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Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

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Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#331
It was a bit irritating to see the kid running up to the model of the rocket ship with excitement and no goggles on. Why lie and make it seem like you'll be able to see these "holograms" without the goggles on? Everyone walking around with these big ski goggles strapped to their head seems worse than Google Glass, which is awkward enough as it is.

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#332

It was a bit irritating to see the kid running up to the model of the rocket ship with excitement and no goggles on . Why lie and make it seem like you'll be able to see these "holograms" without the goggles on? Everyone walking around with these big ski goggles strapped to their head seems worse than Google Glass, which is awkward enough as it is.

I understood from the video that it had been 3D-printed

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#333
Is the plan that you develop apps for this thing using C# (or any .Net language) plus special libraries? Or will the somewhat real-time nature of 3D imagery integrated with the real world using a lightweight mobile device require something closer to the metal?

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#334
post #333

Is the plan that you develop apps for this thing using C# (or any .Net language) plus special libraries? Or will the somewhat real-time nature of 3D imagery integrated with the real world using a lightweight mobile device require something closer to the metal?

"Developers can target all these device types, with one platform and one store. And stay tuned later while our device types expand." They will not abandon that mission, they just committed to it! (video 3:00)

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has become forgotten as the public perception of Glass became dominated by the whole "glassholes" phenomenon, but the Explorer Program was supposed to demonstrate that people could think up these kind of amazing life-altering apps that proved the utility of bothering to wear Glass. They didn't. Years later, the reason to wear Glass remained "take pictures/videos hands free and shave 3 seconds off the time it tak…

The main application that sells it is likely to be less specialised than the cool demos, which are always a bit niche (modelling industrial design for motorbikes etc). 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…

I had an idea to do something similar once for a Uni dissertation, involving a rift mounted with two cameras to do a very hacky and cheap prototype version of what you've described.

My supervisor shot it down because "Google glass will do that" :(

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#336
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Google Glass's concept video: 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.

A better comparison would be Microsoft's demos for Project Natal, which eventually became Kinect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5__fZ3GsW8 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 mor…

I've never used a Kinect; how does the promo video live up to reality? It's looks almost identical to what I still assume Kinect is like, minus perhaps some of the highest fidelity parts like the skateboarding and soccer which I imagine have been attempted but turn out too clunky to be worthwhile. Am I wrong?

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and to do it, as well as motion tracking and environmental feature identification, in real-time with as little latency as possible, and do it on batteries. I keep feeling like watching the Longhorn demo at PDC 2003...

They added the third chip, besides CPU and GPU, they call it HPU (holographic processing unit), which could speed things considerably. If they hooked it directly to ccd then they could really grok terabytes of data on battery.

Magic is not possible. Whatever the HPU does is still constrained by physics. They can't explain away the engineering problem with an invented new name for a device we know nothing about except that it defies the laws of physics WRT computation.

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#338
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Training. Emergency assistance. Military applications. Don't trap yourself by thinking that the item needs to be the be-all for the Joneses.

Yeah this could make putting Ikea furniture together alot easier.

Like that's every going to happen.

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.

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#339
post #231
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a car mechanic remotely helping you to do what's needed to be done. This use case is showcased in one of the videos and it is probably not as complicated as building an AI engine to help a user repair his car. This thing is really crazy!!

This is actually a relatively silly use case for this. A lot of the actual difficult things that a mechanic can do for you usually involve more strength than you have. Or just experience in actually working with things that they can't see. 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 si…

I don't think that 'strength' is the issue but better tools and a lot more experience are the core parts: I remember watching one mechanic changing the light in my car: what took me ~15 minutes (I'm not kidding) took him ~30secondes..

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!

Re: Hands-On with Microsoft's New Holographic Goggles

#340
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a relatively silly use case for this. A lot of the actual difficult things that a mechanic can do for you usually involve more strength than you have. Or just experience in actually working with things that they can't see. 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 si…

Yeah, I'm just not sure that I buy the idea that there's a big market for an expert coaching you through doing repairs via AR goggles. 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 additio…

I agree this is highly unlikely to be a common use case. I might use it, because I try to do most things myself, and I could often use some expert advice. And I know the people who would help me, but it'd be inconvenient to have them come all the way out here. But overall, this is a one-in-a-thousand use case.

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.

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