Dazzling HoloLens 2 Opens a Wide World of AR
Microsoft’s new AR headset is less expensive, more comfortable, and has a better field of view than the original model. It looks like a real winner.
By Sascha Segan
The virtual world just got wider. Microsoft’s HoloLens 2, announced at MWC19, has a 52-degree field of view, more than double the width of Microsoft’s previous augmented-reality headset, making it wider than the Magic Leap and no longer restricting your vision to a little box.
I’ve used the first HoloLens (but not this one yet), and the limited field of view was the number-one problem for Microsoft’s innovative augmented reality headset. In case you don’t know the HoloLens, it maps the room around you and floats “holograms” on top of objects to let you play games, see instructions, or interact with objects.
The new model isn’t just a wider view. It’s much more comfortable than the old one, Microsoft says, adapting to different hairstyles, head sizes, and glasses uses. And stunningly, it maps your hands so you can manipulate virtual objects freely.
“With HoloLens 2, we more than tripled the comfort of the device,” Microsoft’s Alex Kipman said.
Microsoft engineer Julia Schwartz showed off a dazzling demo where she resized objects with her hands, moved them around, asked them to follow her, and even played a virtual piano with ten fingers.
“HoloLens 2 evolves our interaction model by significantly advancing how people engage with holograms,” Kipman said.
It even comes in a special hard hat model, built by Trimble, for folks working on job sites that require head protection.
The HoloLens 2 is based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 platform. At a show where 5G is rampant, this device uses old-school 802.11ac Wi-Fi and USB-C to connect, along with Bluetooth 5. While it’s said to be more comfortable than the original HoloLens, battery life isn’t much longer, with two to three hours of active use.
The display consists of two 2K, 3:2 screens. They’re a new Microsoft MEMS display, according to Kipman. That’s a little shocking; I don’t think of Microsoft as a display manufacturing company. There’s a Kinect sensor on the front to map the room and objects, but also an 8-megapixel camera that can record 1080p video. The headset has five mics and dual speakers.
This is still a headset for businesses, not consumers. Microsoft introduced the HoloLens 2 by showing it being used for corporate collaboration in virtual rooms with avatars, for repairing an engine, for doing surgery, and for designing buildings. At $3,500 or $125 per month (down from $5,000), it’s cheaper than the original HoloLens, but it definitely fits in the business category, not the playing around category.
One partner, though, hinted at something different. While Tim Sweeney, head of Fortnite maker Epic Games, said that, “In the years to come, Epic Games will support HoloLens in all our endeavors.” For now he mostly seems to mean that they are opening up their popular Unreal Engine environment to developers who want to create enterprise-level HoloLens experiences.
Kipman showed a slide festooned with partners, mostly enterprise software companies, working on solutions for health care, architecture, manufacturing, and other industries. Microsoft itself will churn out several HoloLens enterprise apps under its Dynamics 365 banner, letting HoloLens users sample products, do 3D design, or remotely assist other workers.
“HoloLens 2 is ready to provide professionals with immediate value,” he said.
A Cloud-Based Strategy With a Clear Future
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has made “mobile-first, cloud-first” his mantra as he has transformed Microsoft. At the HoloLens launch, he expressed a desire to make his AR platform “open,” although that doesn’t mean it will be unprofitable.
Nadella articulated three open principles. Like Windows, HoloLens won’t have one app store. It’ll have a default Microsoft store, but other store vendors will be welcome to join. It’ll also be open to different web browsers, and Firefox is already on board, he said. Finally, HoloLens will have an open API and driver model.
This feels to me like a pre-emptive strike at Apple, which is sure to lock down its app store on any future AR products. Developers and content creators have complained about Apple’s exclusive app store and its 30 percent take, and the complaining may get louder when Apple unveils its anticipated subscription news service.
But it also shows where Microsoft sees the money coming from. Two of the company’s demos were of Azure-based cloud services that can help developers create cross-platform or higher-quality AR services; one a cross-platform hologram system, and the other a way to do high-quality rendering in the cloud.
“You can stream high-polygon content with no decimation to HoloLens, allowing HoloLens 2 to display holograms of infinite detail,” Kipman said.
The cross-platform “spatial anchors” service, meanwhile, let a Vuforia demonstrator use an iPad to manipulate a scene that a HoloLens user was working in. To do that, of course, you need to pay the Azure piper.
That also ties into the second, lower-profile device Microsoft announced today. The $399 Azure Kinect is a cloud-based motion camera that helps businesses monitor, for instance, if hospital patients are about to take a fall.
A cloud-first company is looking to make its money not on the HoloLens itself, but on the cloud services that power it. For that strategy, it looks like it’s blue skies ahead for Microsoft.
Read more: “Augmented Reality (AR) vs. Virtual Reality (VR): What’s the Difference?”
Originally published at www.pcmag.com.
