Tag Archives: microsoft augmented reality

HoloLens: Microsoft brings augmented reality to the masses

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HoloLens 1

Windows 10 won’t just be confined to your computer and cellphone, but will be all around us thanks to augmented reality and new hardware.

Just as if we were living in the world of Minority Report, augmented reality is now ready to become, well, a reality itself. Thanks to its holographic technology, Microsoft can now create augmented reality version of their Windows 10 OS to combine real and virtual interface elements for users wearing the HoloLens, their latest wearable headset device. By using it, a new range of possibilities and uses open up, such as engineers seeing instructions overlaid on the actual projects they’re working on, or the layout of a location or project to organize tasks in a team.

This technology has universal support under Windows 10, Microsoft’s latest OS, so users can build once and use everywhere. The Redmond company says holographic technology will work with all kinds of headsets already out there, such as the Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR, but it’s their new in-house headset that took our attention: the Microsoft HoloLens is their idea of a headset, and will be available “within the Windows 10 timeframe.”

HoloLens can pair up with all kind of devices running Windows 10, and has its own custom CPU and Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) as to not tax the system it’s interacting with. HoloLens doesn’t require mobile phones or computers, and can be used completely independent of any other gadgets.

Because the life or death of these gadgets depends mostly on what you can do with it, Microsoft is also releasing HoloStudio, which is a 3D modelling tool users can employ to create their own holograms that others can interact with, or even 3D print them for physical use. Now it really feels the future is among us.

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Microsoft’s RoomAlive Turns Living Rooms Into Digital Playgrounds

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The living room might become the living playroom thanks to a Microsoft prototype.

Recently, Microsoft Research has been tinkering with the idea of the living room as a natural extension of the video game experience. At CES 2013 the company debuted Illumiroom, a unique display technology that fills up the living room with images and lights beyond the borders of what’s displayed on the television screen.

Starting today with the project’s rebranding as RoomAlive, Microsoft intends to push the immersive experience of their concept to not just incorporate the background behind the TV, but the living room itself. RoomAlive uses a configuration of multiple Kinect sensors and projectors – as opposed to the single Kinect and projector pairing with Illumiroom 1.0 – to display content across several kind of surfaces, and better yet, can be interacted with.

Microsoft says that RoomAlive can auto-calibrate and find out the 3D geometry of any room in a matter or minutes; Transforming it into a large playroom, where users can touch, shoot at, or even kick objects, such as tiny little creatures or evil robots that where shown in the video demonstration below, that appear walls and floors.

It is pretty darn sweet, even if it’s not near Star Trek “Holodeck” levels of amazing-ness where you can pretend to be Sherlock Holmes, but baby steps, of course. Baby steps.

The tech behind RoomAlive is far away from the consumer stage, and might be that way for a long time. Using the number of projectors that Microsoft does for its demo room is way above what most can afford, but for now it’s an impressive preview of what the future of what the living room can be.

Source: Microsoft

Be social! Follow Walyou on Facebook and Twitter! And don’t forget to stay tuned for more stories, like Sony’s Action Cam pet mount that enables dogs to shoot wacky clips and the Peek-i iPhone accessory, which turns Apple’s smartphone into a spy camera.