Mixed Reality News Features
News: Microsoft HoloLens 2 & Unity Used to Highlight the Threat to Endangered Whales at the Smithsonian
Although the enterprise use cases for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 continue to impress, the arts community just can't stay away from the best augmented reality headset on the market.
News: Here's Your First Look at the US Army's Combat-Ready HoloLens 2 in Action
Though Microsoft has had trouble keeping up with the demand for HoloLens 2, the company has been able to supply modified headsets to the US Army.
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: Windows Holographic Lands in Windows 10 Insider Build 14971
Windows Insiders running Build 14971 of Windows 10 in the Fast Ring can now look for the "Windows Holographic First Run" app to check to see if their PCs are up to the task of running Windows Holographic. It won't detect your VR headset yet, but at least you'll be able to see if your computer will be compatible.
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.
HoloLens Dev 101: Building a Dynamic User Interface, Part 9 (Moving Objects)
So after setting everything up, creating the system, working with focus and gaze, creating our bounding box and UI elements, unlocking the menu movement, as well as jumping through hoops refactoring a few parts of the system itself, we have finally made it to the point in our series on dynamic user interfaces for HoloLens where we get some real interaction.
News: Magic Leap's Biggest Problem May Not Be Legal Fights but a Major Battery Charging Issue
While everyone was marveling at the latest drama over at Magic Leap involving employees last week, a major rumor listed in one of the reports, related to the company's flagship device, was mostly overlooked.
News: 360world's Windows Mixed Reality Tools Will Help Air Traffic Controllers See in New Ways
360world, a Hungary-based tech company involved in motion control and augmented reality, released information today about their latest products, the CLAIRITY HoloTower and CLAIRITY SmartBinocular. These tools are designed to bring augmented reality into the hands of air traffic controllers, via Windows Mixed Reality, to greatly improve their workflow over tools already in use.
Hands-On: Whiteboard App For Magic Leap Lets You Share Your Strategic Genius In Augmented Reality
The business world is currently figuring out how to deal with the coronavirus crisis, with many offices opting to work remotely for at least the next few weeks as a safety precaution. Predictably, this has thrown remote meeting software back into the spotlight, especially augmented reality solutions.
News: Five Windows Holographic Mixed Reality Headsets Have Now Been Seen, but Most Have Not Been Touched
Some of the products I have been looking forward to seeing the most during CES 2017 has been the upcoming Windows Holographic virtual reality headsets. These are VR headset that will run a version of the Windows Holographic platform, which will allow users to have a similar experience as the HoloLens with a mixed reality environment. Of the six headsets that could have possibly made it to CES, five had shown up. Unfortunately, most of them are behind glass.
News: Magic Leap Releases Game of Thrones Experience for All Magic Leap One Users
It turns out that the video Magic Leap released earlier today was indeed a teaser for the public release of the Game of Thrones experience for meant for all Magic Leap One users.
News: Microsoft Enlists Rapper/Actor Common to Push Its HoloLens Future During NBA All-Star Weekend
The Microsoft HoloLens has a fairly passionate, yet relatively small group of users pushing the developer-centric device forward, mostly spreading the word about the device through word of mouth and meetups. But this weekend, during the annual NBA All-Star festivities, we got a look at how Microsoft may be planning to market the device if it ever goes truly mainstream.
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: 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 Assists in Live Surgery
Numerous examples exist of doctors and surgeons using HoloLens to plan surgeries. The device has even been used to view reference images during a procedure and stream it to a remote audience. Until recently, it has not been used to augment the surgeon's view of the patient during a live surgery.
News: Why Is Most HoloLens Development Happening in Unity?
Autodesk offers some of the most popular software for computer-aided design (CAD) projects, which involve all sorts of 3D rendering. Their tools are clearly suited for use with the Microsoft HoloLens, but so far very little supports HoloLens development outside of Unity. Why is that?
Hands-On: Occipital's Bridge Headset for iPhones Has Magical Spatial Mapping Abilities
In the tech world, when you're a small startup going up against the Goliaths and their massive marketing budgets, you're forced to find and produce something almost magical to help your product stand apart from the rest. And that's exactly what Occipital Inc. has done with their Bridge headset.
Hands-On: Magic Leap One First Hands-On Impressions for HoloLens Developers
In a surprising twist of expectation management, Magic Leap managed to not only ship but deliver the Magic Leap One I ordered on Wednesday by 4 p.m. PT on the same day.
HoloLens Dev 101: How to Get Started with Unity's New Video Player
The release of Unity 5.6 brought with it several great enhancements. One of those enhancements is the new Video Player component. This addition allows for adding videos to your scenes quickly and with plenty of flexibility. Whether you are looking to simply add a video to a plane, or get creative and build a world layered with videos on 3D objects, Unity 5.6 has your back.
News: Thyssenkrupp Claims Up to 4x Faster Workflow with HoloLens
Microsoft announced yet another exciting partnership for HoloLens today — thyssenkrupp, an industrial engineering company best known for their elevators — continuing to prove how useful augmented reality is in the workplace.
News: The Floor Is Actually Lava on the Microsoft HoloLens
Unless you had a master of visual effects for a parent, you had to imagine the floor was actually lava when playing the classic furniture-hopping game. With a Microsoft HoloLens, however, you don't have to imagine anything.
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.
News: US Army Declares Microsoft the Winner in Battle for $480M AR Headset Contract
In their first head-to-head major contract clash, Microsoft has emerged victorious over Magic Leap, as the US Army has awarded a $480 million contract to the HoloLens maker.
Exclusive: ODG Filing Points to Magic Leap Acquisition of Auctioned Patent Assets
In case you thought the long and unfortunate story of ODG was over, hold on, there's one last chapter to tell.
News: Experiments in Stock Market 3D Data Visualization on the HoloLens
HoloLens developer Michael Peters of In-Vizible has released quite a few videos since receiving his HoloLens last year. Many of his experiments are odd and funny, but some include serious potential approaches to data visualization. In the videos embedded below, you'll specifically see stock market information beautifully rendered in different ways to help understand the data.
News: Airbus Previews Military Sandbox App for HoloLens
As Microsoft works toward fulfilling its $480 million contract to supply modified HoloLens 2 headsets to the US Army, Airbus is preparing to supply advanced augmented reality apps for the device.
News: Magic Leap Gives the World a Peek at Lumin OS
A fresh batch of developer info has been revealed on Magic Leap's Creator Portal. On Thursday evening, the normally secretive company gave the general public perhaps the closest look yet at Magic Leap One's Lumin operating system.
News: Magic Leap Achieves Full Hand Tracking & Lays Foundation for Magicverse with Latest Lumin Update
After improving hand-tracking and adding multi-user sharing features in the last Lumin OS update, Magic Leap has upped the ante yet again.
News: This HoloLens App Hopes to Offer Paramedics an Augmented Reality Assist During Emergencies
A new telemedicine application for the Microsoft HoloLens is promising paramedics and EMTs a new tool for diagnosis and treatment of patients in the field.
News: The HoloLens Is Already Teaching Tomorrow's Doctors
The human body is amazingly complex, and seeing inside one poses a variety of challenges whether you're dealing with an actual human or some kind of facsimile. Mixed reality offers the ability to get the best of both worlds by creating a holographic teaching tool for human anatomy.
News: Microsoft's Windows Holographic Is Breaking Free from the HoloLens
Not content with bringing the first untethered mixed reality headset to market, Microsoft wants to expand their Windows Holographic operating system beyond HoloLens into vastly more robust technologies.
News: Microsoft's Alex Kipman Predicts Three Trends in Augmented & Virtual Reality for 2018
In a LinkedIn post published on Tuesday, Microsoft's leading advocate for the HoloLens made a prediction that the mixing of immersive technologies will define augmented reality in 2018.
News: Intel Takes Us Inside to Reveal How HoloLens 2 Is Transforming Computer Chip Production
The enterprise applications powering the adoption of the HoloLens 2 are only just ramping up as developers continue to work with the still relatively new hardware.
Video: HoleLenz Adds Magic Windows to HoloLens & Gives Portals to New Worlds
When I first started with HoloLens development last April, one of the first things I created was a window. The purpose of that window was to be attached to a wall and give the illusion of being in a different space—an effect that is often referred to as a "magic window" effect by developers. My goal was to create the feeling of being in the penthouse of a skyscraper, and it's one that I hope to get back to working on soon.
News: The Crazy Process Behind the HoloLens Optics That Make Mixed Reality Possible
Tricking your eyes into seeing 3D images isn't all that hard in movies or even in virtual reality, but when you start projecting holograms into the physical world, you run into some difficult problems. Microsoft obviously figured them out with their HoloLens, but how? The process is pretty amazing.
News: Microsoft Japan Concept Video Demos How HoloLens Will Help Pilot the Drone Ships of the Future
Although the HoloLens is still primarily the domain of developers and researchers, the device is nevertheless on the cutting edge of showing us what will be possible with augmented reality in the coming years. The latest example comes via Microsoft Japan and a new concept video that shows off how the HoloLens will be used in the relatively near future to pilot autonomous ships.
News: Magic Leap Adds Master of 'The Matrix' Bullet Time Effect to Secretive Product Team
After announcing another massive round of funding to the tune of $502 million, Magic Leap is adding another powerful weapon to its creative arsenal: John Gaeta, the man who helped develop the iconic Bullet Time effect for The Matrix series of films.
News: 5 Magic Leap Apps You're Probably Missing, Including Star Wars, the Magicverse Matrix, AR Jenga, & More
Whenever the name Magic Leap comes up, the talk inevitably seems to turn to the company's big-name backers and "unicorn-level" amounts of cash poured into the venture. And if it's not that, observers tend to focus on the company's market strategy and overall prospects.
News: Magic Leap Patent Reveals Plans for Sign Language & Text Translation App
Another piece of Magic Leap's mysterious story has been uncovered thanks to a new patent application revealed on Thursday, March 15.
Have You Seen This?: New 'Crayon' HoloLens App Brings Back the Fun of Drawing on Walls
Crayon, a free 3D drawing application by the mysteriously named arkalian, showed up in the Windows Store recently, so I gave it a try like I do all new apps for Windows Holographic. Truthfully, I loaded it up not expecting much, but wow, was I wrong. It's a simple idea, but it's executed well enough to make it a truly great experience on the HoloLens.