Microsoft's Hololens is a sham: the concept is bad and the device is a fake

[Legend]

*Probably a sham and seems like a fake, but fitting that in the title wouldn't have been as exciting.

There is just so much wrong with this video. Arg! One thing I won't talk about is all the silly marketing going on with the device, like their obsession over the word hologram and omission that true 3D holograms have existed since the 60's. What I'm focusing on is their flawed vision, and how hololens today is nothing like they want you to think.


So one by one I'll go through the features shown in the video above.


1. TVs floating on any and every surface

The ability to have a tv anywhere and everywhere you want is pretty nifty, but the fact you're wearing big and bulky glasses will get in the way. It has a more severe version of the problems facing 3D TVs. Plus only you can see the screen. Outside of cooking and activities involving your hands, a regular smartphone is just as effective as hololens at watching TV wherever you want. And if you care about the big theater like experience, the Hololens screen quality isn't going to come close to comparing with good TVs.

This feature has potential, but in most situations it's worse than what you already have.


2. Visualizing 3D models

Great. Perfect. 10 out of 10. I'll buy one just for this.


3. Creating 3D models

Laughable. No professional or even hobbyist wants to create a 3D model with their fingers. The precision is horrible and you have a lack of input options. I mean really, this is no different than sculpting with Kinect 2.0.

Might be good for introducing people to 3D modeling, but that's it.


4. Video Calls

Hololens has the ability to record what you see, but it lacks the ability to record your face. Video calls can only be recieved, not sent.

Makes this feature kinda strange and pointless. If two people communicated using Hololens, it'd be no different than talking over the phone.


5. Minecraft!

Oh look, now it's even more like legos!

But actually this kinda falls under 3D model viewing, so 10 out of 10.


6. Playing Minecraft

This is just a clusterfudge. So many things are wrong with it. First off, the video shows the minecraft level is built around the room's furniture. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Although completely possible from a tech standpoint, this breaks the game. Your minecraft world becomes dependent on your surroundings. If you move a chair, your whole Minecraft world is lost.

Online play also becomes impossible, unless the people playing with you have their rooms set up with furniture exactly like yours. Custom Minecraft servers are incredibly popular and this concept destroys that.

On top of that, this screws up world size. PC Minecraft worlds are 32 million blocks wide. Assuming in Microsoft's "faux AR Minecraft concept" each block took up a cubic inch, living room levels could only be 218 blocks wide before hitting the walls. Only possible solution to have bigger environments would be having the living room topology repeat over and over, then allowing the player to select which grid they're playing in. Which is just a stupid compromise. PC and even Mobile Minecraft is infinitely better.

Plus mining becomes impossible. Yeah it's just a horrible concept from start to finish.

7. DIY Teaching

Nice. Much better than a phone call and a bit better than a video call. This is a solid feature that you should look forward to with AR.


8. That Mars Thing

Just no. No. No. No. Virtural tourism is great, but scientists and astronomers working with the Mars rover are not constructing 3D environments just to walk around and collaborate in. The only redeeming part of this is that it kinda falls under 3D model viewing, but that's really pushing it.



Bonus. MineCraft in the wall

It looks really cool. Having Minecraft paintings around your house would be nice.

Horrible way to play though. You'd just keep on hitting your head or finger in to the wall. Plus There's no natural way to move around.

Video games in general suck with AR. Hololens is better AR than what our phones, 3DS, and Vita can do, but it's not going to revolutionize cruddy AR gameplay.




So most features of Hololens are gimmicks at best, but that's not even the biggest thing wrong with it. The device itself just doesn't work as well as they want you to think.


1. Motion Tracking

One big necessity of VR and AR is motion tracking. VR like Project Morpheus and Occulus Rift take care of this using an external camera tracking the headset with extreme accuracy.

Hololens does the opposite. It has on board cameras track the world's motion, and then inverts that to calculate its own motion. This is slower and way less precise than the VR solutions, plus it often fails. This video from 7:17 to 7:57 shows the Hololens tracking ability in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6sL_5Wgvrg

It might be hard to notice, but you can see the AR graphics pop around every once in a while. It's only kinda annoying in the video but in real life even the smallest errors like this are extreme and wreck the immersion. Plus the images are overlaid on the real world, giving the brain something to directly compare to. Even if Hololens tracked just as good as PM and OR, its AR nature would make the experience unsettling and potentially vomit inducing for these type of experiences.

Microsoft most likely will get it working a lot better in a few years, but right now it's not even close to being good enough.


2. Image Quality

Microsoft has not released any information about image quality, so for this section I'm just going to speculate.

Due to the high field of view of Hololens, the displays need to be very high resolution. 1080p is good enough for VR, but AR needs much much better if it wants to display small text notifications like what we see in the promo videos. 4k at least would really be what this device needs. Anything less and the resulting graphics would look worse than those from a 2006 smartphone.

It also needs to be really high fps as well so that the graphics can keep up with the world. Being AR 90-120 fps would be awesome but 75 fps should be good enough to have a nice experience. Going in line with this, the graphics need to be low persistence so that the image doesn't look smudged.


So that's what Hololens should have. I'd expect though that it's only 1080p, 60fps due to cost and size reasons. It's not realistically even close to the quality in their marketing videos.


3. It can't make the color black


So um yeah, if you only take one thing away from the article, take away this.

All marketing released for Hololens is either incredibly deceiving, or Microsoft is being shy about a specific feature that's revolutionary and far more valuable to science and technology than Hololens itself. Considering how laughable the marketing so far has been about making the stupidest aspects of Hololens sound revolutionary, I'm going to go with the former.


This is what they want you to think AR looks like:

And then this is what AR actually looks like:

Spoiler for Hidden:

<img src="http://i.minus.com/ignksXlaZUlJY.png" alt="" class="bbc_img" loading="lazy">

That's because all AR like Hololens is using a form of the Pepper's Ghost illusion. (It's most famously used in the Haunted Mansion at Disney theme parks)

The illusion is simple, you bounce light off a sheet of glass in order to make the reflection blend with outside light. Here's a real world picture of the effect.

This example looks much nicer than my Bill Gates one above. That's because the environment is so dark verse the brightly lit living room. The Pepper's Ghost illusion only adds the two light sources together, so it works much better when the real world part is dark and the reflection part is bright.

Moving back to just Hololens, it means that Hololens can only add colors to what you're seeing. Watching TV on a red surface means the entire TV will have a red tint. Using the device in bright rooms will be almost impossible as real world light drowns out the "holograms." Worst of all imo, is that the device cannot make anything darker than what it is to begin with. A black colored part on a "hologram" is impossible unless that part of the "hologram" is above a real world black object.

With Hololens it'll only be a nice experience while the lights are off.




Please point out any mistakes I've made or just argue with me about stuff. As I made clear, AR for viewing 3D models will be amazing. I'd love to be proven wrong about Hololens if it meant a good 3D model viewer was closer than I thought.

[darkknightkryta]

I haven't had a very good look at it, but I agree with some of your points.  You don't wanna model with your hands.  If it works as advertised, that's cool.  But it seems so "marketed"

[BasilZero]

They should of called it "Halolens".

That way it makes sense with "Spartan" and Cortana being available in Windows 10 as a assistant l0l.

[Max King of the Wild]

Watched a little bit... Reminded me of kinect reveal video... Still waiting to be able to scan items in game and use them.

[Legend]

To me it kinda feels like Hololens is just a marketing ploy for windows 10.

[Mmm_fish_tacos]

This is all ready getting out of hand with the fanboys.

[Dr. Pezus]

Watched a little bit... Reminded me of kinect reveal video... Still waiting to be able to scan items in game and use them.

Same here. Too many buzzwords and fake promises imo

[darkknightkryta]

Same here. Too many buzzwords and fake promises imo

It works just as well as Milo.

[Max King of the Wild]

I didn't read the original post but me and a coworker was talking about this today. We both agreed that the video was battleship. Another coworker came in and started calling us fanboys and we were only saying it because it was ms. He said the tech will get there eventually. I said not before its already irrelevant if at all. Unless Ms can break the laws of physics. I was trying to explain to my coworker how the hologram works and why it wouldn't be possible to watch TV in mid air. He was saying it will happen eventually. I should have read this thread

[Dr. Pezus]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-s-hololens-is-something-different-than-o/1100-6424809/

Asked if Microsoft viewed Rift and Morpheus as competitors to HoloLens, a Microsoft spokesperson said: "Today's efforts in VR and AR are truly exciting. What we are talking about is something different."

The Microsoft rep went on to explain what the company thinks will set HoloLens apart from other virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.

"Holographic experiences on Windows are about delivering a mixed reality of both your digital world and your real world," the spokesperson said. "We are integrating holograms into the world around you--transforming the ways you create, connect, and explore. We hope holographic experiences on Windows 10 will help drive continued innovation in this category."

____

lol

[Legend]

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-s-hololens-is-something-different-than-o/1100-6424809/

Asked if Microsoft viewed Rift and Morpheus as competitors to HoloLens, a Microsoft spokesperson said: "Today's efforts in VR and AR are truly exciting. What we are talking about is something different."

The Microsoft rep went on to explain what the company thinks will set HoloLens apart from other virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.

"Holographic experiences on Windows are about delivering a mixed reality of both your digital world and your real world," the spokesperson said. "We are integrating holograms into the world around you--transforming the ways you create, connect, and explore. We hope holographic experiences on Windows 10 will help drive continued innovation in this category."

____

lol

Gosh I hate their marketing with the word hologram.

Plus lol he just described ar.

[Dr. Pezus]

Plus lol he just described ar.

Exactly lol

[kitler53]

i already thought about the video conferencing point,.. silly stuff really.

the 3D modeling is effing obvious,.. the finger control thing looks like a horrible user experience even in their canned circle-jerk of a marketing video.


good point on the can't display blacks bit.  i inherently already knew it but i hadn't explicitly thought of it.