HOW IT WORKS

FOR HOME IMPROVEMENT

HAVING SPENT MY PROFESSIONAL life explaining mechanical concepts to our readers – as well as staff, friends, neighbours, family members and folk who come up to me when I’m at the local home centre – and having received instructions from experts in return, I can tell you that this new Hololens from Microsoft fills in the crucial missing links that occur when you’re trying to explain something complicated to somebody. Mechanical problems, electrical work, plumbing – all of this is difficult to talk someone through, especially over the phone. There are variables. Pieces don’t fit. Things break. Problems arise because the references you used are wrong or out of date, or you’ve fouled something up and can’t find your way back. Or any number of other reasons. The Hololens is the next best thing to an expert guiding you through. As the teacher, you can see what your pupil is doing. You can draw imaginary circles in the air around the wire he is supposed to choose – and he can see it! DIY magic, I tell you.

I can foresee a day when you, our reader, calls a POPULAR MECHANICS editor and we talk you through that tap replacement, or the woodworking project that we just ran in the magazine, or any other project, because we can both put on our Hololenses and see what the other person is doing. So, yeah, it’s very cool that the Hololens can let researchers explore Mars as if they were there, but I’m just as excited (okay, maybe a little more) about being able to see your leaky kitchen sink and showing you – live and in person, from a thousand kilometres away – how to fix it. –