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Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

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Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#211

Post by curioussavage »

jimmySixDOF wrote: post #195
pharke wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Microsoft and Meta are obviously partnering up. This is likely just a symptom of that with Meta getting buy in from Microsoft to use Meta's VR platform. I agree that Horizon is the worse of the two but that doesn't mean they'll fail. Worse is better sometimes. The lynchpin will be if Meta is really married to Unity, Unreal Engine is eating Unity's lunch with adoption and features. If Meta makes the jump to UE th…

I am afraid you are not paying much attention to the xr dev community which is overwhelmingly Unity vs UE. Both have their shortcomings but the new UE features like Nanite don't work out of the box double rendered and thats just one reason.

I’m pretty sure it works in vr now. Just not on mobile vr which would matter for meta.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#212

Post by Mikeb85 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #207
l33t233372 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that online as well, no? I suppose if you elect to not remain anonymous there could be an issue, but generally speaking I don’t know that this is a problem.

Yes, but VR has the advantage of feeling closer to IRL meetups in some ways. Head and hand movement does a lot.

Everyone's pushing IRL meetings though. Apart from tech, most industries are back at the office...

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#213

Post by TulliusCicero »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #212
TulliusCicero wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but VR has the advantage of feeling closer to IRL meetups in some ways. Head and hand movement does a lot.

Everyone's pushing IRL meetings though. Apart from tech, most industries are back at the office...

Were we talking specifically about corporate work? There's more to meetings or meetups than just your job.

That said, I think VR/AR may eventually be a way to enhance online work meetings. It doesn't seem like it's there yet overall, but eventually I could definitely see it working.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#214

Post by pjmlp »

Hard times for the persons involved.

From technology point of view the few surviving .NET bindings to DirectX done by Microsoft own teams are now dead, thus re-enforcing the work from C++ teams.

Another example that technology many times dies not due to its technology capabilities, rather due to external factors.

Many XBox related studios were also affected by the layoffs.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#215

Post by pjmlp »

ripley12 wrote: post #22

I was considering getting into HoloLens development a few years ago. It seemed like they were still pushing developers toward UWP even when UWP was obviously nearly dead, and that killed any interest I had. Did the developer story for HoloLens ever get better or did it just die a slow death?

It focused on using Unity, and MRTK is based on Win32 and Khronos XR standard.

The problem with Project Reunion (nowadays known as WinAppSDK + WinUI 3.0), is that it is clearly managed by people without big background on Microsoft UI stacks (watch a couple of community calls), and it is years away to achived parity to UWP, let alone what Windows Forms and WPF offer in API surface.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#217

Post by sofixa »

charles_f wrote: post #30

I mean, these were cute and demos were a bit "wow" but the practicality seemed reduced, especially when most of the use cases they demonstrated would be covered by a phone call. The big industrial use case I saw was to receive teleguidance to repair equipment, the ground reality is that most of the time if you don't know how to fix it... You're not allowed to try to fix it.

There's another practical niche - museums. The Museum of the Liberation of Paris - General Leclerc - Jean Moulin (same museum, they couldn't decide on the name apparently) uses HoloLenses in the underground bunker that served as a command post during the uprising in Paris that led to it's liberation. It allows for a much more immersive experience than just signs and mannequins (they have both of those too). I can also see that working very well in e.g. natural history museums, with AR making fossils come to life.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#218

Post by TomSwirly »

h0l0cube wrote: post #71
pharke wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, Microsoft and Meta are obviously partnering up. This is likely just a symptom of that with Meta getting buy in from Microsoft to use Meta's VR platform. I agree that Horizon is the worse of the two but that doesn't mean they'll fail. Worse is better sometimes. The lynchpin will be if Meta is really married to Unity, Unreal Engine is eating Unity's lunch with adoption and features. If Meta makes the jump to UE th…

It's more that the industry is bearish on long bets in a tight financial climate. The tech for VR/AR is too clunky to seamlessly integrate into peoples' daily lives like mobile phones and smart phones did. There will need to be an iPhone-like leap in affordable and portable vision tech before VR/AR becomes a feasible marketplace.

Corporations are almost universally posting record profits. In what way is this a "tight financial climate"?

Answer: some people will do anything to justify corporate cruelty to peope.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#219

Post by antoniojtorres »

avsteele wrote: post #158

I really wanted to use HoloLens for remote support. Too bad they never really looked like they would support it for wider use. We are a small company that sells very complex equipment to labs around the world. The users are smart / PhDs, they just need to be told what to do to fix things when they need an adjustment. This is large physical scientific equipment and the stuff requires 'hands-on'.

Magic leap had some pretty interesting demos for remote support at CES this year. You should check those out if you haven’t.

Re: Microsoft has laid off entire teams behind Virtual, Mixed Reality, and HoloLens

#220

Post by nmstoker »

boppo1 wrote: post #91
andirk wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was Google Glass but it got laughed out of town for being made for dorks. Seemed like perfectly good tech.

Iirc there was some face-punching resistance to people recording discreetly. I suspect that may have subsided some in many areas due to the longer them of high-res-video-recorder ubiquity.

I never understood why they didn't let the camera flip up (to give visual appearance you weren't recording directly ahead). A simple physical move could have helped it gain acceptance
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