HOOPLA OVER HOLOLENS: YES, IT’S WORTH THE HYPE
It’s not there yet, but VR’s augmented cousin impresses
The line for a quick demo of HoloLens snaked through Moscone Center during Microsoft’s Build 2016 developers conference Wednesday.
The excitement is easy to explain.
HoloLens is the world’s first augmented reality device to hit developers. But at this stage, it’s a bit like when Steve Jobs unveiled that first app-lite iPhone. Impressive, but of limited use.
That’s why Microsoft is banking on some of the 5,000 developers that have converged on Build to create applications that may one day cause AR goggles to be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In fact, AR is expected to take a 75% slice of 2020’s $120 billion AR/ VR pie, according to industry advisers Digi-Capital.
So the question is: In its firstgen state, is $3,000 HoloLens worth the hype? How about an emphatic yes with a few critical asterisks.
USA TODAY was granted two hours with HoloLens earlier this week; the majority of that time was dedicated to free exploration unfettered by Microsoft oversight. Since previous media access has amounted to short, controlled demos, this was effectively the first opportunity to assess what it would be like to own HoloLens.
By coincidence, the experience came just days after this tech reporter was able to spend significant time interacting with a development kit version of Face-
book-owned Oculus Rift, one of three high-end virtual reality devices landing this year.
While virtual reality seals off the user to teleport them to other worlds, augmented reality overlays interactive holograms over the real world.
Let’s cut to the key impressions.
Form Factor. HoloLens sits on your head like a 1.2-pound crown. Inside the clear plastic visor are projectors for the holograms, while on the outside sits a camera as well as sensors that determine your spatial position in a given room.
The most important thing to point out here is HoloLens is an untethered device whose technology resides inside the unit. An equally impressive AR goggle made by Meta is, by comparison, connected by a cable to a powerful computer.
One cannot understate the importance of being untethered — no cables to trip over — and therefore the freedom of movement that AR lords over VR. True, VR immersion is wildly lifelike, but as a result many experts
advise no more than 20 minutes a day of VR viewing. In contrast, I had HoloLens on my head for 90 minutes straight.
User Interface. There are three ways to interact with HoloLens, air-touch (hold your arm out, point an index finger to the sky then down), glance (move your head, not your eyes, toward something you want then airtouch) and voice (here Microsoft’s virtual assistant Cortana does the honors, whether it’s asking for a weather update or to bring up a webpage on a hologram browser).
The simplicity of this interface trio is to be applauded, though again over time holding an arm rigidly outstretched proved a bit fatiguing. Perhaps HoloLens is secretly being positioned as a virtual computer-slash-workout device.
Applications. The idea of HoloLens is to ultimately have it replace many of the objects we use to interact with our digital lives.
Instead of reading up on the latest news on a PC or a tablet, in HoloLens you fire up a hologram browser, choose its size and navigate to a site by typing one character at a time.
Real keyboards connected to HoloLens by Bluetooth can also handle this task.
I typed in USA TODAY and was brought to our mobile site. While it was fascinating to see a story floating in space Minority
Report style, navigating through the website proved problematic and, ultimately, I abandoned that quest.
The bottom line: What a few hours with HoloLens reveals is that augmented reality — once its form shrinks and its use-cases mushroom — is more likely to become woven into the fabric of our daily lives.
At this stage, it’s a bit like when Steve Jobs unveiled that first app-lite iPhone.