Microsoft just showed something that makes Google Glass look like a science project. HoloLens is a standalone headset, no phone, no PC, no wires, that overlays holographic objects onto the real world. The Minecraft demo puts a whole game on your coffee table. The spatial mapping demo lets you walk around digital objects sitting in your physical room. The field of view is small and the price is going to be steep, but the demo is the most convincing piece of mixed reality I have ever seen.
Mixed reality enters the lexicon
Microsoft is calling this “mixed reality” to distinguish it from VR’s full immersion and Glass’s thin overlay. Digital objects exist in your room, anchored to real surfaces, and you interact with them using your hands and voice. This is conceptually different from both approaches, and it is clearly aimed at enterprise first: architecture, medicine, manufacturing, training, any domain where seeing a digital object in physical space is actually useful.
The trend for the year ahead
The XR split just got a third lane: VR replaces reality, AR annotates it, MR blends digital objects into it. Expect the terminology wars to get confusing fast, and expect Microsoft to push hard at enterprise before attempting a consumer version. The field of view problem needs solving before this becomes a mainstream product.
The HoloLens demo is the most impressive spatial computing moment since the first Rift. Whether Microsoft can ship this at a price real people pay is a different question, but the vision is right: the screen of the future is the room itself.
Part of Two Decades of XR, my running diary of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.