Microsoft Admits Sales of 'Expensive' HoloLens 'Not Huge', Says More Versions Are Planned (betanews.com)

Microsoft is not giving away too much about the sales figures for HoloLens but goes as far as saying it is "in thousands, not hundreds of thousands". From a report: Speaking at educational technology event the Bett Show in London on Thursday, Roger Walkden, Senior Director and Commercial Lead of HoloLens, acknowledged that the price tag was partly responsible for the small number of sales. Interestingly, though, Microsoft is not bothered by what could be seen as disappointing sales, despite the fact that the company seems to be betting big on HoloLens by adding headset settings in recent Windows 10 Insider builds. [...] But for anyone who feels let down by what HoloLens has to offer, there is good news: "this is version one, and there will be future versions."

Comments

Re:Needs an upgrade

[Nidi62]

A big space that I see where this technology would be very useful would be in flight training. Full flight simulators are extremely expensive and break down very easily. Flight Training Devices are cheaper but barely offer visuals (except level 6/7 FTDs) and in some cases don't even have physical controls and rely on flat panels to display the cockpit layout. Using AR/VR headsets along with tracking gloves (assuming low latency) would allow training programs to rely more on FTDs than on full flight sims, saving costs both in device cost and energy used as FFS's are more expensive than FTDs in both cases. Say $20k per FTD for 2-3 sets of gloves and 4 headsets (1 set glove/headset each for 2 students and an instructor, 1 headset for observer) and you could use FTDs for most sim training, reserving FFS's for check rides for type rating and maybe one or 2 classes of sim training prior to the checking event for familiarization with the sim and getting full motion feedback for maneuvers. It would also reduce cost further by just needing the control panels for feedback and dispensing with the half-cockpit layout that some FTDs have as the cockpit can simply be simulated in the headset.