http://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/about Largely related to my line of work but I thought it might interest tabletop enthusiasts as well. Would be mighty awesome to play Card Hunter in a hologram. Or for that matter, any game. On the microsoft side, free update to win 10 for past window users (from win7 onwards) is really the only good deal. Another form of distributed consumer marketing practice but what the heck ... If anyone wanna talk hololens development, feel free to pm. I'm waiting on user feedback before jumping on the wagon. Cheers !
It does look very interesting. Also: THEY ARE NOT HOLOGRAMS, despite everything that Microsoft has said on the matter. I just had to get that out of my system.
Yes, the technical term is augmented reality. Holograms are MS's own spin on it. Gathering from first hand reports streaming in, the feedback seems positive. The tech is real and I'm on the mailing list. We'll see how things go...
Awesome. Can it show virtual objects that are darker than the real objects behind them, or can it only add light to what you see?
I have no idea. Fired a technical question more than 12 hrs ago and not gotten a reply yet, hoping for a response this year. My readings indicate that the ambient occlusion is accounted for. Virtual objects under your table will be shadowed. I presume that the virtual object's texture defines what is seen (related to the question I fired). So if your virtual object had a high resolution black texture against a black wall, they'd blend in nicely like a camouflage. Heh, its augmented...so you can still see your surroundings. But with anything dealing with light, outdoors will degrade performance.
Guess being on the insider does have some perks, even tho I'm not based in the US. And finally some word on the technical aspects of the Hololens device itself. http://t.co/zUJd3T1wl0 Don't go joining the win 10 program just for the device, no sdks/apis have been released for devs to work/play with. You just get a chance to install win10 pre-release build and a chance to play with VS2015 and that's it.
Assuming your question is still on occlusion: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/microsoft-shows-off-new-hololens-demos-build-conference/ Honestly, not really bothered by it. The quicker they release dev kits, the more brains get thrown on the problem, the higher the chance of a 2nd generation improvement.
I admit I've just skimmed that, but it looks like they're talking about occlusion of the rendered image by reality, whereas I'm talking about the opposite. You know the weird ghostly appearance Slimer has in Ghostbusters? All their rendered stuff would look like that unless they can somehow block the light from things in the world out.
Taking the image straight from the url, I see soft self-shadowing effect and the robot looks whole to me (The blue pattern overlay is prolly the env depth mapping). And it does look like ambient occlusion is accounted for as well. Since its optical projection, dark objects behind the robot has no impact as the virtual is overlaid upon the real world unless the model is deliberately made semi-transparent.
