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

@asky314159: This is an interesting thought! They certainly haven't solved the problem in the demonstration.

However, I could imagine it IS possible due to the camera being on the lens that it can super impose an image of your hand on top of the holographic image exactly where your hand is. Given how "Project Natal" came worked out, I don't hold high hopes for the device but the first impressions appearing do sound promising.

WHERES MY SKATEBOARD SCANNING?!

Holograms are the next big fad. Hope they pan out! Technology has felt kinda behind in the past 10 years from sci fi expectations. This seems to be shifting though, and maybe rather quickly. Self driving cars, general purpose robots, Advanced general purpose AI, drones are all picking up more and more headlines.

There were a couple of articles last year saying in 2015 phones will project flat images on to surfaces that you can interact with like a screen, and in 2016 they will actually project 3D holograms into mid air. http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/next-smartphone-buy-holographic-projector-inside/

There are also large 3d holographic billboards coming. http://www.kurzweilai.net/huge-ultra-realistic-outdoor-3d-displays-without-glasses-planned-for-next-year

I hope that holostuff will end up working as well as advertised. I was a bit bummed that Google Glass seemed to have gotten dropped, because we are only half-way there towards a dystopian Syndicate future. Right now it's only a handful of big companies that seems to own everything... We need all the AR technology bullshit and cyberpunk implants before were finally there.

@development: I find this to be a lot less gimmicky than VR. Removed from the constraints of gaming you can find a lot of useful applications in other fields.

Funky.

Just from that video thumbnail, this looks like that thing Norman Jayden got addicted to in Heavy Rain, ARI. And it may or may not have eventually killed him, depending on what ending you got.

Yes, I would love to see giant buttons for social media everywhere while walking around my home.

I can honestly say... "I have interest"

I know it is another "Kinect" type project, but it's exciting!

The only thing I found terribly interesting was Phil Spencer saying one of his favorite new games was Civ Beyond Earth, then I saw it said 15 minutes played. Probably not his Steam account, but I still got a laugh out of it.

If they get even remotely close to this, I'm all over it. The crack in the living room wall showing minecraft was just sweet as all hell. You can say what you want about how mirrors and white walls expand a room... That was something else. As people live in smaller and smaller spaces, stuff like this will become more and more valuable as a way to change ones surroundings.
One step closer to the pod

Hah!

That video is the most bullshit thing I've seen in a long ass time.

There's no way in hell it's ever going to even come close to working as well as it did in the video. Even if they managed to correctly map all of the holograms onto the surfaces in your home without too much jank, the kinect-esque interface of vaguely moving your fingers as a means to interact with said holograms is a complete lie. Seriously. There's literally no way that can be intuitive. You can't just tap your finger on a random spot in space and somehow have a computer know the exact point you meant to interact with. No. There will have to be some kind of cursor, and moving around a cursor by waggling your hands around.... Well, we all saw how the Kinect turned out. Imagine trying to maneuver that already-barely-functional cursor in three-dimensional space.

@acidbrandon18 said:

David Cage did it first!!!!!

I hope I live long enough to get one of these. Bonus points if I get to OD on drugs like Jayden.

Anyone who saw the first Kinect video, with the cool paper thing... will know what to expect.

I can finally have my ideal home office setup.

One step closer to the crazy cyberpunk future! Sign me up!

No way it works as advertised thought.

I don't care about minecraft, will I be able to play summer lesson in my own home?

This is going to end up like Kinect where it's useless for games but has practical applications in more important fields like medicine that people are going to conveniently ignore so they can call it a total failure.

It's the streaming from Xbox One to any Windows PC or tablet that has me excited. This is their answer to Playstation's remote play, only Windows 10 will be ubiquitous within a few years, whereas the Vita is already nearly dead.

I'll believe it when I see it.

This promo smells of trailer-hype just like kinect.

Normal people don't want to wear giant headsets, be it hologram, or VR. This whole headset fad will end-up being another tech bubble. Smartphones have created this simulated interest in "technology" by the larger masses, alongside apps. While in reality all ppl do on their phones is send text's, browse the web, and play mindless games.That's as far as the general masses commitment to technology extends.

This magical world where ppl carry mobile headsets isn't a real category in the market, its too much effort and commitment for the average joe/jane.

@giffe: But it's streaming from xbox to Windows 10 device (PC/tablet) and they definitely didn't say it would work in the other direction so I wouldn't go expecting that any time soon or even ever.

Also I don't want to tell you how to spend your money or anything but considering the hardware you seem to be employing, getting a stronger GPU doesn't appear to be a very heavy investment for you. :V

I kind of wish people wouldn't call this a hologram. To be a hologram it needs to projected into the world. What we have here is very good stereoscopic AR.

I'll just put this 1989 NASA video up here:

Anyone notice that they don't show a single person wearing the thing from the front? A few shots from the side and the rest are the backs of people's heads. Makes me wonder if they believe your average person will think they look silly wearing the oversized googles on their face.

Not for me, then I could just bury the Xbone in the corner and not have to worry about switching HDMI cables and audio cables every time I'd want to play my console.

WELCOME TO THE FUTURE

Let me know when I can scan in my skateboard.

First version won't be able to make holograms of black people.

Hey, I get Windows 10 for free. Good. I like not having to spend money.

Man, Microsoft again shows something totally fucking awesome that no other company has even come close to, and everyone is so jaded that they write it off as a "meh." NASA is working with them to use it with the Mars rover Curiosity this summer, and they have working demos in their secret lab that all the journalists attending were able to try out.

Science fiction is becoming science fact. HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?!?!?!

Also, streaming from the Xbox One to my PC sounds pretty neat. Would be awesome if they're able to pull off PC to Xbox One, though I can definitely see them running into legal issues with publishers and whatnot.

Good call. Google Glass just got shelved for basically that reason, as I understand it.

Wonder for how long the free upgrade stuff was talked about in secret, considering the whole fact that DirectX 12 is a 10 exclusive feature. I'm happy though, as long as it reviews well, I'll be probably upgrading. I think that the motivation for this move is two-fold; gain some really good PR, and combat the issue of most of your userbase sticking with a single OS (don't have any official stats with me, but I remember the adherence rate for 7 and XP being crazy high. Fairly certain that 7 was still well over 50% of the customer base, even with 8 out for a couple of years).

Also, yo, that motorcycle was first made in holograms son. Major technological innovations are built on the backs of previous attempts, so whether Microsoft falls flat or triumphs is not the most important part here. What is important is that Microsoft is putting itself on the line and beginning to seriously think about all this future shit, and that's exciting.

NASA wants to use it to science harder on Mars, so I guess it must have some kind of potential... But as always, time will tell, and I will wait.

30 years from now, when I'm too old to care about any of this stuff, all these things will be a reality.

Still no MC Collection on PC.

NEXT

@flippyandnod: Aside from the word "exclusive" how is the Wired article full of bullshit? A lot of different press outlets got their hands on the same demos and said basically the exact same stuff.

TBH if this thing actually works, and can enhance gaming. like the hologram video MS put out a couple years ago, that showed the TV content being expanded off the screen and projected around the room, I could totally see myself using something like this. It's obviously less immersive than full vr. But being able to see your hands and feet, as well as your home environment, is more user friendly while still potentially adding tons to what you are doing.

I don't see why something like this can't live along side the Oculus Rift. VR excites me as long as they get the motion sickness stuff sorted. But AR or holographic tech excites me just as much. And if this ends up competing with the Rift at all, it will be a good thing, because competition in the market means the consumers win. Look at what's happening with the new consoles, prices cut and packages re-tooled after less than one year as a direct result of MS and Sony competing.

The stream of an actual live demo made me far more interested in this than the marketing video since the latter, as many have said, feels a whole lot like the completely unrealistic marketing which was originally put behind Kinect. Motion tracking seems like it will have less issues than Kinect since it is presumably tracking hand movements rather than full-body movements and using a visor of sorts ensures that it is centered where you are looking (though I have to image that it becomes uncomfortable to wear after a while). I'd say the main issue here is that it seems to rely a whole lot upon vocal commands, which are always infinitely more cumbersome and annoying than pure motion-tracking.

I guess they are also really trying to figure out just what they can do with Minecraft at this point to recover the absurd amount of money they paid for it; they haven't really done a whole lot with it so far, but the marketing video focused a good bit upon people playing with Minecraft-like things and even just straight-up Minecraft near the end.

@whitegreyblack: Oh, for sure. I'm not saying that Hololens is going to be a big success and have lots of great applications, I'm just saying that people who have actually used it have said amazing things that seem to bear out the possibility that what was shown in the concept video is not as far from the truth.

Microsoft have said that this has a long way to go still and no one is even making any software for it yet. I see this more akin to the old table sized Microsoft Surface of yore, more a proof of concept that will bear out much more fruit in 5 or 10 years.

@brad3000: for sure, duder. Even though the tech is not up my alley, it will be interesting to see what comes of it.

Look Around You.

But on a serious note, this is actually really awesome. But only as a groundwork for the future. Consumers don't want a bulky faceshield, but in the future, I see this sort of augmented reality making it into regular glasses, maybe contact lenses. Hell, augmented eyes.

You have to lay the groundwork.

Really hope one of the first public made holograms is Tupac and Michael Jackson hanging out in your house.

I think this technology is going to be much more friendly to consumers over virtual reality in that you still have your peripheral vision with this. Oculus almost made me puke after 2 minutes of trying it.

Will I be able to scan my skateboard into my holo lens?

Another piece of hardware where the primary use case is a lightsaber fighting game, that won't get one, or at least won't get a decent one.

I was about to say that CAD work would be amazing with that thing. I just got a touch screen laptop and even that tech makes orienting parts a million times easier and more intuitive.

Yea holy shit, as someone who works on PCs for a living that is a Crazy move for them.

While IRL holograms are pretty far off, the most relevant aspect of the tech is the "stand-alone" part. Until Oculus can fit all that shiznit into a single headband, it'll be a gimmick - a cool one, but a gimmick nonetheless. That goes twice for Sony's VR headset. At least a PC can be close by. A console is usually across a room.

Psssh. Change the name to HaloLens to fit in with MS' Halo-everything approach.

3d modelling and animation is the only thing I can think of that Hololens would be useful for.