I spent the last few days at the Microsoft Build conference. Among the things that they showcased, was the much anticipated Hololens! If you haven’t seen this yet, I would strongly encourage you to check out their site.

We were all a little irritated by the tease by Alex Kipman who almost led us to believe that we were all getting a hololens. But in fact, they brought hundreds of them for us to try out. Ok, that’s fine. I get it, it’s not quite ready to be released even for developers yet. But it does need to get in our hands so that experiences can be built, and what better way than to give it away at this massive developer-oriented conference. So in order to be able to try one, you had to register online for 1 of 3 hololens courses, and receive an email invitation with the exact time and place to be. I was disappointed when I received the “We’re sorry, due to demand blah blah blah….” email. So I went out with my day.

Later that night as I was out watching what would be the final Red Wings game of the season, it happened! I got the confirmation instructing me to be back at the hotel at 6:45pm, which was right at the time the Wings game would be wrapping up. I told my friends “Sorry, I have to go do this!” And I left the bar and the Wings game behind (good thing, because as I mentioned, it was to be the last game of the season…)

I won’t/can’t go into detail about how I got into the demo, because there were some mix-ups and mistakes were made, but it was rectified and finally I was ready to embark upon my holo-journey! I finally learned that the man guarding one of the elevators was doing so to protect the secret of hololens that rest upon the 27th floor of the same hotel I was staying in. Upon being shuttled up with 7 others, we were paired up with our Microsoft employee who would guide us through the hallways past the more than half-dozen security guards, and the dozen Microsoft employees standing outside their respective hotel rooms that had been transformed into hololens experience rooms. We were brought to the end of the hallway where we had to deposit our phones and other smart devices. As another member of the group commented “What a waste of a beautiful corner hotel room!” Once our guide got the all clear over her secret service radio, we were taken into another room where we were given a brief overview of how to handle the device, and our pupil distances were measured as if we were being given an eye exam.

Upon getting the all clear again, our guide took the first group, my group, out and placed us one by one into the hotel rooms that had a Microsoft employee outside of it. Once in the room, I was introduced to the employee and another employee who would be the technician for the duration of the exercise, and then found myself face to face with the hololens! This was the real deal. The polished, commercialized product that you see advertised on the Hololens web site, rather than the alien device with a giant computer attached to it that was experienced by reporters and media after the initial Windows 10 announcement. The woman who was to guide me through the exercise assisted with putting the device over my head. It was slightly heavier than I imagined, but I got used to it quickly. I had to ensure I could see a Windows logo in the center and all 4 sides to the box surrounding it. The bottom bar flickered in and out, which the tech said was fine. So I stood up to begin the exercise.

The guide informed me I should be able to see the same model from my PC screen on the construction model city to the left. I looked over, and I could see about half of it. The top half, to be exact. I tried to adjust the visor, expecting to be able to see more, so I sat back down and we re-seated the device on my head. Upon getting back up and looking again, it was nearly the same.

That’s when I realized something: This thing has a very limited field of view. Imagine taking what you’re looking at and only being able to see a little rectangle of it. No peripheral vision, you can only see what you’re directly looking at. And only by moving your head. Don’t simply move your eyes, because you’ll lose sight of what’s in front of you. You don’t feel completely immersed in the experience as previously described. Even those who tried the demo back in January made the comment that this is not what they tried back then. They would not have been nearly as impressed as they were initially. With that said, there is still time before RTM, so Microsoft can possibly make adjustments as needed.

With that in mind, I continued with the demonstration. I was able to take the mouse on my screen, and move it off the screen into the real world. I was able to control it just the same as if it were on the screen, and grab the structure that had been placed in the middle of the model. That was pretty cool. I was then instructed to grab the top of the structure, and raise it up higher. Which I did with the mouse cursor, and saw it immediately reflected both on the screen and on the model.

Next, I was instructed to place a marker on the board on one of the neighboring street corners. Upon doing that, I was able to see in my screen as if I were standing on that corner. Complete with the building we were designing. The Microsoft guide mentioned that the building seems out-of-place, so the tech changed the color on the fly which was immediately reflected on my screen so I could see the impact of that change. Real time feedback. I can see how that could be huge when designing and constructing buildings.

After that part of the demo, I was guided into another part of the room which had been furnished with fake brick walls on all sides except the doorway in which we were standing. The display changed to reveal the structure of the building, mapped out to the surrounding walls. That was really cool. I could walk around the room, and whatever had been in a specific place previously actually stayed there, it didn’t move with me. But what did move was the angle in which I was viewing it. As I moved, I could see around objects as if they were real. Remarkable! It was at this point when I started to care less about the narrow field of view and more about what I was actually doing and experiencing through this new technology. I was no longer just viewing something through the lens of a camera, I was there.

On the wall I was instructed to look at, there was a virtual note left by another “member” of the construction crew. Upon listening to this note from the speakers on board the headpiece, I was told we could not place a doorway where we previously wanted to due to a structural support beam having been placed there. As the note was playing, I saw an outline of the other person and where that person was looking, so I knew exactly what they were referring to.

So the tech moved the doorway down the wall slightly which revealed a pipe in the wall. In a similar manner to what the other “person” had done, I was instructed to leave my own virtual note advising the plumber that we needed to move the pipe. Upon using my air tap on the pipe, I was able to verbally record a note, and then play it back afterwards.

That was the end of my demo. After waiting in the hallway for all the group members to meet back up, we grabbed our belongings out of the lockers and were shuttled back down the special elevator to end our 30-minute demo of this amazing new technology.

So my overall thoughts on this… It’s incredible the way it can map out 3D space and display objects around, on top, and that it can interact with this real life space. This isn’t virtual reality, this is augmented reality. The possibilities of this technology are endless, but like many other developers whom I sat in a focus group with, we remain skeptical. This is likely not something that will be used by the masses. We view this as being a commercial product that has the potential to change how some industries operate. Construction, medial, real estate, the list goes on. Sure, it could be used for gaming, and it could be used around the house as shown in Microsoft’s video, but are you really going to wear this thing around the house all day long? I’m not likely to…

The narrow field of vision issue is potentially a big problem. For the Mars Rover demo that’s previously been tried by journalists in January, this would have changed the experience of this completely if the visual area had been so limited. It doesn’t feel like you’re on Mars anymore, it would feel like you’re in your living room, looking into a portal of Mars. It’s unclear why this regression happened. It could be for safety reasons. After all, if we have our entire living room or office coated by holograms, it could be very easily to run into something you don’t realize is there. Especially if the developer is a jerk and designed the app that way. It was also rumored this changed was to reduce nausea, but that remains to be confirmed. Perhaps we’ll hear more on this in the coming weeks. But it’s important to know both that Microsoft has time to correct this before RTM, and that the demos they showed during the keynote and in the advertisements is not what the current state of the product is actually delivering. While slightly misleading in its present state, the technology is still very impressive and has a lot of potential. I’m looking forward to seeing what the future of this holds!

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