Microsoft HoloLens

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Will probably end up being vaporware. But pretty cool I guess.

http://youtu.be/b6sL_5Wgvrg

[Ed Oscuro]

Nah, MS actually has a pretty good track record of rolling hardware out lately.

But a lot of that stuff has tended to be aimed at business users, like their recent "conference room in a box" screens. It could be useful for anybody, but likely not at a price that's affordable, at least to begin with. I could think of lots of potential uses for HoloLens, but I could've said the same for Glass. I guess the only real differences here are that HoloLens looks set up to make use of an external computer so you can use more and more complicated kinds of overlays, and they also haven't worried too much about making it small in an attempt to sidestep all the bad press from Glass.

[Damocles]

Discout Quentin Tarentino is creepy. A guy over at Ars Technica practically jizzed all over himself writing an article about this a few weeks back. That being said, it's interesting as all hell. Ghost Recon Future Soldier in real life.

[Xyga]

Isn't that just augmented reality in 3D Google Glass + Kinect form ? So why the 'holo' ?

[DunlapDunlap]

Isn't that just augmented reality in 3D Google Glass + Kinect form ? So why the 'holo' ?

Because it sounds like "hollow," like Bill Gates' head.

[Ed Oscuro]

Because it sounds like "hollow," like Bill Gates' head.

Get that shit outta here.

@ Xyga: It might be holographic. Ars Technica has a good rundown, and they address that point specifically (commenting on a linked Wired article):
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/01/ ... tual-real/

Personally I'd like to try something like this out for building 3D imagery. Just think - no more scale issues, you can build things to a real scale! I'm not sure everybody would work faster with gestures than with a mouse + tablet combo, or if it's even accurate and flexible enough to replace those, but it'll be interesting to see if it at least gets close. I don't think "close" is the word when it's completely different, but that gives the idea.

[Cagar]

Literally for the first time ever, I got the
"...Do we reaaally need this?"
feeling for a product. The intelligent watches and google glass weren't nothing for me, but this seems completely unnecessary, especially considering how much it will probably cost.

Heck, I can't imagine using it even if I was rich

[nasty_wolverine]

Literally for the first time ever, I got the
"...Do we reaaally need this?"
feeling for a product. The intelligent watches and google glass weren't nothing for me, but this seems completely unnecessary, especially considering how much it will probably cost.

Heck, I can't imagine using it even if I was rich

holographic porn. nuff said.

[Cagar]

Literally for the first time ever, I got the
"...Do we reaaally need this?"
feeling for a product. The intelligent watches and google glass weren't nothing for me, but this seems completely unnecessary, especially considering how much it will probably cost.

Heck, I can't imagine using it even if I was rich

holographic porn. nuff said.

Too bad quality, oculus rift is already enough for that.

[Ed Oscuro]

You can't walk or run around with Oculus, though. With this you could set up a laser tag type game in any place, if you had an appropriate program to do it, and that actually does provide the missing link to a gaming revolution I've been expecting for years now.

Whether it's something any of us will care about is another question, but I definitely see some of the functions. Again, though, I think it's more interesting if you have some kind of serious use for mixing the real world with holographic-style overlays. Microsoft's "elbow joint replacement" teaser image just half-seriously suggests what can be done, but don't be fooled into thinking they aren't trying exceptionally hard to bottle up all the major applications.

[BIL]

Porn? HOW BASE. (・｀ω´・) Finally my games will be real!

[Cagar]

You can't walk or run around with Oculus, though. With this you could set up a laser tag type game in any place, if you had an appropriate program to do it, and that actually does provide the missing link to a gaming revolution I've been expecting for years now.

Whether it's something any of us will care about is another question, but I definitely see some of the functions. Again, though, I think it's more interesting if you have some kind of serious use for mixing the real world with holographic-style overlays. Microsoft's "elbow joint replacement" teaser image just half-seriously suggests what can be done, but don't be fooled into thinking they aren't trying exceptionally hard to bottle up all the major applications.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUhUzUWOIug
try not to cringe

[BPzeBanshee]

Cisco and quite a few companies are pushing towards an "Internet of Things" future where you can essentially control a significant part of your environment using a centralised network. Think of some sci-fi films where the main person checks power usage, water systems, and various stuff you wouldn't otherwise consider digital around his apartment and can see what the main functional purpose for this thing is going to be.

Bit cynical about the "processing terabytes of information" using the "HPU" here.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hacker paradise! I can see why you're talking about the IOT here - this would serve as a kind of visual guide much more natural than typing up an IP address and fooling with an HTML page directly served by each device. You can still get that HTML page but Hololens could let you overlay the physical location of each thing into your environment. Obviously GPS isn't really at the right price yet - where you'd want to add that $15 MediaTek chip to every device.

Not sure on the utility of the IOT concept for many devices. What's the difference between walking over to your fridge, opening it, and throwing away spoiled food, versus just waiting until a sensor triggers and you get an alarm just as you're starting your 12 hour shift that there's some spoiled food (and then tapping "ignore," forgetting all about it, and then repeating this process every day until the smell becomes so unbearable that you just walk over to your fridge, open it, and throw away the spoiled food)?

[BPzeBanshee]

Your example would be what IOT advocates call a "kink to be ironed out" - in the magic IOT world where everything is connected your local network server would make note and tell you at a better and more appropriate time, defined by when your visor/microchip in your brain/phone walks in to your house or a predetermined time that you specified. Mac OS X already links notifications/alarms from your iPhone to OSX itself so I find this to actually be quite a plausible idea. Not helping the Big Brother/Hacker paradise paranoia here though.

Mind you, I read Peter F Hamilton for sci-fi (planet-wide internet, house AIs that can micromanage stuff like that for you and various other IOT predictions of the future written in books as far back as 20 years ago) so perhaps I'm a bit of a dreamer. IOT potential security flaws is another can of worms in itself worthy of its own thread knowing this place.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think that with the right kind of equipment, IOT makes a lot of sense. Our friend BILLG is worrying about robots stealing jobs (well, he puts it a bit more impersonally) but there's a lot to be said for the idea of microfactories. Of course robots themselves will need IOT capabilities too.