Watch Halo Played on Microsoft HoloLens in Augmented Reality

By
Paul James
-
12

This is a video of Microsoft project manager Varun Mani, streaming a game of Halo: Guardians to his HoloLens, presented through the magic of augmented reality, straight onto his walls.

Microsoft’s augmented reality wonder-toy HoloLens has flirted with the idea of becoming a platform for some fairly unique gaming since it’s reveal in January of this year at a Windows 10 press event.

See Also: HoloLens Multiplayer Minecraft Demo Shown at Xbox E3 Press Conference

Powered by what Microsoft terms ‘Windows Holographic’ APIs, the self-contained, untethered headset presents a mixed reality view of the real world, rendering and projecting virtual objects into the users view of the real world.

microsoft hololens ar headset

In this short video, Microsoft Project Manager Varun Mani is shown setting up a session of Halo from his Xbox 360 to stream directly to a virtual projected screen, rendered by the HoloLens. The virtual screen can be positioned manually in space and the HoloLens seems to have no trouble anchoring the projected view to the real world.

Previous gaming demonstrations have included an impressive onstage showing of recent Microsoft acquisition Minecraft, and a dedicated made-for-HoloLens title Project X-Ray – shown at another Windows 10 event in October.

See Also: Microsoft Reveals ‘Project XRay’ HoloLens Gameplay

 

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Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Raphael

    So Halo played on a small virtual screen instead of a small physical screen. Yeah.. wonderful. I’m off to spend some time on my Oculus DK2 now.

  • JoeD

    These people couldn’t get the Kinect right (or even Windows for that matter) and the first batches are winding up inoperable! I predict this thing will go the way of the dodo in a very short while.

    • Shahril Kem

      Yeah thats why we have NASA to test it for us, boy am i glad those guys at JPL is testing it, funny when it’ll malfunctioned when astronauts donning those hololens.. they must be chumps..

  • Mark Batcheler

    Such pessimism!

    As an owner of a DK2 I’d personally choose VR over AR if I had to choose one, however, I believe that technology such as this will be hugely popular in the future.

    Kinect (The 2nd iteration) was a great bit of kit but its a difficult sell because in gaming there are only so many uses for it.

    Hololens and Magic Leap potentially have far more applications and could prove to be very popular

    Its important to remember that VR and AR technologies are all iterative. VR will not be anywhere near perfect to start with either but year on year it will improve. The same will be true for this.

    I for one am just excited for what the next few years have to offer!

    • Shahril Kem

      Just enjoy the tech, people being critical is good, supercritical…

    • I may be mistaken, but I believe both Magic Leap and Hololens could theoretically be used for VR as well as AR, so really they may just be a more flexible solution?

  • A virtual screen!?! That’s so… 1962. And I bet the HoloLens virtual screen is lower resolution than that 1920×1080 pretty plasma on the back wall. The HoloLens Minecraft demo is what its all about; genuine 3d elements placed in situ in the RW. MS should really wait until they can insert Halo props into the real world, then release the video… of course, there might be a lot of overturned coffee tables…

  • Jim Cherry

    I don’t get ms marketing right now their ceo said this thing will be an enterprise play in 2016. So why are they showing so much consumer facing bs for a product that wont even be purchasable next year. Its like those demos ms research would show of products that didn’t even have patents. They even had a house of the future they did at ces one year all the things in that house never turned into actual things consumers could use.
    MS if you want to get ppl hyped for something show hololens apps running on hardware that consumers can buy next year ie vive, or rift.

    • lovethetech

      is there a problem with that?

  • jkflipflop98

    So fake. Not a single thing they’ve shown about hololens has been real. It’s all been pre-recorded CG mock-ups done with actors.

  • Niklas Fischer

    Acually AR will probably take over VR just as another has written in the thread . or more precise it will be a system that can do both ar and vr, at some point in the future . at the moment vr is much cheaper and will deliver more immersion as the fov is greater and the tracking is better . Ar as it stands need good tracking but not as good as vr , as you still see the real world and won’t get sick as easy.

    Microsoft Hololens costs 3000 dollar so its not really consumer tech yet, I have high hopes for magic leap tech but I’m guessing it’s going to be realy expensive as well and no known dev kit or release date :) The demos I have seen from Hololens from the live stage show realy impressed me . however it seems like the precived fov is a bit cheated in the presentation , by just filming in the sweet spot of the system . many reports state that to fov was quite limited , and that the tech Microsoft is using has inherent limitations that maybe hard to overcome.

    And in the defence of kinect that some have been bashing , sure as a gaming perifital it maybe has failed, especially by hardcore gamers . But it delivered a realy cheap depth camera what alowed loots of researchers and hobbyists to try out 3d tracking , 3d scanning , and motion capture in varios forms .
    Notable mention is all the vr locomotion systems that are beeing developed that have had use in the prototyping phase from the kinect.
    As well as the hololens itself wich uses similar tracking .

  • Anthony Kenneth Steele

    no lag gaurantee