The Dawn of the Hololens

The consumer technology world (particularly gaming) has been abuzz for quite some time on the subjects of Virtual and Augmented Reality -- shortened to VR and AR respectively. AR has been around for a while, as common as downloadable applications on cellphones and VR is slated to enter the market later this year.

However, a new technology in the vein of this type of reality-overlay has recently come to light in the form of Microsoft's Hololens, in a surprise announcement earlier this month at Microsoft's Windows 10 event via live webcast.

"What if we could go beyond the screen," asks the narrator in a video describing the device's potential, "where the digital world is blended with the real world." It goes on to show people wearing a head-mounted device that supposedly projects holograms of what the user wants over the real world. In just a single example, we see a projected television display, 3-dimensional ornaments, bright post-it-note-style pages on the fridge and even a 3D recreation of the area depicting the weather.

Microsoft may be aspiring to give every Iron Man fan a dream come true, but the device is still several months away from being unveiled. Additionally, Microsoft has been quick to insist that Hololens is not intended to be a direct competitor with AR and VR technologies.

While the technology saw a more primal iteration in the form of the Kinect, it has been in development for more than half a decade, ever since it was first presented to Microsoft by its chief inventor, Alex Kipman.

In a demonstration to Wired Magazine, Kipman explained that Hololens works by tricking your eyes into perceiving light as matter. Once generated in the "light engine" of the device, light particles are manipulated by layers of red, blue, and green glass into entering the eye at specific angles to form the illusion. It also has stereoscopic sound emission to emulate direction.

Hololens will be shipped to developers for testing and software production before the first half of the year is over. The date for commercial release is yet to be announced.

by Kevin Andrews

#microsoft #tech #hololens