Hololens and Unity 3D

Looking forward to try one of this devices someday. The devkit price is on the steep side but i reckon the future is developing for VR/AR devices. Anybody here with an early hands on developing for the Microsoft device? Although i think there is space for both which one you think is going to win the battle, Hololens or Rift? I have tried some demos on the Rift and it was amazing but one cannot ignore the potential of holograms on a day to day basis besides gaming. Any ideas on how the development for Hololens on unity might be? The information regarding the device is scarce and scattered on the internet but for the people interested i will leave some links that wrap up what is known to date nicely.

Looking forward for your opinions!

Additional info:

http://www.facebook.com/hololensdeveloping/
http://holoview.technology/

 

Also interested if anyone has had any hands on experience with the Hololens tech.
It is a bit steep to invest on tech that you have never tried, and it is US Canada only, so I probably can't have a go for a while still.

I am curious if it is as good as the video demos (which you can find on youtube) make it seem. Anyone?

 

There are some experiences being shared around the internet but none of them entered the more technical field of code and editor interaction except the article on the link below. I came across this link about a month ago and since it required registration i didn't bother. In the hopes of possibly finding something new i tried my luck today and found some pretty cool information regarding the experience of developing (although fairly limited) for the hololens.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/29...irst-look-build-hololens-apps-with-unity.html

First thoughts?

 

"You'll use Unity transforms to place a stage in relation to your HoloLens; and as it's a 1:1 mapping, you really are placing your stage two meters out and half a meter down. Getting that initial placement right is important. You don't want to destroy the mixed-reality illusion by dropping a user right into the middle of an object."

That really seams interesting...

But how would it be to build games with this? I mean games that can use all the functionalities of the device. I would love to put my hands on this!

 

Yes, but if it catches on we'll likely see cheap ripoffs on the market at some point.

 

It would be awesome if we could see some other companies make some cheaper devices. Specially to Indie devs, since $3k is kinda expensive to startups.

 

I think with the economy of scale, battery price drops and maybe less premium build quality (you look at the hololens and you know it breaths quality) allied with a tethered version might bring some hope to the indie community and augmented reality enthusiasts. We need this yesterday!

 

Well,there are already cheaper alternatives; you can do augmented reality on your smart phone and there is also Meta Glasses: https://www.getameta.com/

 

I did notice that Google Cardboard leaves a spot open for your phone's camera.

Ah, yes. I remember that now. Absolutely ugly hardware though at least they give us their technical specs. If I'm not mistaken we still don't know the actual specifications for the HoloLens.

 

I don't think Meta Glasses are as much powerfull as HoloLens will be. I don't know yet much about either of them, but I've read that HoloLens will run some kind of Win10, so you can run almost any app in it, and that is awesome. Also Unity will have good support to this stuff. At least its what is says here http://blogs.unity3d.com/pt/2015/04/29/announcing-support-for-microsoft-hololens/

 

Ryiah is totally right about the uglyness factor. I didn't know that project and looks cool although it is on a different league than the Microsoft counterpart which is untethered and a platform on its own.

 

I was only suggesting Meta as a potential alternative. I tried it a few months ago and it was... ok. Haven't tried HoloLens yet, though!

Obviously; quality will vary on the product depending on a wide number of factors (Cost of it, experience of company making it, content available for it etc)

 

Have a short video of it in action!

 

AWESOME Andy! Thanks for sharing

 

Wow that really seems promising! Even for developing purposes it would be awesome to watch with "our own eyes" the map of the game in front of us in "real 3D"

 

2016 is here and probably the chance of having the Hololens in our hands in the 1st quarter!. Anyone knows a release date for an update on Unity that includes the sdk so one can start learning the basics of the development?

 

FYI, you can run Win 10 IoT version on a Raspberry Pi 2 with DirectX (I don't think it is hardware accelerated though).

 

Well, but that means that you need to connect the Meta Glasses to the Raspberry, and have some external power source for the Pi, also you would need to connect the Pi.
But don't misunderstand me, the Meta Glasses seems to be some fun stuff to play with, I'm just saying that the HoloLens glasses won't need any external computing(like the need to attach the Pi), and that's something really good.

 

There are third party modules that attach directly to the Pi for powering it.

 

I know, but you still have to move around alongside with the pi and the cables.

 

Sorry, I have a bad habit of being too terse. I mentioned it only as an indicator of the low requirements needed to run Win 10 IoT in general. So, I wouldn't be surprised if the Meta Glasses were able to also.

 

Their current version has no hardware to do so, no cpu or whatsoever, but I would love to see them build something that wouldn't require an external piece of hardware since they're cheaper and they seem to be region free unlike HoloLens.

 

A follow up on one of the good places to share and get information on developing for hololens

https://www.facebook.com/groups/hololensdeveloper/

 

One thing to note that doesn't seem to be noticed by a lot of people: The current Hololens version has an estimated field of view of only 30 degrees.

So assuming your vision is a 180 degree square (it isn't) and the devices are square (it isn't): A Rift covers 30.9% of your vision and a Hololens 2.8%. The square thing may exaggerate the low field of view of both, but it may be partially balanced out by the width/height ratio of human vision and device vision being roughly equal.

Video with some 3rd person visualization of 'full vision' compared to the estimated FoV of the Hololens. (compare ~3:40 to ~4:00)

So if you see this picture, he can probably only see the yellow holograms with some rocks behind it, maybe the tip of the flagpole. The rest will be the room itself or black from the hololens.

Using some math you can calculate the size of the 'screen' you see with Hololens. At one meter distance, it is comparable to a 24 inch monitor.

Of course this is not an entirely valid comparison, as VR and AR aren't the same thing. But it's important to note as a field of view of 30 degrees is not enough for a lot of applications, especially immersive or entertainment ones.

</rant>

 

It is a good point Zuntatos and I am well aware of that but it is reported by people who had the chance of testing on the device that one can get used to that limitation pretty quickly. However I am hoping that this issue might be addressed on a final product release. It might be a lense, or a computational requirement limitation which is understandable having in mind the device is untethered and the only one right now to make do with only a battery source unlike the Rift and alikes. I hope Microsoft can sort this issue or release a tethered and cheaper version that relies on external computer processing and power source. We can't forget it is a freaking PC!

 

Is it still that impressive to squeeze a full computer into a very tiny format though? Aside from some very limited details, such as the architecture being Intel's Cherry Trail, we don't really know much about the hardware specs. It could end up being very restrictive.

By the way Intel's Cherry Trail appears to fit into just about anything with the smallest I've found being the ASUS Vivostick, but if you want to see a device with a battery you only need to check out many of the latest Windows 10 tablets. Guess I'm just not as easily impressed these days as I used to be.

 

Yes it could be restrictive and might possibly be on its first iteration but keep in mind it comes with a boat load of sensors, 3d mapping capabilities and 3 different processing units. If it was easy Microsoft wouldn't be the only company following the AR untethered approach. Impressive computing power in small formats is achievable though as you mentioned. I am hoping this device is one step ahead!

 

Some news regarding battery life and device linkage! https://www.facebook.com/hololensdeveloping/

 

Google is pursuing this, see Project Tango. Also Intel with their RealSense cameras. Hololens is a cool device, and the "Air Tap" convention works well, but field of view is very limited as noted above. All these systems will use similar sensor data but the Google implementation seems ahead of anybody else's - drift compensation and tracking is better (I've demoed all of them). I think the biggest thing the Google system has that the others do not is the concept of persistent location, stored in an Area Description File. It recognizes you've been in this room before, and can remember to put the dancing bear in the corner again - like GPS but for indoors, with cm scale resolution. Hololens has to scan the whole room again every session, doesn't have the same kind of persistence system. Also note that Lenovo has announced a sub-$500 phone with integrated Project Tango tech to be released this summer. And when Google wires Project Tango into Magic Leap... that will be hard to beat.

 

I just read field of view in humans is about 114 degrees. I also remember my eye reactions being tested after an accident and found out most people have two blind spots, one in each eye. Not being a doctor, I was guessing the blind sport might be the where the optic nerve joins the retina in each eye but I have only one blind spot in an eye and the other eye has no blind spots so I am not sure how that works. But on the the AR 30% field of view, it must be for practical safety reasons with AR. It's augmenting reality, not taking over.

 

@goat

See pic:


~100 degrees to both sides, ~200 total.

I highly doubt you have 1 blind spot, it may just be tricky to find the second one. It's as you say, the place where the nerves go through, there aren't photoreceptors there. It'd be creepy if one of your eyes missed the nerve cables yet worked.

The limited FoV may partially be for safety reasons, but I'd say more likely is cost and capabilities of transparent displays. I believe they're mostly projectors now, limiting the area they can cover and they also have limited resolution. I'd say both FoV and resolution should increase a lot once OLED cost settles down, there already are some transparent prototypes.

 

No, my eyes were tested very thoroughly. In fact I remember one doctor insisting on extra testing and somewhat disbelieving of the results at ETHZH Unispital after the 1st doctor testing and gave him the results, but those were the results. Whether I was born that way or the accident I had the reconstructive surgery for caused my missing blind spot I couldn't tell you. The vision in my eye that was struck also slightly improved after the accident.

I think it's strictly for safety reasons and human interaction usability testing that they design the AR the way they did, of course the cost savings are a coincidental fortunate thing and maybe the cost savings because of it is what make the design affordable.

 

Well maybe they have such a small fov because of the costs of the displays, battery life is also something that gets affected when using larger displays. Maybe with larger fov it would cause motion sickness. Either way I would like to try it and see for myself what's the power of this technology.

 

Good news for those craving for hololens material!

Check Alex Kipman at TED -> www.facebook.com/hololensdeveloping/posts/1509556359353972?fref=nf

 

Uhh I found something interesting on that page too! We have some Hololens and unity code already
This seems really fun!
https://www.facebook.com/hololensdeveloping/posts/1509773099332298

 

There's some newer links about hololens!
Also they will start shipping those glasses on 30 March
http://developer-hololens.com/2016/02/29/hololens-playlist-videos/

 

I would love to develop for one of these but $3000 is a little steep after dishing out over $2000cdn for the Rift and Vive and I still need to dish out another $400+ for a video card. Plus 30 degrees is too little for my projects.

Has anyone been following CastAR? Apparently they are refunding their kickstarters and giving them a free consumer version of their AR device when it ships. They must have some serious backing to be able to afford that.

 

Microsoft finally released some information on the hardware of the HoloLens.

https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-hololens/en-us/development-edition (scroll down and click Hardware Details)
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/29/11132090/microsoft-hololens-hardware-specifications-developer-kit

 

Want.
Not sure if I 3k want though.

 

TBH I'm probably not going to make $3000 from the Universal Windows apps I'm developing, I doubt it's even possible to make that much from a Hololens app... if it was like $500 I'd consider buying one for fun but when devkits are so expensive and it doesn't make sense from a business perspective then it's hard to consider(Like how much is the consumer one going to be?!?)

I'm going to try and make a Hololens simulator for the HTC vive where you get a VR room that has AR within it, I think it could be a great tool for people looking to make Hololens stuff but don't have children to sell.

 

Any news on a release date for hololens integration on Unity? (Holokit SDK?)

 

http://developer-hololens.com/2016/03/09/galaxy-explorer-ep-4-new-video/

*The wild and sexy unity inspector appears*

 

Don't get too excited.

1st, they have to crank the thing onto your head so tight that it doesn't move.

then they have to calibrate it based on how they put it on your head. If the thing shifts or moves then it doesn't work well anymore.

After you have it on, there is about a 2in^2 portion of your field of view in which the hololens projections actually appear. It is NOT you're entire view, and it is not immersive.

Hololens is hype and marketing.

If it was anywhere near as cool as it looked in the MS presentations then it would be worth every penny of $3,000, but its not.

Maybe the tech has improved since last year. I'll probably find out in a couple of weeks at the next build conference.

The presentation they did at the build keynote last year had me ready to throw money at the stage and filled my head with dreams of slapping virtual TVs all over the walls of my house with netflix on one, a hockey game on another, and maybe a game on a third, but the reality is much different.

 

@delinx32 Agreed, that's what I've been saying to everyone I see hyping it up. The tech is promising enough, but for now it's a bit of a niche. It needs some time spinning up like VR, maybe in a few years AR will be somewhat immersive and usable for 'general' usage.

 

Agreed, VR had its beginnings in the early 90's (lawnmower man?). It took 20 years for it to catch on as a viable consumer product, and its STILL a niche with over priced hardware. Tech moves faster now, but I think we're a ways away from seeing hololens as a viable product. Still, I'm glad MS is experimenting with the tech, it can only lead to really cool stuff down the road.

 

That may be true, but the first plane only flew a few meters away.
I think the hype is only because is something new, and a new door to augmented reality. That being said, now its only a matter of time(years) to have a really good and cheaper device.
I still remember when the first phone with camera came out, it was a S***ty camera, but everyone went nuts with that and look at what we've got now.
So I think the hype is because its really something different and new(and yes the marketing is strong with this one)

 

https://microsoftstudios.com/hololens/2016/03/15/galaxy-explorer-ep-5-see-what-happens/

This is just an example of what Microsoft and their amazing talent is doing.

The entry price may be steep. For VR or other devices, they demand a 1k+ PC + the device. With Hololens you get everything, untethered. Who else is doing that? In addition, the team said they had direct compatibility with Unity. How awesome is that? One of the easiest to learn game engines, up and running, on your hololens in no time. Sounds pretty cool to me. Can't wait to get one.