Microsoft has splashed out on a promotional video designed to demonstrate its vision of a Super Bowl future, augmented by its untethered, augmented reality headset HoloLens, demonstrating how it could used in the home to enhance the football viewing experience.
Microsoft’s HoloLens is a promising piece of untethered, augmented reality technology which first appeared at the front end of 2015, and its free-roaming ‘holographic’ visor has continued to impress purely on a technological front, field of view issues aside. However, after a year ‘out there’, despite numerous examples of just how HoloLens could be pitched as a product, it increasingly feels as if Microsoft is searching for the right market to pitch the device into. We’ve seen high profile gaming demonstrations with Minecraft presented at E3, workplace applications with remote assistance and Xbox One streaming.
In a move unlikely to clarify that situation, Microsoft is rising the wave of hype that traditionally surrounds Super Bowl weekend in the US with a video that shares its ideas on how the AR visor could be used to bring elements of the event into your living room.
The new video shows various concept ideas, including a 3D pop-up version of the live match projected onto a coffee table, life sized football stars crashing through real living room walls and various gesture-controlled 3D projections displaying data about the Super Bowl and its venue. It’s not clear how much is pure concept here, but feel that some of the shots might be tough to pull off in reality.
It’s slightly concerning to see Microsoft to continue taking a few ‘artistic’ liberties with it’s portrayal of HoloLens’ abilities though. The majority of shots in the video are presented as wide-angle visions of a user’s room filled with AR, whereas the more realistic first person portrayal of the device’s limited field of view is closer to reality, and given less air time.
Nevertheless, there are some very cool ideas shared here and we can’t wait to see if Microsoft can bring them to fruition alongside a HoloLens release, details on which we’re still waiting for. We do worry though that the company, after continually wowing us with HoloLens’ potenttial, doesn’t yet quite now what to do with it.
