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Development Kit for Microsoft Hololens

Microsoft has announced yesterday (Oct 7, 2015) that it will start shipping development kits for the Hololens in Q1 2016. Hololens might be the next big thing in 3D Vision / Virtual or Augmented Reality. It is a mix between the Kinect and the Oculus Rift. I believe that augmented reality has more future than virtual reality but this is only my personal opinion.

There will be sessions organized by Microsoft around the country to demo and explain the development kit. I have registered to one in November.

The development kit costs $3000. I hope this is not an indication of the price of the final product.

More info on the Hololens here.

Any idea or comment about the Hololens for LabVIEW?

Marc Dubois
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Microsoft organized a tour to demonstrate the new Hololens device. The tour was in Austin, TX from November 17th to 20th, 2015. I attended one of those demos.

Description of Hololens

The Hololens is an augmented reality head-mounted display. The images are displayed on a transparent glass that the user can see through, making the technology much less subject to discomforts associated with fully-immersive virtual reality devices. The Hololens is equipped with sensors that scan the environment and analyze the gestures of the user, with at least one microphone for voice commands, and with at least two speakers that do not cover the ears.

The Hololens is very light and easy to install, thanks to two concentric rings: one ring is adjusted to the head and the other one that supports the electronics pivots around the first ring and is locked in position when the first ring is tighten using a single wheel in the back of the head. This approach makes the positioning of the display independent from the installation on the head.

The installation is also facilitated by the fact that all electronics of the Hololens is self-contained; no cable to deal with and no fanny pack.

Description of demo

Just before the demo, my inter-pupillary distance was measured using one of those devices one might see at oculist offices. It was the first time mine was measured and I was surprised at the 68.5-mm result that was significantly larger than the “standard” value I was using of 62.5 mm. The lady who was doing the demo at the same time than me in an adjacent room had an inter-pupillary distance value of 58.5 mm.

The demos consisted of sessions, one person at a time, of a ~10-min shooting games. The demos were in small rooms, about 15’x15’. At the beginning of the demo, after installing the Hololens, I had to spend less than 30 seconds to scan the room. In that mode, I had to move my head and turn around to scan the walls and objects in the room so that the Hololens could create a 3D model of the room. During that operation, I could see triangular meshing being built on the walls and objects, definitely giving a “Matrix” feel to the operation.

The game consisted at shooting at robots that were breaking through the walls and that shot back at me. I had to aim using the visor displayed in the Hololens. Robots were coming at me from the four walls of the room. Firing my weapon was accomplishing by bending the index finger while the rest of the hand had to be held as a fist, and I had to maintain my hand in front of me or I could not fire. Several times, I had to reposition my hand in front of me because I could not shoot anymore. A special power could be activated at some interval by saying “X-ray” that slowed down the robots for a few seconds.

I had the opportunity to hold the Hololens in my hands for a total of less than 10 seconds. It was almost put on my head (I had the chance to make the adjustments myself though using a single wheel in the back) and when I quickly removed it at the end of the demo to look at it, the Hololens was snatched out of my hands and I was quickly showed the exit of the room.

Impression

I have to say that I am not a gamer so I cannot compare the value of Hololens for gaming with other platforms. Moreover, I have absolutely no interest in gaming so from that point of view, the choice of demo by Microsoft was lost on me. I would have preferred something more industrial or scientific like some ot the examples shown in the promotional videos.

Nonetheless, I was impressed by the Hololens. The first characteristic that jumped at me was the quality of the contrast of the generated images relative to the reality. The virtual images did not seem to have any transparency. The images were like CAD drawings rather than rendered images, and the colors were very bright in a slightly dark room with gray walls (not fully lighted, more like a living room at night than an office), helping with the apparent opacity but it was still very impressive.

The second impressive characteristic was the spatial registration. When moving in the room ducking to avoid laser rays from the robots, the virtual objects appeared really locked in space. The robots were coming from all around me (I could hear them breaking through the wall in my back) and when quickly turning around on myself, I could not feel any virtual object jumping, moving awkwardly, or jittering.

The third characteristics I liked was the field of view. Much better than I had expected because of several comments I had read about previous Hololens demos back in June 2015. There was still some area of the field of view not covered but I think it was significantly better than what was apparently shown in the previous demo (http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/17/8788943/hololens-minecraft-demo).

Gesture recognition was OK but limited to a single gesture for that demo. The fact that it could recognize the index movement was impressive but trying to find and maintain the correct position of my hand during the game was the only point not very impressive with the demo. The type of demo chosen by Microsoft (shooting game) was probably more sensitive to that problem than any other type of demo.

Finally, what was definitely not impressive was the Question and Answer session after the demo with two alleged developers. That session did not provide me with anything I did not know before. We went through a Powerpoint presentation that listed the six characteristics of developing for the Hololens (from memory):

  • World lock (spatial registration)
  • Spatial sound (stereo sound)
  • Gesture recognition
  • Gaze (what the user is looking at)
  • Voice recognition
  • Environment scanning (I don’t remember the actual term used).

The applications developed for the Hololens would be part of UWP (Uniform Windows Platform) meaning that an application developed for the Hololens would also work on Windows phones, Windows tablets, and other Windows devices. They could not give me any information about how it would actually work: would the display be part of a desktop environment or 3D images would need to be written using a 3D coding into special drivers. LabVIEW 3D Pictures tools would be compatible with the former but probably not with the latter.

Summary

I really enjoyed seeing that piece of technology. Although I do not enjoy gaming, I could see the potential of that technology. To me, it feels so much better than what can be accomplished with other virtual technologies. My personal opinion is that the use of immersive virtual reality has very limited applications in industrial environments. However, virtual-augmented reality might be very useful.

Development kits for the Hololens, available first quarter of 2016, can be ordered now. However, at $3000 each, if the cost of the development kit is representative of the retail price of the Hololens, the gaming market might be small. For industrial applications, price is not as much a limitation. For LabVIEW applications though, spending $3000 now for a technology that I cannot tell if it will be compatible is out of the question. I will have to wait until more information about Hololens development is available.

Let me know if you have any opinion about the Hololens, one way or the other.

If you want to learn more about the Hololens, and even possibly order a development kit, go to www.hololens.com.

Marc Dubois
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