Developers are finally getting their feet wet with Microsoft's HoloLens and the associated platform.
The developer kit of the Microsoft HoloLens is amongst the most expensive gadgets you can get your hands on today. At $3000, it’s not a consumer product, but we really hope Microsoft can bring this to market sometime in the future. If you weren’t as excited as us, these two videos from developer Kenny Wang and his endeavours with the HoloLens should get you up to speed.
In the first, Wang demonstrates Valve’s award winning game Portal, brought to life. For the uninitiated, Portal was named the game of the decade back in 2012, by VGX Awards. It has the player control a portal gun and two portals that are always connected to each other. You have to create these two portals to navigate through various puzzles.
In his demo, Wang uses the portal gun to create these two portals and have a Companion Cube move across them. The cube rolls down the stairs and interacts with the environment (which happens to be a living room or staircase) the way a real world object would.
In the second demo, Wang has a version of Pokemon played on the HoloLens. The developer wears the HoloLens to see the pokemon right in front of him. He chooses the pocket monster to bring to a battle and then commands it to perform certain moves. There’s no button pressing either, you simply bark commands, almost like they do in the original anime.
Wang’s demos do look like an incredible example of what the future of augmented reality can possibly be. If something like this can be achieved in the consumer market, is could lead to a revolution in the way we game, especially in the multiplayer gaming universe.
Of course, Microsoft has its work cut out to make the HoloLens a consumer friendly device. In fact, we’re not very sure the company wants to do so. After all, even at its humongous price, it doesn’t take a genius to find application for the HoloLens in industries, where such a price tag is more reasonable and affordable as well. Given Microsoft’s recent enterprise focus, it may be a while before we see more affordable, consumer friendly HoloLens devices. Moreover, chinks, like the headset’s limiting 96 degree field of view need to be worked out too.
Follow Us
Prasid Banerjee
Trying to explain technology to my parents. Failing miserably. View Full Profile
