Microsoft has just announced their new HoloLens. It’s the latest in the growing trend of virtual reality, but instead of just putting the screens closer to your face like the Oculus Rift or Google Glass, the HoleLens is a computer that projects programs and screens literally onto anything and everything around you.
The HoloLens uses your hands and your voice to operate; think Kinect but more immersive. You can drag programs, make them smaller or bigger, and even tell them to “follow you”. This will make the window follow behind you while you walk. Have you ever been watching a movie and needed to make coffee? Now instead of pausing, you just take the movie with you and stick it on your fridge.
Microsoft isn’t just stopping at making your apps more convenient. A big story from last year was Microsoft’s purchase of Minecraft, and now we know why. Microsoft is touting Minecraft HoloLens as the products “killer app”, and watching the segment in the video, we are inclined to agree. The HoloLens will obviously not be limited to one game, and we imagine everything from Angry Birds to Call of Duty will eventually have some HoloLens integration. We just keep imagining that scene from Iron Man 2 takes a holographic basketball and nets it in a basket.
The HoloLens is also promising to help productivity. Another segment in the trailer shows a woman designing a motorcycle through HoloLens. She has a holographic model on her desk, and even augments the real life product through the Lens. Since the device is running full Windows 10, the HoloLens will have access to OneDrive, Word and a host of other products you can use when you’re on the clock, and Microsoft maintains that “the HoloLens is as beneficial for productivity as much as tablets.”
Microsoft hasn’t announced a price for the Hololens yet, but they have said that it will be available “in the same time-frame as Windows 10”. Whether this mean at the end of the year, or just in the time frame of Windows 10’s life cycle is still unknown, but we expect to get more information pretty soon. If we had this in our basement, all we’d want to do is tell people about it.
