Mixed Reality News Features


How To: Add Full Body Motion Tracking to the HoloLens with a Kinect
Thanks to Project-Infrared, there's now a pretty straightforward way to add motion tracking to the HoloLens: Connect it to a Kinect.

News: HoloLens Can Now Wirelessly Tap Rendering Power of Any Desktop PC via UWP Apps Built in Unity
Looking to inject a little more processing juice into your HoloLens? Unity can fix you up with the Standalone Universal Windows Platform Holographic Emulation.

News: Design a Room Layout with Holographic Furniture Using HoloPlanner
When figuring out how to arrange your furniture in a new room, you traditionally have to measure everything and use your imagination. HoloPlanner has a better idea: just place holographic furniture in the room so the Microsoft HoloLens can imagine it for you.

News: Trimble Brings Mixed Reality to the Construction Site with DAQRI Smart Helmet
Trimble is integrating its mixed reality applications into the DAQRI Smart Helmet to enable outdoor and on-site support for design, construction, and heavy industry as part of a collaboration the companies announced today.

Exclusive: Inside Magic Leap's Secret Headquarters
The long guarded veil of mystery surrounding Magic Leap for years was finally lifted last year when the company revealed its Magic Leap One device.

News: Coming Soon to Mixed Reality—Audio Sticky Notes by Holo Voice
When you want to leave someone a quick message, you often write it down on a sticky note and paste it to the relevant location. Alternatively, you call to leave a voicemail. Holo Voice Memo lets you do both at the same time by leaving an audio clip on a physical object in the room so anyone with a HoloLens and the app can play it back.

News: Transform Your Friend into an AR Musical Synthesizer via This HoloLens 2 NFT App
One of the oldest electronic musical instruments is the theremin, a synthesizer that generates sound based on hand gestures, as featured in the classic "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys.

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface, Part 2 (The System Manager)
Now that we have installed the toolkit, set up our prefabs, and prepared Unity for export to HoloLens, we can proceed with the fun stuff involved in building a dynamic user interface. In this section, we will build the system manager.

Video: Haptics Make Holograms Touchable on the HoloLens
Imagine wearing your HoloLens, then reaching out to touch a hologram and actually feeling it. Mind blown, right?! Now imagine that same hologram responding to your touch. I don't mean in the way holograms currently respond to an air tap, but a much more refined and precise touch. Maybe you touch a character on the shoulder and it turns around to see you, or maybe you hit a button in the air and it reacts accordingly.

News: Classic '90s Game Lemmings Comes to the HoloLens
If there's one thing entertainment companies love, it's rebooting aging franchises. But design firm Globacore Interactive Technologies appears to have taken rebooting to the next level by remaking the classic '90s game Lemmings specifically to work on the HoloLens, Microsoft's mixed reality headset.

News: Control a Synthesizer with the HoloLens to Make Music in Mixed Reality
In the world of analog synthesizers, hitting a key, twisting a knob, or sliding a fader makes a beautiful musical (or not so musical) sound and can be an amazing and downright satisfying experience. Now it's about to get even more satisfying, if you add Microsoft's HoloLens into the mix as a means to twist those knobs virtually instead.

News: Magic Leap Used to Bring AR to H&M & Star Wars Fashion Collaboration in Tokyo Developed by Warpin Media
There may be questions from some about the future of Magic Leap, but in Japan, The Force is with the augmented reality startup.

News: UC Berkeley Team Commands Drone Fleet with HoloLens
User interfaces for computers have evolved over the years, from the introduction of the keyboard and mouse on the personal computer, to touchscreens on mobile devices, to natural voice recognition. However, the same cannot be said for robots or drones—until now.

News: Stanford Children's Hospital Experiments with Magic Leap One to Reinvent Medical Training Simulations
In the last few years, the HoloLens has become a popular tool for use in medical procedures and training. But recently, the Magic Leap One has gained momentum in the space as well when it comes to medical use cases.

News: New Yu-Gi-Oh! AR Game Lets You Fight Monsters & Duel with Friends
You know the drill. It's time to d-d-d-duel! This time you're a part of the Shadow Games in a way you've never been before, thanks to Micorsoft's HoloLens.

HoloToolkit: How to Add Voice Commands to Your HoloLens App
The HoloToolkit offers a great many, simple ways to add what seems like extremely complex features of the HoloLens, but it can be a bit tricky if you're new to Windows Holographic. So this will be the first in an ongoing series designed to help new developers understand what exactly we can do with the HoloLens, and we'll start with voice commands.

How To: Share Photos & Videos with the Microsoft HoloLens
Microsoft's HoloLens comes with helpful features for capturing video and photos, but sharing whatever you record isn't as straightforward as you might expect. So here are the many ways to get your media off the device to share with the world.

News: The HoloLens Might Have a Small Field of View, but That's Actually a Good Thing
Microsoft's HoloLens is certainly a leap into the future of mixed reality interfaces, but it's not without drawbacks.

News: Royal Australian Air Force Using HoloLens to Experiment with Augmented Reality
The limitless applications of 3D data visualization will enable a more efficient approach to many of life's problems. Each day, developers exploring this technology are finding new ways to solve these problems in mixed reality; 3D modeling, easier house management, spinal surgery, and forest fire management are just a few recent examples of ways 3D data visualization can benefit us all.

Hands-On: Hands-On with Spatial's Remote Meeting App on Microsoft HoloLens
In recent years, many software publishers have tried to sell the business community on remote meetings via VR, but if social media chatter is any indication, it hasn't taken off in a big way just yet. However, for some, the notion of holding remote meetings using augmented reality, a medium in which you're still directly tied to the real world and not closed off in a blindfold-style VR headset, might be the better solution.

News: Patent Applications Offer Closer Look at Magic Leap One & How It May Work
Eventually, even the most private company has to file its patents and unveil its tightly-held secrets, and Magic Leap is no exception.

News: The HoloLens Lets You Watch TV in a Whole New Way
Are there any benefits to watching a movie in a holographic mixed reality headset, or should you just stick with your TV? It's not as cut and dried as you might think. While TVs have some advantages, so does the virtual screen of a Microsoft HoloLens.

News: US Navy Taps Microsoft's HoloLens for Augmented Reality War Games System
Simulated training can help soldiers and sailors learn how to use their weapons safely, but simulations can sometimes lack the stressful environment of a real firefight.

Hands-On: Hands-On with Magic Leap's Undersea, an AR Experience That Transports You to Another World
The latest immersive production from Magic Leap Studios finally got its debut on Monday at Siggraph, during which the company also released the app to the general public, so we took it for a spin.

News: HoloLens Update Brings Display Mirroring & Quick Actions Menu for Routine Tasks
Microsoft has informed HoloLens users that the company will begin rolling out a mandatory update for HoloLens as part of its Windows 10 October 2018 release that brings a number of new features and quality-of-life improvements to the headset.

News: Microsoft Unveils Remote Assist & Layout, New HoloLens Apps Aimed at Workforce Productivity
On Monday, at its annual Build developer conference, Microsoft revealed two new apps for the HoloLens apps.

News: Microsoft Fuels Efficiency at Chevron with Remote Assist App for HoloLens
Four months after unveiling the latest productivity apps for the HoloLens, Microsoft now has a series of compelling real-world use case videos showing how the augmented reality device and its apps are helping oil giant Chevron.

News: Microsoft Makes HoloLens Available for Rent for Trial Evaluation & Trade Shows
While the consensus among some in the augmented reality community is that the Microsoft HoloLens is the best device available at present, it also remains the most cost-prohibitive option, with the development edition costing $3,000.

HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface, Part 11 (Rotating Objects)
Continuing our series on building a dynamic user interface for the HoloLens, this guide will show how to rotate the objects that we already created and moved and scaled in previous lessons.

News: Microsoft Unveils How-To Videos for Dynamics 365 Guides App Ahead of HoloLens 2 Arrival
With the imminent arrival of the HoloLens 2 expected any day now, Microsoft is preparing new users to take advantage of its software from day one.

News: Brainlab Prescribes Magic Leap as Cure for Visualizing Medical Imaging Data, Lumin Updates Pushed to Devs
While many of the latest content partnerships announced by Magic Leap appear to lean towards entertainment and gaming, a new partnership with medical technology provider Brainlab has Magic Leap getting down to more serious business.

News: New Magic Leap Images Appear as Saudi Prince Gets Demo from CEO Rony Abovitz
It turns out that the government of Saudi Arabia has managed to do something last month's Game Developers Conference couldn't — give us a few new glimpses of the Magic Leap One being worn by someone other than Shaq.

News: VAR Football Gives Coaches Another Tool to Train Sports Teams With—The HoloLens
The HoloLens is a natural medium for 3D data visualization, which offers a far more ideal approach over 2D screens to managing multiple resources simultaneously and grasping the bigger picture. We've already seen how management is using holograms to oversee cities, firefighters, and the military, and now training for sports teams is being addressed with VAR Football.

HoloLens Dev 101: The Unity Editor Basics
With any continuously active software, it can start to become fairly complex after a few years of updates. New features and revisions both get layered into a thick mesh of menu systems and controls that even pro users can get bewildered by. If you are new to a certain application after it has been around for many years, it can be downright intimidating to know where to begin.

News: Mercedes-Benz Shifts to HoloLens for Employee Training
Luxury automaker Mercedes-Benz has joined the growing list of automakers adopting augmented reality to provide an assist to its manufacturing operations, in this case, via the Microsoft HoloLens.

Hands-On: Up Close & Personal with the Meta 2 Head-Mounted Display
Last June, Meta began shipping their Meta 2 mixed reality headset, to the delight of many. In September, it was announced that shipping had been delayed until the end of the year. Then it appeared that Christmas would bring something magical when Meta sent out an email four days before the big holiday saying that the Meta 2 developers kits were finally shipping. Unfortunately, having a few on order here at Next Realit,y we are still patiently waiting for ours to arrive.

HoloLens Dev 101: How to Create User Location Hotspots to Trigger Events with the HoloLens
One of the truly beautiful things about the HoloLens is its completely untethered, the-world-is-your-oyster freedom. This, paired with the ability to view your real surroundings while wearing the device, allows for some incredibly interesting uses. One particular use is triggering events when a user enters a specific location in a physical space. Think of it as a futuristic automatic door.

News: Microsoft Is About to Revolutionize How We Watch Sports at Home
Obviously this is just a teaser, and who knows how soon we'll see something like this in real life, but just go ahead and watch the video first before you continue reading.

News: The Enterprise Leap — Robots, Gremlins, & Games Won't Save Magic Leap, but Tapping the Inner Child of CEOs Just Might
Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism, but outright anger at what may have seemed like an attempt to dupe trusting onlookers.

News: 5 Major Problems Magic Leap One Faces on Day One
The mysterious technology product teased via an eccentric TED Talk nearly five years ago has finally been revealed, and it's called the Magic Leap One: Creator Edition. After all of the non-disclosure agreements, furtive comments from CEOs and insiders given early access to the device, and a seemingly never-ending string of hints dropped by the company's CEO, Rony Abovitz, on Twitter, we finally have a real look at the product.