The Holodec is essentially here, or at least the working software. We can expect glasses that also adjust for out prescription as well. All of which means that we can expect 'glasses that provide us with a surround work station wherever we wish to sit and be comfortable.
Better yet, it will even be soon. How about a virtual cell phone as well. We will be watching folks essentially miming their cell phone and carrying out a conversation with no visible cell phone.
It is now a short step to integrate separate systems as well. You will walk into a room and everyone will be appearing to wear virtual costumes and look gorgeous. Just like our games now. This could be distracting.
I Just Tried Microsoft's Remarkable Holographic Headset — Here's What It's Like
http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-hololens-hands-on-2015-1
I just had a 40-minute in-person demonstration of HoloLens, Microsoft's new computer headset, and I'm convinced that personal computing is on the verge of a major change.
In 10 years or so, people will be using head-mounted displays that project 3D images that you can interact with in actual space.
It's going to be a huge leap over the flat-screen computing that
we've all become used to over the past 30 years. It's so much obviously
better that once people try it, there will be no going back.
Augmented Versus Virtual
This was the second time in two months that I felt as if I were
glancing into the future. The first was when I tried on the latest
version of the Oculus Rift, Facebook's virtual-reality headset. It reminded me of that "wow" feeling I had the first time I tried an iPhone back in 2007.
HoloLens and Oculus are similar but distinct. Oculus Rift is virtual
reality, which means the image seems to surround you entirely, and you
don't see any part of the real world.
HoloLens is augmented reality, which means it projects images on top of the real world. (It doesn't really project holograms everybody
can see — to see the images, you need to be wearing the headset or
looking at a computer display of what the viewer is seeing.) The
goggles, or glasses, are translucent. It's a little like Google Glass
but with actual glass and much more immersive.
HoloLens is less jarring than Oculus and a lot more flexible. With
HoloLens, the programmer can control transparency of real-world objects.
For instance, in one demo, the program superimposed the Martian
landscape all around me, and I could barely see through it — except when
I was looking at one particular PC monitor, which appeared front and
center.
It's closest to Google Glass, but I never saw a very good immersive
application in Glass — it was always just a little tiny bit of
information superimposed on the real world. Glass seemed more geared
toward taking in information, like recording video. HoloLens was more
interactive. (Apparently Magic Leap, which in October got a $542 million investment from Google, is working on something similar, but we haven't seen it yet.)
This combination of reality and unreality is amazing, and potentially incredibly useful, as the demos showed.
Here's what I saw.
The Setup
Microsoft has been working on HoloLens in secret for five years, one
rep told me, and security was incredibly tight. I was with a group of
about 30 other reporters. Microsoft confiscated our bags and phones, and
we were not allowed to take pictures or video.
Then they escorted us downstairs into the super-secret labs in the basement of the Microsoft
Visitor Center, right in the most-trafficked part of Microsoft's
headquarters. As one executive quipped earlier in the day, this
five-year development project was hidden in plain sight.
We were trying on early demo
versions of the glasses, and they were a lot clunkier than the prototype
version shown on stage and in the picture at the top of this article.
They were basically two pieces of glass and a series of head straps,
with some odd metal cylinders here and there. There was also what looked
like the main CPU unit, a several-pound black box that we draped around
our neck, and we had to use a power cord during the demos. The whole
setup was very steampunk, or like something from the Terry Gilliam movie
"Brazil."
But Microsoft assured us that the
much slicker prototype versions would in fact be out soon — "in the
Windows 10 time frame" is the official statement. Think 2016. They also
promised that HoloLens would be self-contained — it requires no phone
and no PC, and it is battery-powered.
Microsoft showed us a couple of key
things, such as how to move the cursor around the virtual world (that's
easy — you just move your head), and how to select using a particular
finger gesture — you basically stick your finger straight up in the air
as with one of those foam hands fans show at football games, then move
the finger down and back up again.
Then we were ready to go. I tried three applications and got a demo of another person using a fourth one.
Skype
This was the most obviously useful
and the easiest to understand, as it was an extension of a familiar
application, Skype video calling.
For the demo, I was told I would be
installing a light switch. (I've never done this.) I would use the
Skype app on HoloLens to call our handy friend, Lloyd, who would walk me
through how to do it.
Lloyd appeared in a little window.
He could see everything I was looking at. (My field of vision would
appear on the Surface app he was using back at his house.) He told me to
look at the set of tools, then told me to pick up the voltage meter,
the screwdriver, and so on. When he needed to, he could "draw" on the
world in front of me — so, for instance, he drew a little diagram to
show me which way to hold the light switch when I was attaching it to a
couple of wires. If I wanted to have a clear field of vision, I could
"pin" the little window with him in it, so it would stop following my
field of vision around.
This photo from Microsoft's press
kit shows how it works: "Dad" is drawing on the screen while his
daughter sees the instructions superimposed on the real world in front
of her:
In this way, he walked me through
the installation in about five minutes. I succeeded! I wish I'd had this
product last weekend, when I struggled to install some curtain rods
into plaster in my house. (It took a couple of tries.)
This will apparently be a real app, and it will be available when HoloLens ships.
'Minecraft'
For this one, I was escorted into what looked like a small living
room. When the game started, I was able to see blocks and scenes from
the video game "Minecraft" superimposed on the real surroundings around
me. They even extended below the coffee table in the middle of the room.
At one point, I was pointed to some zombies on another table. I said
"shovel" and a shovel appeared on the screen. Then, I used the finger
gesture to dig a trench through the coffee table. Weirdly, the coffee
table seemed to disappear, showing me the "Minecraft" world below it,
including a pit of hot lava. (Obviously, what was really happening is
that as I dug, the "Minecraft" world was superimposed on the coffee
table in just that spot. But it really seemed as if I were digging
through it.)
Then I lit some TNT and blew the zombies into the lava.
By the way, Microsoft did not officially call this demo "Minecraft,"
and the company is not committing to bringing "Minecraft" to this
platform. But it looked just like "Minecraft," and let's be serious — if
Microsoft did this, my kids would become even more addicted to
"Minecraft" than they already are.
Here's kind of what it looked like:
Mars Rover
Microsoft developed this app in conjunction with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a branch of NASA that tests all kinds of futuristic applications from
companies and government agencies before the general public. (I'm
jealous; I want to work there.)
The surface of Mars unfolded before me. I moved my head to move the
cursor around, then moved my finger to select specific spots. Then we
could apply scientific analyses to these spots. We could also walk right
up to them, crouch down for a closer look, and so on.
At one point, there was a PC monitor right in the middle of our field
of vision — this was to show how scientists do this today, and it's
rudimentary compared with being able to move through the space in 3D.
But it was also another example of how the real world and the virtual
world commingled.
Finally, one of our colleagues appeared as a shimmering gold avatar,
and we worked with him to discuss parts of the scene that we wanted to
photograph.
It sounds complicated, but it was actually quite intuitive and easy to use.
As with Skype, this is a real application, and NASA JPL plans to start using it with real Mars Rover data this summer.
HoloStudio
For the fourth demo, we watched rather than participated. The
demonstrator dragged various blocks and on-screen commands around to
build a 3D model. (We were able to see what the demonstrator saw on a couple of big screens at the side of the room.)
At the end, this demonstrator sent
his model to a virtual cloud-based 3D printing service, which would send
him a finished plastic version in the mail.
This demo was the least impressive
of the four, but it showed how building a 3D model is much easier in a
virtual 3D space than on a flat screen. You can actually rotate the
thing, walk around it, and see what you're doing on all sides.
What Does It All Mean For Microsoft?
Again, what Microsoft showed was just a prototype. We don't know when
it's coming out, exactly how the final version will differ from the
prototype, how much it will cost, or which applications will be
available for it. It may crash. The resolution may not be particularly
high. It may give some people headaches, or nausea, or who knows what.
But it felt a lot more finished
than Oculus, which today shows nothing more than a few short (if really
impressive) video loops. It will have APIs that will ship with Windows
10. It has at least a couple of finished applications. It has at least a
vague time-frame for shipping. And most important, it felt a lot more
like a general-purpose computing tool, with a ton of potential
applications for consumers and businesses.
HoloLens won't be material to
Microsoft's business anytime soon. But it shows that Microsoft is still
thinking way into the future.
Microsoft may have missed the
smartphone revolution, but there's no reason to think that computing
stopped evolving when the smartphone became common. Microsoft is
certainly taking steps to make sure it has a part in whatever comes
next.
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