We’ve seen ever-incredible but never-quite-reality AR concept videos for years now. Microsoft, which just revealed their HoloLens AR headset, was brave enough to take the unit out on stage at their Windows 10 press event for a live demonstration.

When first coming out onto the stage, the user wearing the Hololens looked at a pedestal which had on it a “hologram” of a Microsoft employee. This view shows what the user saw through the lens:

microsoft hololens in action through the lens

The user move around the pedestal and although she moved her head slowly, the tracking looked great. Afterward, she gestured up to the wooden wall in front of her to bring up an application menu which appeared to be floating, but didn’t quite look attached to the wall (though we’re not sure if it was supposed to). Note that the finger does not appear to be correctly occluding the menu.

microsoft hololens interface application menu

On stage, the Microsoft HoloLens user demo’d the application HoloStudio which is a simple 3D design app which allows users to create models using gestures. Here we have a third-party perspective using an AR filming technique to project what the user is seeing onto the camera’s view.

The user built a quadcopter using HoloStudio which had been previously 3D printer from the app and shown to fly briefly on stage.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • zalo

    http://youtu.be/RCCXZ8ErVag?t=54s

    Position drifts pretty badly; look at the guy’s feet and look at the bottom edge of the menu when that comes up.

    AR has way more strict tracking requirements than VR does, in terms of both latency and accuracy. Not even CastAR has broached the threshold yet.

  • Noam

    The only technology that allows augmented reality with such low-profile glasses is ” light field display” – the same technology “Magic Leap” is using.

    These are a very very bad news for Google and Magic Leap….