Mixed Reality

A couple of weeks ago, Tom Warren from Verge, joined in on an hour long virtual meeting room with Microsoft’s Alex Kipman, the inventor of Xbox Kinect and HoloLens. This was possible through Microsoft’s new Mesh platform, which currently uses the HoloLens 2 headset. This is the new technology that Microsoft calls, mixed reality. Kipman describes this technology as “like you’re in the same place with someone sharing content or you can teleport from different mixed reality devices and be present with people even when you’re not physically together. This technology will initially present people as avatars from their AltSpaceVR social network. The mesh software will eventually support something called “holoportation” which allows people to appear as themselves in the virtual realm. During this hour long meeting, Warren discovered that you can even hand people virtual objects and animals like jellyfish and sharks. Microsoft is hoping that architects, engineers, and designers will utilize this new technology. Other businesses should also be intrigued in this type of technology, especially now during a global pandemic when sometimes not everyone is able to meet up in the same room physically. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, stated, “think about what Xbox Live did for gaming — we went from single player to multiplayer, creating communities that helped people connect and achieve together… now just imagine if the same thing happened with mixed reality.” The one drawback to this new technology is the hefty price point, but the possibilities for this are endless. This can also have tremendous impact on urban policy, planning, and design. With technological advancements progressing every day, things like Microsoft Mesh will be seen more and more throughout society. The reality is there will be less human to human contact over the years with the constant upgrades we see in cell phones, computers, tablets, and even gaming devices. These devices will most likely be able to use Microsoft Mesh or other similar technology in the future. With technology like this becoming more common, there will be less traveling of people. People will be able to visit each other virtually and make it feel so real, that there may not even be the need for constant travel anymore (just a thought). This impacts policies because it is important for policy makers to push this type of technology all throughout their respective urban areas. It is crucial that businesses and citizens make use of this astounding technological advancement. This also has the potential to completely change the workplace. We are already starting to see less people commute to work every day with this pandemic and the emergence of Zoom and WebEx. Now with this, there may be business that simply do not have an office anymore. If people can see each other so realistically, and virtually, why would they want to waste their time commuting to work every day? Just a thought. Article source: https://www.theverge.com/22308883/microsoft-mesh-virtual-reality-augmented-reality-hololens-vr-headsets-features