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Today I was very privileged to be invited to Immersive VR which is an award winning virtual and augmented reality company in Norwich. We were there to see how we could work with them in creating some new digital resources for the university but while we were there they showed us a few cool things too.

I’ll cover these things in a couple of posts but I’ll start with what I thought was the highlight of the day, the Microsoft Hololens.

Up until now I’d only ever seen it in video demos but to get your hands on it is something else. Fair enough the Hololens is still a dev unit but what I saw was pretty impressive. The first thing you notice is how sleek it is. We got to play with the Oculus Rift and the Vive today but for both we were tethered by a cable, the Hololens in comparison is completely self contained and is actually very comfortable to wear although I’m sure the battery life is shocking.

The first thing you notice when you use the device is that the field of view is quite narrow. Now I know that there was some debate about this in the press and it seems to have got even narrower since then but it’s still very usable.

In my first experience I was told to look at a wall and upon it was a menu of selectable holograms. To select an item you move the cursor by moving your head and to home in on it and then you raise your hand into your eyeline and simply make a clicking motion. This is the main form of interaction for many of the devices functions.

Most of the demos that I saw were generally around navigating 3-Dimensional interactive objects in physical space. The most impressive thing about the Hololens and its implementation is the fact that those holograms are literally cemented in that physical space. After playing with the headset for a little while I was asked to take a look across the office and on doing so every desk had a 3D hologram hovering above it, the modern equivalent of having your picture on your coat hook at school. Then I was asked to look out the window and blow me down there was a shark swimming down the street, absolutely mind blowing. They have actually taken this even further as there are 1500 holograms dotted around Norwich and if you were to take the Hololens out and about in the town centre you’d find them exactly where they were left.

The one thing I will say is that the so-called holograms do look a bit first-gen. It did give me a feeling that I was playing Second Life again but in an office but I’m sure that this is something that the developers are looking into. What I was also reassured by was the excitement that the Immersive team had for its future.

There are so many applications to which the Hololens could be applied and like I say it’s a great looking device and unlike the VR solutions we tried it was so good to try something out and interact with a real person at the same time. The boys and girls at Immersive were awesome and I thank them so much for their support.

There is an argument about what is better, AR or VR and to me mixed reality seems to be the way to go, especially in the industry that i’m trying to support. Originally I thought that the Hololens was a bit of gimmick but after actually using it I think that Microsoft have a hit on their hands. I was also reliably told that the processing power in this dev unit has been turned down by half so when they unleash the full potential of this bad boy the sky could literally be the limit.

I have been converted. Hallelujah!

Author

Paul Wright

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