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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.