Journal Week 1&2 — HoloLens
Through extensive research into the world of Augmented reality, the HoloLens designed and built by Microsoft was looked into, which was a new yet exciting experience. Although Virtual Reality is what I intend to study and hopefully utilise for my future career, the Augmented Reality was also an interesting topic to start off as well.
First off, the AR creates virtual objects mixed with the real world around you whilst the VR focuses on changing your whole environment and immersing you into a completely different world. Microsoft’s HoloLens is the first self-contained holographic computer to be sat entirely on your head without any cords to be connected to another device. While the device deems to produce holograms, it is just virtual objects seen by just the user of the device and is not seen by everyone around it. What the device essentially does is that it uses its camera and sensors to detect the environment around you and pin virtual objects onto them. By using gestures with your hands, your voice, and the direction of where you’re looking at, the HoloLens creates virtual objects that can be seen in all directions and angles.
Although this sounds all exciting and all, it does come with high costs and still contains needs of improvement, but that is to be expected as it hasn’t been many years since its release date. There are various other AR devices such as the Meta series and Magic Leap (yet to be officially released), which have different features such as screen resolution and size. The Meta 2 features its functionality of actually “touching” the virtual object like it’s really there. Its Screen resolution goes up to 2560x1440 and costs roughly a third of the price of Microsoft’s Hololens. A major setback would be the tethering component which basically means that it the device is connected to a computer nearby.
Finding the exact functionality and how the device can differentiate objects and your environment was really hard to research, and applying this to the course project will definitely be an intensive and stressful journey, yet a fun and one of a kind experience dwelling into Augmented Reality.
Virtual objects created can also be seen in all directions and angles. What this means is that you can physically walk around the virtual object. Despite the name, the glasses cannot produce holograms for everyone to see; instead its augmented reality which uses movement aware senses to make virtual objects look like it’s there in real life. How the HoloLens does this is, is through the inbuilt cameras to detect the environment around you and pin virtual objects onto them. By Air tapping, which is essentially like a mouse click on a desktop; works in conjunction with gaze, and activates the target with a gesture. By using hand gestures, you can make interactions like placing, resizing, and rotating virtual objects, whilst voice commands give you extra control. The HoloLens tracks your movements and gestures, which then produces light that bounces off the three layers of glass in each lens of the device to your eyes, all in which to trick your brain into thinking that the object is really there.
