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Hands On With Microsoft's Holographic Goggles
First time accepted submitter mkukuluk writes Forget Google Glass — Jessi Hempel describes the amazing experience she had with the new Holographic goggles from Microsoft. From the article: "The headset is still a prototype being developed under the codename Project Baraboo, or sometimes just “B.” [inventor Alex] Kipman, with shoulder-length hair and severely cropped bangs, is a nervous inventor, shifting from one red Converse All-Star to the other. Nervous, because he’s been working on this pair of holographic goggles for five years. No, even longer. Seven years, if you go back to the idea he first pitched to Microsoft, which became Kinect. When the motion-sensing Xbox accessory was released, just in time for the 2010 holidays, it became the fastest-selling consumer gaming device of all time.
Right from the start, he makes it clear that Baraboo will make Kinect seem minor league."
wearable glasses are dead, long live wearable glasses! srsly though, MS approach makes sense. GG never made sense. projecting data onto your visor for real-time augmented reality? that's cool.
The team they have working on this is excellent, the idea is promising, the reviews are great, and the advertising is good. Looks like a solid win. If they have good patents on it, they should be able to control a large and growing market 5-10 years out.
How does this device handle a dull or dark holographic image projected in a bright environment?
Area51 - We are watching...
Granted this is just an interesting concept at the moment, however I think Microsoft may have something worthwhile here. The only thing is lacking (or missing rather) is a tactile interface - so that one could "feel" virtual objects.
I'll be paying attention to this, because I think this could be a game changer.
Regards,
MBC1977,
Certainly looks a lot more interesting and viable than google glass. Once google pushed the wear it anywhere video camera recording what everyone is doing it became socially a dead product. Lets wait and see if MS can productize it without making the idiotic mistakes of google that led to the highly deserved coining of the word glasshole.
AR-Rift: Stereo camera rig and augmented reality showcase
What is Presence in Immersive Augmented Reality?
"In a previous post I presented the AR-Rift, a low-cost immersive video see-through AR head-mounted display based on the Oculus Rift DK1 and consumer cameras. Technology affording similar experiences will begin to emerge at a consumer level in the coming years."
writing a science fiction book doesn't qualify as prior art.
This is the first time I have been genuinely excited about any Microsoft product since Windows 7.
This is something I would definitely use.
I can imagine overlaying debugging screens above my computer monitors. Moving more work off my precious screen real estate without needing several new monitors. The potential for something like this is limitless. Provided it really works like we have been shown.
Android Software Engineer
No, it is still not holography. It has exactly nothing to do with holography.
Not bullshit at all. Kinect's first couple of months on sale were extremely successful. In fact, MS made a very nice slug of money from it; unusually for the console business, there was a hefty chunk of profit margin on each unit sold. And it sold a lot of units very fast, because it was never supply constrained; unlike many new console launches, if you wanted one, you could walk into a shop and buy one (supply shortages have limited early sales of the PS2, Wii and PS4 to a large extent, early sales of other consoles to a lesser extent).
Of course, the Kinect basically went on to traverse (on a slightly smaller scale) the same kind of curve of the Wii. Lots and lots of early sales, but faltering when people started to realise that the only games you could practically play on it were short-lived party-games. So after the first few months on sale, sales fell of a brick and games releases dried up. But MS had a lot of sales and made a lot of money in the window before that.
And in what the hell sense is the Xbox brand a dismal failure? Ok, it's never taken off in Japan (basically because Japanese consumers are highly protectionist), but it's generally been a surprising success. The original Xbox managed just over 24 million sales. That's a long way behind the PS2's 150+ million, but ahead of Nintendo's 22 million, despite Nintendo being an established brand at the time and essentially being able to sell in 3 major markets (US, EU, JP) rather than Microsoft's 2 (US, EU).
The Xbox 360 managed 83 million sales until the point where MS stopped reporting sales (the unit is actually still selling). By comparison, the PS3 managed 80 million and the Wii just over 100 million (though the Wii got most of those early in the cycle - both console and game sales dried up in the second half).
And this time around - despite the "disaster for MS" narrative, the Xbox One isn't doing too badly. Sales data is a little hard to compare at the moment, but it looks like the PS4 managed 20 million in a year on sale, the Xbox One 10 million in the same time and the Wii-U around 8 million over two years. The Xbox One is in second place, but set against previous generations, it has sold fast in its first year (remember that console sales tend to accelerate in their second and third years, as prices come down and more games become available).
So MS has a successful console brand on its hands. What it doesn't have is the kind of "single device living room dominator" that Ballmer hoped the Xbox One would be. The new management seems content to settle for "successful games console", though there's a real question as to whether MS will want to be in that space in the long term.
"Fastest-selling consumer gaming device of all time"? Bullshit.
Kinect, like everything else to do with Xbox, is a dismal failure. People bought it only when they had to, developers didn't support it, and the product was flaky. Now no-one cares.
I agree, PS2 owned the market, the Cube the first to go and Xbox expected to call it quits soon as they just weren't selling. Then Halo came out and everything changed.
I've never owned a Xbox but have played Halo (~2001) (Quake2 but with better graphics). I had a PC Voodoo 3Dfx graphics card (~1997), it came with a version of Quake 2 made for that graphics card, it's hard to say now which had the better graphics, the 3Dfx or Halo.
Here's your prior art:
https://www.spaceglasses.com/
It's not using simple stereo screens, they have lightfield projectors:
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microsoft-nadella/
They track eye movement and adjust for that as well. I think you need the lightfield stuff so that the eye if forced to adapt focus for different distances, it's a depth cue that Oculus don't have.
It'll be interesting to see what frame rate and latency they achieve. It sounds like they have a lot of hardware in the headset, so it could be quite good. Plus they only need to render the bit right in the centre of the field of view at high quality.
What you say is technically correct for a very narrow span of time, but also one of the most pernicious myths about the finances of the gaming industry.
The article you link is from when the 360 first went on sale in 2005. The 360 remained MS's "main" console until late 2013. Production costs fall wildly over that time. Indeed, in the traditional MS/Sony model of selling consoles, you sell at a loss for about the first 12-18 months, then as unit cost reductions and economies of scale start to work in your favour, you keep the console selling at a more or less neutral level for the rest of its life-span, reducing the retail price as costs fall further.
Where do they make the money from? Xbox Live subscriptions, first party games etc are a small part of it, but only a small part. Most of the money - and it is a lot of money - comes from third party game fees.
See, when you buy a console game as "new" (rather than pre-owned), a large chunk of the sale price goes directly to Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo. On a full-priced game, this tends to be in the $10-15 range. Historically, this has explained the price differential between console and PC games - though with Valve now taking a similar cut of most PC game sales, who knows how long that will last.
The platform owner has spent next to nothing on those third party games; in most cases, it only gets involved at the certification stage. So it is, for the most part, "free money". And with series like Call of Duty, FIFA, Madden etc racking up the sales they do, it is a lot of free money.
So the trick is attracting third parties to the console. To do this, you need to have either a large current installed base, or the promise of a large installed base to come. This is why console manufacturers are happy to sell at a loss for the first year and often to take a loss (or at least a risk) on funding first party or platform-exclusive third party games - the Halos, Gears of War, Killzones and Gran Turismos of the world. Those are the bait to lure in the early adopters to get the installed base growing to get the third party developers on board.
The other business model is the one that was previously (but not currently) used by Nintendo. In the SNES, N64, Gamecube and Wii generations, as well as with its handhelds up to and including the DS, Nintendo sold platforms at a profit from day 1 and focussed much more on first party games development. This actually worked pretty well for a long time; they made megabucks on the SNES (which also had a lot of third party support, so win-win there) and even when the Gamecube ended up with poor sales, they were still able to turn a profit on it.
But around 5 years ago, this model started to break. The Wii was essentially dead by 2010; console sales were slowing to a trickle (after a few phenomenal years) and despite the huge installed base, most Wii owners (a different demographic to that on other platforms) did not buy many games, so third party developers abandoned it. Then came the 3DS launch.
The 3DS is doing ok now. Well in Japan, so-so in the US and Europe. It's on course to be a kind of PSP-level success, which is ok (the PSP actually did much better than is generally realised, largely on the strength of Japan). But the 3DS's launch was actually a bit of a disaster. For months after launch, the damned thing just wouldn't sell - and price was a big part of it. So Nintendo reversed historic policy and slashed the price; for the first time in its history, selling console hardware at a loss. It didn't remain at a loss for long; only 6 months or so until it got onto a neutral footing - but it was enough to bury Nintendo's historic strategy. Console sales improved, third parties moved in (particularly Japanese developers, many of who shy away from the high cost of developing for home consoles) and Nintendo's losses (the first in the company's history) were reduced. When the Wii-U was launched, it was launched with a traditional Sony/MS style pricing strategy; sold at a loss at first, before moving to
Wow, bitter much...
Kinda guessing you're not a fan of the Xbox. Possibly even that you're a bit of a fan of one of its rivals? Remember that blind brand loyalty (or blind hatred of a brand) is self-defeating on the part of the consumer.
Microsoft does not love you and does not have your best interests at heart.
Sony does not love you and does not have your best interests at heart.
Nintendo does not love you and does not have your best interests at heart.
Valve does not love you and does not have your best interests at heart.
The fanboy-arguments between the various sides in the console war are more bitter this time around than I've ever seen them before. Which is ironic, really, given that the actual practical differences between the PS4 and Xbox One are vanishingly small and only really apparent to hardcore enthusiasts.
Actually it does. Raising a ship from the depth of the ocean by slowly filling it with inflatable baloons was non-patentable because this idea was shown in a disney cartoon, so fiction work does qualify as prior art.
Is there anything more than a flashy website behind that?
As pumped air flotation systems were in use in the 19th century, I'd suggest it wasn't the Disney cartoon which killed the patent...
> [inventor Alex] Kipman ... idea he first pitched to Microsoft, which became Kinect
so he invented Kinect? hmm nope, that would be Primesense cleverly going around earlier patents on structure light (for example Viewpoint Corps US6549288 filled in 1999) by using random instead of striped dot pattern.
maybe Kipman invented original Natal aka Kinect 2 aka time of flight depth camera? hmmm nope, that would be 2 or 3 whole companies M$ bought (3DV, Canesta) spending over 1 Billion dollars before settling on ready to sell Primesense camera in the end.
What exactly did he invent? He is a manager at M$, not engineer.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
The first use for technology like this, especially if it can't be taken out of the home, is always porn. Guys are going to wear Hologlass to make their wives look like Beyoncé.
you don't patent the glasses as single, monolithic item. you make up about 300 bullshit patents like "method for utilizing parallax to create depth of view in wearable binocular computer displays .. on the internet"
Think of the scene in the matrix where operators are guiding ships in and out of Zion. There is a huge 3D interface for them to interact with.
You could eventually get right of ALL external displays. All of them. No longer would you need a tv in every room, or at all. The TV could be as big or as small as you want, any where you want.
You would no longer have to produce any external interfaces at all. Everything would be virtual, seamlessly integrated into your current environment, anywhere you are.
Imagine playing a shooting game where the enemy is seamlessly integrated into your house.
The possible applications for AR are truly astounding.
But how well would it work for people with prescription eye glasses? Nobody in the demo is wearing eye-glasses - 60% of Americans have to wear glasses and only about 13% of Americans wear contacts. So that leaves over a hundred million Americans having to cram this thing over their glasses just to use it or not buy it at all. It seems that this suffers from the same issue that Google Glass had - prescription eye care. 3D movies are ruined for folks with glasses - try stuffing two sets of glasses on your head for a couple of hours - it flat out sucks. The selection of headphones is limited by how comfortable they are with glasses on for an hour or more. So why would this technology be any better?
The article focuses on how cool it is without addressing the actual practicality of having one - how heavy is it? How likely is it to survive five hundred or more impacts with the floor? What happens when the cat sit in it while it is lying on the desk? Besides a couple of gimmicky things, who cares? How is holography on the inside of my helmet better than a computer screen? I keep hearing about how much cooler it is, but not how much better it is than what I have now. Why is it better? A holographic display is not going to be any more enlightening than a regular display. Besides we already see the world in 3D. I really just don't get why this is anything but "cool" like 3D movies were in the 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, 2000's, etc. It's a gimmick.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
That was certainly true for the Wii and Wii-U, but I'm not sure it holds up for Nintendo's other consoles. The Gamecube hardware was, by all accounts, good. Better than the PS2's and not far short of the Xbox's. It's still slightly amazing that the PS2 did as well as it did, given it was both underpowered and a complete dog to develop for.
The N64 was more complicated; most of its hardware was pretty decent, but the decision to stick with cartridges rather than move to a CD format for games doomed it in the race with the Playstation. That was probably the most significant point in console-history (I'd rank it above even the Atari-crash, which was strictly a US phenomenon) - the moment Nintendo decided, on the basis of piracy fears, to part way with almost all of its significant third party developers (and also to massively annoy Sony, who had done a load of development work in partnership with Nintendo on CD-based console technology). If the N64 had used CDs, chances are the industry would look completely different today.
That's not how "prior art" works. An idea is not patentable. A precise description of how to achieve an idea is patentable. William Gibson may have written some great stories about VR, but those stories are not descriptions of how to implement VR. I realize that many patents are terrible patents, and should either never have been granted or should be constricted, but I'm talking about the goal of patent law, not arguing about each individual patent.
Minority Report is another story / fantasy, with some CGI visuals to go along with it. Neither this nor "Virtual Light" describe anything in "immense detail". Immense detail would be source code, VHDL, wiring diagrams, etc.
And in what the hell sense is the Xbox brand a dismal failure?
These are all published numbers. Google them yourself.
XBox development costs: 24 billion
RROD writedown: 1.1 billion
Xbox division losses as at 2007: 5 billion
OK, so by 2007 the Xbox brand was worth negative 30 billion dollars. Earnings since then:
2008: +426 million (first profit for Xbox in a calendar year! yay!)
2009: +169 million
2010 +165 million
2011: +210 million
2012: -229 million (ruh-roh, Raggy)
So for Xbox 360's prime earning years, it made 741 million dollars. That doesn't even pay back the 1.1 billion writedown on the RROD fiasco. Let alone the 30 billion dollars Xbox was already in the red.
Negative thirty billion plus zero point seven four one billion equals TRAINWRECK BLACK-HOLE DISASTER.
Microsoft tries to deflect attention from overall Xbox performance by either mixing its numbers up in the greater Home and Entertainment reports, by emphasising "revenue" or "units shipped" or "market share", or by fixating on a small time period - that's how you get shit descriptors like "Microsoft's usually profitable games unit". Yeah, usual in the sense that the unit made annual profits for four straight years. It just cost Microsoft's shareholders thirty billion dollars in the years before that.
OK, how about some more recent numbers:
http://www.businessinsider.com...
Summary: Xbox costs Microsoft two billion dollars a year.
Yep, that's right, Microsoft spent thirty billion dollars setting up a business unit that runs at a loss of two billion dollars a year.
By any sensible reckoning Xbox is arguably the greatest disaster in the history of the tech industry. Microsoft's just good at covering it up.