By: Bryan
I’m sure everyone has seen the recent boom in interest regarding virtual reality. Microsoft has been developing Hololens for a while now, and has recently released it for developers.
The hololens cannot be considered virtual reality; instead, it uses something called augmented reality. This means that it doesn’t immerse you in a virtual world, it takes in your surroundings and projects things that interact with it. For example, you can have it scan your surroundings, and can use walls as surfaces for screens that can serve the purposes of a tv or monitor. For now, the hololens is not available to consumers, as it is targeted to be used for business or education.
Hololens look like a pair of thick, futuristic headphone/goggle mix. If you compare it to something like the Oculus Rift, which is a big black block that covers your whole face, the Hololens actually looks fairly normal and un-bizzare. So far, the biggest problem regarding the Hololens is that the field of view is a bit too narrow, but comparing it to how it was when it was first announced, it is getting better.
Unlike certain virtual reality sets that are available today, the Hololens doesn’t need you to hold something in your hand, so you don’t feel like you are playing on a gaming console all the time. You use your fingers to tap on what you see, and use gestures to control what happens. For example, at any time, you can make a “bloom” gesture to go back to the main start menu. You can run any application that runs on windows 10 on the hololens, and it seems like a truly impressive piece of technology.
