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| Images like this still aren't wholly
accurate — the user will only be able to see Holograms directly in front
of them — but the technology is definitely improving. Photo: Microsoft |
The HoloLens headset from Microsoft is the world's first
untethered wearable that generates holograms before your eyes. It's been
nearly a year since we first strapped a prototype to
our faces, and as the tech goliath prepares to unleash a first batch of
units to developers in the coming months, I was invited to check out
just how far the technology has come. Holograms are here people — and
they're going to change your life.
As a kid who grew up with a
hand-me-down rabbit-ear TV and a rotary phone, I sometimes wonder if
modern-day reality is actually a Jetsons-like, cyberpunk, Truman
Show sci-fi whose clandestine cameras I'm completely oblivious to. Well,
I had one of those moments earlier this week when I tried out HoloLens
for the very first time, and the work Microsoft put in is evident. Sure
the experience is still occasionally glitchy, but make no mistake, it's
very cool. Between improvements seemingly made since our last hands-on,
and after playing Microsoft's recently debuted augmented reality video
game, I'm convinced: We're entering the age of the hologram.
Plus?
Starting today, Microsoft's letting developers flock to their flagship
store in New York City to try out the same demos I did a few days ago.
I'll go through 'em one by one. But first, let's talk about the
HoloLens' progress.
People have had hands-on with the headset before, and there are a few pitfalls that still exist: The field-of-vision is still narrow,
meaning you can only see holograms directly in front of you. The
headset still feels a bit top-heavy. And the adjustment wheel on the
strap that goes around the back of your head snags your hair while you
rotate it to tighten the thing onto your head. Not pleasant.
But, there are many improvements! I didn't see any of the distracting rainbow-like effects at
the corner of the goggles, as we did in a previous hands-on
opportunity. I also didn't notice any reflective objects in the room
bouncing back light that distracted from the illusion — instead, actual
objects looked like actual objects, and the holograms looked like
holograms. And, while I didn't participate in previous firsthand tests, I
didn't think that you had to move your head too much in order to move
the "cursor" that floats in front of your eyes to select menu items, as
we previously reported. All those items were compact, and required
minimal noggin tilting, in my opinion.
One huge update? We got to play Project X — now called
Project X-Ray — for the very first time. That's the dope-as-hell AR video game that was demoed on stage back in October.
Slip HoloLens on, and malicious alien robots tunnel through your
breakfast nook's walls and unload lasers of doom at you. It's your job
to gun 'em down. It's
Halo meets laser tag.
In the game,
enemy alien robots explode through the real walls of the room in AR,
leaving you to physically scramble around to track them
down, manoeuvring to avoid their beams. There were a couple moments when
I felt like the image signal flowing before my eyes was kind of weak;
like, the AR images were kind of faint and flickery. Overall though, it
was intuitive to use with the handheld controller that was provided. The
actual gameplay was precise and responsive, as well. Foes disappeared
as soon as they were hit, with the same instant feedback you'd find in a
traditional video game.
You
might be wondering, how's this any better than virtual reality? It's a
good question! To me, virtual and augmented realities are
apples-and-oranges. While VR is like being cocooned in a 360-degree IMAX
planetarium, AR blurs the line between the actual and the virtual
worlds more than VR does. It's just a different kind of fun to see
bloodthirsty extraterrestrials orbiting your buddy's head in real life,
or ploughing through your family portrait from '91 hanging on your
parents' foyer wall and then opening fire.
I've truly never played a video game like
Project X-Ray before,
and so long as Microsoft can make the experience glitch-and-gimmick
free, the creative opportunities for developers are limitless. Imagine
swinging an AR golf club in your backyard and seeing a holographic golf
ball rocket into your annoying neighbour's window, or setting off
holographic fireworks into a night sky.
I will say that, out of all three of the HoloLens demos I was treated to,
Project X-Ray was
by far the glitchiest. Granted, the action was all extremely frantic:
Enemies buzzed around me constantly and quickly, which required actual
dodging and hopping and pivoting to parry their unending sortie. During
all that, it was sometimes hard to keep track of them all, because the
holograms of my robotic flying foes got weak, started flickering, or
were hard to follow in that dinky field of vision.
But Project
X-Ray was also the newest of the three demos! It was just revealed back
in October, so it's understandable it's less polished. Let's talk about
the other two demos — which were, largely, bug-free, and looked freaking
fantastic.
Reminder: With HoloLens, the "cursor" is your eyes.
You look around the real room you're in and select holographic images
that appear in your goggles by hovering the cursor in the middle of your
field of vision over the object. To interact with the object, you "air
tap." In front of the goggles, point your index in the air and then make
a fast swipe down motion. Voice commands are also at your disposal.
So,
onto the second demo: Holographic storytelling. The idea here is that
you can replace godawful PowerPoints with holograms. In this case, I
stepped into a fictional boardroom pitch for a luxury watch. I looked at
a real table in the demo room and saw a large hologram watch blown up
to the size of a golden retriever. It was a little glitchy — I think it
was supposed to be directly on the table like a real watch would sit,
but instead the image was really off-centre and appeared along the edge
of the table.
From
there, I could move the cursor with my eyes to different points of
interest on the watch: "Here's what the links are made of," for example,
or info about the battery. The really cool thing about this, from a
business presentation standpoint, is that you can actually see where
your audience is looking at the hologram — assuming they're also wearing
a HoloLens set, that is. You can transform your hologram so that it
looks like a heat map: The redder parts of the "object" are where more
people look. In my case, the big watch face was a focal point for my
hypothetical audience, so I was able to use that data and go in and add
an interest point that provided a factoid about the face's composition.
And,
for the final demo: HoloStudio. Here, you can download a 3D project
you've already worked on on a computer, for example, and then create a
hologram out of it — and then tweak it in augmented reality. When you're
done, you can send it back to your computer, a 3D printer, and more.
The
first thing you have to do, before you turn the real room into an AR
workshop for 3D holograms, is "scan" the space. This tells the software
where you can place your finished creations in the real room. For
example, you'll be able to stick your homemade AR sign on a wall next to
a real-life painting, or on an odder shape, like the top of an end
table or the side of a couch.
My demo consisted of a cartoony,
underwater dive scene inspired by Hawaii. There were small blue fish, a
couple of human divers, sand, lots of coral, plants, anemones, that
kinda thing. At first, it was a tiny, diorama hologram — but I could
blow it up so that it filled the room, and I was among the underwater
scene. I could then use my eye-cursor to select one of the fish, copy
and paste him around the vignette, and even blow one of them up to
pony-sized proportions. In another scene, I was able to spray paint a
Star Wars X-Wing orange. These projects can be saved and sent to you
later.
All in all, I can honestly say that this was unlike
anything I've experienced before. There's still plenty to be sceptical
of: That peskily narrow field of vision needs to be made way bigger to
achieve the same level of immersion as VR — that still hasn't changed,
and needs to be addressed. And the quality of the holograms themselves,
as well as the accuracy of their placements in the rooms, were at times
unreliable and inconsistent, so that needs work. Plus, HoloLens will only be available to
developers and commercial buyers in North America for $US3000 ($4162) a
pop in quarter one of 2016, so it will be a while before it's even
available to Joe Schmoe consumers like you and me.
Until then,
know that holograms are here, and that some of the biggest tech
companies on planet Earth are working to get them in our hands — even
the ones that are staticky and flickering.
