Heavy, and small FOV, but still amazing
When I tried the HoloLens when it was first unveiled five months ago at Microsoft’s Windows 10 event, I was completely blown away. It had the potential to be “transformative,” I wrote. Admittedly, this is in part due to the fact that I had never seen anything like it before. Now that I’ve had some time to digest the possibilities, I wanted to jack back into a HoloLens demo at E3 to see if the initial wow factor had worn off.
No pictures were allowed, but this is what the headset looked like.
While I’ve tried Hololens before, this was the first time that I’ve had the chance to try out the wireless version. Microsoft wouldn’t let me take any pictures of the headset, but it looks like the prototype that the company shows off in its press materials. Judging from what I saw after wearing it, I want to say the field of view seems slightly smaller than what I saw before. The FOV was never great to begin with and here I’d say it’s akin to holding a 5-inch phone horizontally seven inches away from your eyes. Arguably more limiting than the horizontal FOV was the vertical view. Any holograms slightly above your brow line, for instance, will be invisible to you. If you’re hoping this will get better when the headset launches, you’re going to be disappointed considering Microsoft says that the FOV won’t change dramatically when it officially launches. Still, what I was able to see within the limited FOV is still incredible.
At E3, I was able to try out a very brief Halo-themed demo. After getting my interpupillary distance (IPD) measured by a Microsoft representative, they placed the headset on top of my head and I was asked to look at a wall. With the HoloLens on, the wall displayed four floating circles spaced out in rectangular fashion. I was told that I would need to line these four circles at the four corners of my FOV before tightening the knob on the back of the headset to secure it in place. One issue that I kept on running into was that the headset would just constantly droop down my face towards my nose.
While I appreciate that this version of the headset is wireless, it also means that there is a whole Windows 10 computer sitting atop my head. This was noticeably heavier than the headset I tried at Microsoft’s Windows 10 event, which had the headset connected to a chest pack. In general, the headset felt uncomfortable to wear and before trying this HMD on, I was initially thinking that run-and-gun laser tag games would be great with the Hololens, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable running with that heavy headset flopping all over my face… A part of me wants to bring the chest pack back if it amounted to better weight distribution and more comfort.
Regardless, once I got the Hololens up and running, I was directed down a hall where I saw a Halo style waypoint floating in the air. It looked just like it did in the games, and even had a distance marker telling me how far I was from the waypoint. Once I walked through the waypoint, it directed me to look outside a “window.” The window was really just a wall, but inside this fake window I could see a hanger with Halo-style aircraft. I could angle my head left and right, and it displayed seamlessly, without any lag.
I continued to follow the waypoints down a hall and it directed me to stand in front of a circular warzone briefing table. The table was lit blue and here holographic battle plans were displayed. A Spartan soldier appeared and gave us the layout of the battlefield and outlined what type of enemies and terrain we would encounter. The visuals would shift, animate, and highlight areas of interest. This battle strategy was all to set up a Halo 5 game play demo on the Xbox One right next door, but I was much more interested in the HoloLens technology. One thing that I regret not doing too much of at the initial HoloLens event is sticking my hand out in between the holograms to see if I could obstruct the view, and when I did this, the holograms would just project through my hands, making them look almost translucent. Again, there was no lag, no latency, I never felt motion sick, and the holograms projected quite boldly and brightly.
I’m still a little confused by how developers will be able to program for it, considering everyone has different living room environments, but Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda, who is one of the Hololens leads, says that Microsoft has done a lot of that work on its end, and that developers wouldn’t have to worry about that. He unfortunately didn’t delve into it more than that, but that at least sounds reassuring for Hololens developers.
There’s still no precise release date for HoloLens yet and Microsoft is only saying that it will launch within the Windows 10 launch frame, but when I pressed Tsunoda if that meant 2015, considering Windows 10 is launching this July, he could not confirm.
While I wish the headset offered a greater FOV and was lighter, the visuals are still mystifyingly magical and there’s a lot of potential here if Microsoft plays its cards right.
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1BQhMvR
