31–40 of 119 posts
I'd be impressed if someone could give me a grab bag of real world use cases for the mass market. I'm just super not convinced that this isn't a Kinect sitting on your face. And Lego/Minecraft on the tabletop.... no thanks I don't want games set in my lounge room, that's an incredibly boring place to set a game in.
It's a fun proof of concept, but not much more.
Currently I'm working on a large HoloLens project for the aircraft industry. But the amount of possibilities I can think of with a HoloLens (or similar device) is limitless.
The HoloLens has amazing tracking and latency. In a couple more years, when HoloLens and/or competitors release a device with a large field of view, HoloLens-like tracking/latency, and leap motion-like hand recognition, it's going to be very exciting.
I've been making apps on it since mid last year. It's an amazing device, the image stability and quality is very good and in a well-designed app the small FOV becomes an afterthought. Clicking/selecting objects with gaze is often an antipattern. Much better to use alternate input. Analytics is kind of a mess. Everybody recommends unity but performance will suffer. I wrote my own framework instead. Most of the open-so…
Is AR the future? I demo'd google cardboard VR to a bunch of kids (prob about 200 ish) who thought it was amazing. They really enjoyed it and the feel from teaching them using VR was that this was another tool people will use in the future. Kids are already wired up with headphones, phones in pockets, phones wired to external battery boosters. I say this because I thought cumbersome cables from phone to goggles would…
People really don't like the concept that I can see a world they can't experience. Some people become offended. Making people feel comfortable has a long way to go, but as you mention kids start with no preconceived notions so this may not be a stigma for future generations.
I've been making apps on it since mid last year. It's an amazing device, the image stability and quality is very good and in a well-designed app the small FOV becomes an afterthought. Clicking/selecting objects with gaze is often an antipattern. Much better to use alternate input. Analytics is kind of a mess. Everybody recommends unity but performance will suffer. I wrote my own framework instead. Most of the open-so…
Is AR the future? I demo'd google cardboard VR to a bunch of kids (prob about 200 ish) who thought it was amazing. They really enjoyed it and the feel from teaching them using VR was that this was another tool people will use in the future. Kids are already wired up with headphones, phones in pockets, phones wired to external battery boosters. I say this because I thought cumbersome cables from phone to goggles would…
HoloLens is cool but most of the HoloLens applications you write will be consumed on the $299 software-compatible Mixed Reality headsets that ship later this year (it's amazing how few people are paying attention to this announcement - Microsoft uses Mixed Reality as its branding but these are basically high end VR headsets with integrated tracking for a third the price of Rift and Vive devices)[0][1] From an applica…
How well will this work though? Virtual desktops exist for the Oculus Rift and the Vive but from what I understand, the limited resolution doesn't make it a great experience, and can't really replace monitors yet for text heavy work.
HoloLens is cool but most of the HoloLens applications you write will be consumed on the $299 software-compatible Mixed Reality headsets that ship later this year (it's amazing how few people are paying attention to this announcement - Microsoft uses Mixed Reality as its branding but these are basically high end VR headsets with integrated tracking for a third the price of Rift and Vive devices)[0][1] From an applica…
> it's amazing how few people are paying attention to this announcement
It's not amazing because they're not showing anything except what appear to be fake, marketing videos. They've always been cagey with the HoloLens and what it was actually like and it looks like they're continuing down that line.
I would say info isn't that sparse (as it used to be). Search the Holographic Academy, watch their youtube channel, and subscribe to the Windows MR blog/newsletter.
Have demos of stuff I built, feel free to DM if you want to see.
If I want to watch a movie in a public area for instance, I'd love a VR mode to tune out everything else.
Pros: Very intuitive controls after maybe 5 minutes of using it. Building in voice commands is easy in Unity, can't speak for other platforms. AR has more practical applications (but VR is more mature). Microsoft listens, and will try and add features that people ask for. The forums were very helpful for someone a year out of programming to come back and learn. Spatial mapping was really cool. I didn't think something could be that accurate in the space of a few minutes.
Cons: Controls can be a steep learning curve for older individuals (based on my experience). Development setup was hard when I started, but has gotten much better from what I hear. Trying to show what you're doing in the hololens live was very hard. Had to build that in, but I think now they've cleaned that up as well through Unity. I think the previous con points out that this is a very new platform, and things are going to change. Keep that in mind, and don't get too mad if things break. It's not super powerful, so you'll have to move to directx if you want to pull every inch of performance out of it. Shaders are your friend (I'm a newbie when it comes to game dev, so this was a lot of learning for me).
I know that people mentioned that FoV is bad, or could be improved, but honestly I didn't have a problem with it. With AR, and how you can still see the world around you, it wasn't a hindrance for users that would demo. That being said, I wouldn't oppose an improvement!