Microsoft Hololens (1 Viewer)

Ambitious start, but the current product does not look as fully baked as the teaser videos make it look. Also looks exhausting to use for extended periods:

http://gizmodo.com/microsofts-wants-to-turn-your-living-room-into-the-holo-1680924508


http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7867593/microsoft-announces-windows-holographic

I can see this being cool and allowing people to see places they can not afford to go to but at the same time do we really need to replace real world with virtual reality? Personally I do not think I would be interested because I would not like to be visually disconnected from what is going on in the room I am in. I love tech stuff but how much is enough? I can see this technology being misused and some people abusing it instead of having real world friendships with real people. That and the push for the so called smart homes where we have everything accessible wirelessly and our cars controls accessible to the government not a good thing really. But as far as this tech goes not really thinking I want anything to do with it, maybe younger people?

Wired on the backstory:

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microsoft-hands-on


Ars is 'wowed'

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/hands-on-with-hololens-making-the-virtual-real/


http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/21/7868251/microsoft-hololens-hologram-hands-on-experience

http://gizmodo.com/project-hololens-hands-on-incredible-amazing-prototy-1680934585

Everyone's going to be walking around all day watching porn.

One more step toward Demolition Man sex...

When we get to Zero Theorem sex...I hope I'm already dead...

1) Why does Microsoft insist on over promising and under delivering? I have little patience for vaporware and concept vehicles. Announce a shipping product; remain silent until then.

2) Ubiquitous Computng is the future of computing. I've been looking for it since about 1993. IEEE Spectrum, I think, had a fantastic article on it which caught my attention. Google Glass is working in the right direction, but too early, too limited. Hololens concept video is close to what to hope for. I think the actual product is still too early, but we'll see.

A 1000x YES!

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-01-22-molyneux-warns-microsoft-dont-overpromise-on-hololens

Molyneux commented, "The bizarre thing is a huge amount of effort and time and money goes into researching the tech, like the Kinect tech and scanning the bodies, and there's always this one line that hardware manufacturers - whether it be Microsoft or anyone else - say and that's 'we can't wait to see what happens when it gets into the hands of developers.' Now if Apple had said that when they introduced the iPhone, I don't think we'd ever end up with the iPhone! What really should happen is that they put a similar amount of money into researching just awesome real world applications that you'll really use and that work robustly and smoothly and delightfully.

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Interesting essay. I liked this bit:

He continued, "For me, some of the stage demos they had were magical as they were building drones on stage and you start to think back to your Kinect days and how exhausting that would be to move your arm around and tap with your fingers. And this is the problem with VR - the applications that we think are going to be great on it quite often are exhausting or very challenging."

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While Minority Report is a great visual, I don't think it's the future. I believe information overlay is more important. The concept video gives a half step view of this, showing the women getting a tutorial of fixing her drain pipe. But I'm fascinated by the prospect of 'x-ray' vision. How many times have I been fixing something, working on a hard-to reach bolt in my car engine, hidden around a corner and behind hoses? Overlay glasses can let me see through that to understand spatially where the bolt is; and with that I can better feel and get the wrench on it.

And having many times dragged a cheap stud finder over my walls and pencil marking the bounds of studs, I dream of getting a house model, importing it into my VR glasses, and simply seeing the studs as I go to mount shelves or hang a TV mount. And forget the laser level: the hologlasses can project a virtual plumb line that isn't blocked by mount hammer or impinged by imperfectly flat walls.

Augmented Reality is a terrifically exciting idea. I think smart watches a stopgap -- maybe a decades long stopgap -- but Google and Microsoft are closer to working on the future than Apple appears to be. But they may be so early, they're like Kodak with the first digital camera 30 years before anyone cared.