all for getting Windows 10 as a free upgrade, though.

The Kinect "demo" videos looked just like this. I'd be shocked if it does a third of what this video depicts.

How do I get porn on this?

I have to say that I'm proud of the community here on Giantbomb. I did a quick search through the comments on the reddit post about this for "kinect" and didn't get a single result. It's strange to me that people can ignore the fact that microsft failed so hard at that the first time and only generally made it better the second time. I will remain highly skeptical about this.

Microsoft should have just shown some clips of Minority Report and said, "It's basically this."

Come on.

This looks fantastic! That being said, so did 'Project Natal' and we all know how the Kinect turned out both times with 360 and Xbox One.

Also, what's with Microsoft releasing their exclusives on the PC? Do they not want people to buy their console? As years go by this console gen, it seems more and more fitting to invest in a new PC and buy a Wii U for the Nintendo stuff.

The 3DS showed us that this should be possible to pull off. What ot did was quite impressive...and that was only a underpowered handheld device.

Gonna use this to make tupac and hatsune miku fight

Suprised this isn't called Piller of Autumn or some shit.

how is that kid seeing the rocket the dad made, he has no hologram glasses on

He was implanted with Microsoft contacts when he was born. Every kid born after 2002 has them.

@hassun: Streaming is HUGE for me. I have a 90" screen (projector) for the living room which my Xbox is connected to. I have a 50" TV mounted in the bedroom above my monitors and computer. I prefer to game on my Xbox, I like my friends list and library of games on it.. and I don't have to worry about my dated GPU (GTX 560 Ti is no longer good enough to play on).

Given this setup my the streaming would allow me to play games with the same friends in multiple rooms. It's also worth noting, if it's streaming similar to Steam, I could buy an Intel NUC ($100) for every additional TV to allow me to play Xbox on every TV. It's a feature I envy about the PS4/Vita work.

It's also worth noting, if Xbox integrates windows games to work on it in the other direction Xbox immediately has a larger Indie game collection and better support for indie games than Playstation could ever offer (Simply because indie games are developed FIRST for PC). I'm glad they are taking their platform in this direction... I had all but given up on running windows computers until I saw this.

Are VR/AR headsets the motion controls of this generation? Cause that's what it's feeling like, just another bandwagon that Sony and Microsoft are jumping on. Promising great things that will ultimately fall short, and will end up simply being yet another disappointing page in the generation.

I haven't been this impressed by an unveiling of new tech in a long time. They've shown off something interesting that might actually have a change to do something useful, and with live demos AND plans to release to boot.

It's just a prototype, but I can imagine something like this being ubiquitous in 10 years. I never got that sense out of anything similar in recent memory (Natal, Glass, 3D, The touch future, hell even Oculus), but this Hololens thing looks serious.

Welcome to the 90s.

Man, machine, the fusion.

Welcome to the 90s.

Light years ahead of evolution.

It's like an April Fools video.....but real!

I was under the impression that it was 3D printed afterwards. They mentioned during the presentation that one of the people demoing the product had designed some kind of toy helicopter thing and they 3D printed it.

A few times I've been around that track

So it's not just gonna happen like that

Because I ain't no Hololens girl

I wonder what the bottom of his shoe looks like...

@thethirdman: It wouldn't be the same because you'd be behind the action...unless you're into that sort of thing.

Am I the only person who had to google "windows 9" after reading this article? Why is microsoft having trouble counting recently? Why didnt they just call it the xbox4 by this logic so they dont have to admit they have one console less than sony

David Cage did it first!!!!!

The streaming thing makes me want to buy a Surface tablet. I know right now it's through Local Area Network only, but people will find a way around that (if MS doesn't offer up remote play themselves later on).

The hologram glasses are neat and I think I'd prefer something like that to something like the Oculus, but I'm still not really interested enough to think I'll be plunking down money for it.

The Haloization of any and all things Microsoft is jussssst fine with me. Cortana as their Google/Siri, Spartan as their web browser. I hope we get a new Office suite called Arbiter or something.

I'm just reminded of Kinect as I was watching the video in terms of what they think they can do and what it will actually be.

I admit that I am a curmudgeon - however, I don't think it's a bad idea to wait to see if the HoloLens has a practical use outside of MS's own tech demos, before going too crazy over it.

Morpheus and Oculus? I'm not convinced they're gimmicks. This? This totally looks like an ultimately useless gimmicky device. It doesn't have the precision people are going to want that might've made it appeal to the general public.