Here is the product website with three promo videos on it:
What I'm curious to find out is whether HoloLens will run into the same core problem as Glass. People are afraid of people wearing Glass. They're scared that they're being filmed, or worse. Unless HoloLens can avoid making you stand out - by looking like regular glasses, or even contact lenses - I'd guess that HoloLens will end up suffering the same fate as Glass.
I was also thinking about battery life. If it's not designed for outside, then presumably you'll be near a charger, so you're less likely to run out of charge when you need it.
Many people would find tools like these incredibly useful at work, in the car or at home. But not in the street, at the beach or in restaurants whilst talking to other people. That's just socially awkward/insensitive.
Take the example of fixing your car. For example, performing your own oil change, or replacing your alternator. That seems like a perfect use case for holo, right? The goggles would tell you what needs to be done and what the next step is.
But that would involve so many technical challenges that it seems very difficult. You, as the creator of FixYourCar holo app, would need need to detect what type of car the user is looking at, what part of the car they're looking at, render an overlay with the correct orientation, and so on. And at the end of all of that, it's not entirely clear that your app is more helpful to them than if they'd just look up a list of steps for fixing their car using their mobile phone.
I guess what I'm asking is, what do you think holo's killer app would be?
This thing is really crazy!!
Now I'm really excited about this.
Now, a mechanic using this to "see" things that are actually in control of a remote robot? Pretty cool. Showing you the thing that is right in front of you? Cute, but ultimately silly.
How exactly does this work?
You still need to pay for an expert's time -- in fact, you probably need to pay more for it, because the expert is probably faster to do a thing than to explain the thing to you and then you do it. Also, the expert now needs to be someone with these additional skills of coaching someone through an operation.
Tools are still needed -- is there actually a big market for the kind of repairs you can do with the tools that everyone has lying around at home but which is complicated enough to need hand-coaching by an expert?
I mean, maybe! Especially if you can locate the expert in some place where labor prices are much lower (so: India). But then you also need the person to buy the AR goggles. And how often does this use case come up? Is this like 3D printers where people try to sell me on the concept that I could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for something that can make me things that cost less than $20 and which I need three of every year?
Online training though - a whole other thing. Imagine math and physics with interactive 3D visualisations.
Or for kids, a virtual version of one of those 30-in-1 electronics teaching kits.
And so on.
If this works it could be a game changer, and it could also create a whole new app industry.
I just hope the technology is non-crappy, and it doesn't get managementised into uselessness.
An electronics teaching kit might not work on a tablet (but would in VR), and note that any kind of really fluid manipulation of a virtual environment is going to involve a whole additional technology that gives precise locations of your hands (at least). The HoloLens allows a few simple gestures, not the ability to handle virtual objects in many degrees of freedom.
But:
> Tools are still needed -- is there actually a big market for the kind of repairs you can do with the tools that everyone has lying around at home but which is complicated enough to need hand-coaching by an expert?
Almost all repairs on appliances, cars, houses, and so on can be done with tools you have laying around the house; they don't require anything more than a hammer, drill, screwdrivers, wrench sets, etc. The only thing you're typically not going to have on hand is replacement parts, which are usually not too difficult to get your hands on and which you would have to pay for anyway.
When people do this, it's not going to be an "expert", it's going to be something along the lines of "hey dad, look at this real quick."
> But then you also need the person to buy the AR goggles.
The Ars reporting showed someone using a Surface to view and annotate the HoloLens-user's view, not another set of HoloLens. So the barrier is much lower, any Windows 10 PC should be godo enough.
Also, apologies for my brusqueness.
So I think the interesting market is in building the infrastructure/app that makes it easy for vendors to create the content and ship it as a (free) addon for their products.
And that's like riding a bike: you cannot really tell someone how to do it..
It can still be very interesting in many ways!
http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/service/augmented_reality_w...
Its not like car manufacturers dont have cad models of their own cars or anything, right?
Sony currently sell an HMD for surgical use, allowing for comfortable and convenient viewing of video from endoscopic cameras. A practical translucent HMD would be extremely valuable in surgical procedures guided by x-ray or ultrasonic imagery.
To give a trivial and easily-implementable example, I would have bought Google Glass without hesitation if it integrated with my electronics test equipment. Being able to view data from an oscilloscope or logic analyser without taking my eyes off the PCB would be a boon. PCBs are designed with fiducial markers as a necessary part of manufacture, and machine vision is already used extensively in many aspects of electronics manufacture and repair; It would be relatively straightforward to overlay all sorts of data that would be enormously useful to technicians and engineers.
Stereoscopic and volumetric displays are used extensively in petroleum and mining geophysics; This equipment is currently relatively niche due to extremely high cost, but could be used in a much greater range of geoinformation applications if costs fell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R1snVxGNVs
I think Google over-promised initially which lead to many being underwhelmed with Glass. I hope Microsoft isn't making the same mistake here.
First thing, it crashes, a lot. We're talking 2-5 minutes active 3d scanning before the structure sensor driver bites the big one. Requires killing and restarting service along with all programs associated.
Also had hard freezes as well.
Its "google quality" in other words, crap. It might get better. It probably won't, given their track history regarding consumer devices in "google beta" (read as alpha).
There was also the other Kinect demo that featured Milo, but Molyneux probably deserves the blame for that infamous piece of hype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDvHlwNvXaM#t=10
I definitely want HoloLens to be real, too, but to avoid heartbreak I'll temper my hopes until more reports come in. Or, even better, a firsthand experience.
And given that most normal people would know that it was socially awkward to use it in public only "glassholes" remained. This meant that buying/wearing Glass tarnished you with that label and associated you with that group.
They didn't. Years later, the reason to wear Glass remained "take pictures/videos hands free and shave 3 seconds off the time it takes you to check your text messages."
The MS product seems pretty clearly to be more broadly capable hardware, but I do still wonder if it will have actual applications.
I wonder if its "killer app" might just be that now a virtually big screen takes up little physical space/weight.
Clear the big monitor off your desk, now your 11" laptop (or smaller) can effectively have a 40" screen, etc.
Unlike Oculus, you can still see the real world. Unlike Google Glass, it's a big display and not an awkward eye movement.
There's still the barriers of - showing other people stuff - social awkwardness of sitting with a keyboard seeming (to others) to be staring into empty space while working - it might feel like wearing a hat - what's the effective pixel density like?
It is absolutely possible to use a lens system to move the focal point to the distance, but hasn't been done yet, probably because you can't do it on 120x120 degrees.
I wouldn't work on a virtual screen for long hours until there's an answer to that. But once it is solved, I can see how we'll all become Holographic addicts ;)
My supervisor shot it down because "Google glass will do that" :(
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/google-glass-2-0-eight-things-addre...
"7. On that note, don't give one to Robert Scoble"
It's not that Google Glass intrinsically makes you look like a narcissistic douchebag, it's that the first people to show them off were narcissistic douchebags, posing with their smug self important "look at me I want your attention" expressions, who crystallized the image of the "glasshole" in everyone's minds.
"Microsoft HoloLens goes beyond augmented reality and virtual reality by enabling you to interact with three-dimensional holograms blended with your real world. "
I understand the marketing reasons for this, but contrast this with the fact that Oculus embraces the term "virtual reality" despite the baggage that comes with it and the fact that they can't trademark it. I guess AR never caught the public imagination like VR did.
MS could find the middle ground between lush 3D VR-like environments and the real world. I find things like the Oculus and other HMDs to be terribly claustrophobic and dizzying. Not to mention really asocial. I don't want to mount a tissue-box size thing to my face that removes the real world. I'd prefer having the real world still here with the digital world tied to it. There just seems to be something wrong with giving software my entire field of view. I don't want to stare into the same Unity3D generated environments. I want to augment my real world life, not replace it.
In the early days of computer, the usage was like that...very task oriented. When you are done you go back to your non-digital life. It's only when the technology and public perception changes, you start carrying PCs in your pocket all day long like we are doing today.
That seems much more useful than a VR that you have to plug out of the real world and immerse yourself in - at least for collaboration with others on real world things... like the example with the motorbike design.
Back around 2000 a Slashdot article reported an attempt to create a human-sized hamster ball constructed of a semi-opaque projection-friendly surface. The ball would sit on some sort of roller mount. Five projection screens surrounding the ball would project a virtual environment over the "port", "starboard", "fore", "aft", and "north" surfaces. A human occupant would enter the ball, and, based on his movement detected through the roller base, be presented with a continually updating holodeck-like virtual environment.
Perhaps something like this is still in development somewhere.
Basically a helmet of sorts where you dropped a smartphone into a slot at the top, and some semi-transparent lenses in front of wearer's eyes then made the phone screen appear to float in front of said wearer.
Edit: found an article about it: http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132280-seer-the-augmented-re...