SAN FRANCISCO — With upbeat music and colorful moving spotlights, Microsoft’s “Holographic Academy” at its Build developer conference feels more like a nightclub than a coding school.
But there are some actual lessons taking place here, and I got a chance to go through an abridged version of the class with a group of journalists Wednesday night. We programmed our HoloLens devices to place virtual 3D objects on a table, see avatars on each other’s shoulders, and ultimately shoot fireballs from our hands, tearing open a portal into a virtual pit below.
If it sounds pretty cool, that’s because it was, even though it wasn’t quite perfect. My device encountered some bugs, preventing me from experiencing all phases of the demo, but I did get to take part in the culminating fireball fight after getting a replacement HoloLens.
For me, it was the first time experiencing HoloLens since the unveiling of the device more than a year ago at a special event on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Back then, it was a prototype headset connected by wires to a nearby computer, so in many ways this was my first time with a real, untethered HoloLens.
Microsoft shipped the HoloLens to developers this week at a cost of $3,000 each, but the company hasn’t announced pricing or a release schedule for the future consumer version of the device. Microsoft is focusing for now on business and scientific applications, such as the “Destination: Mars” NASA experience announced this week.
Here’s what the experience was like for me this week.
Fit and Feel: With a larger-than-average head and bulky glasses, I struggled at times to get the HoloLens to fit properly, but ultimately I figured out how to make it feel comfortable, even with my glasses on, which has not been the case for me with virtual reality headsets. The device has an adjustable band that can be tilted upward to rest above your forehead, and a dial in the back to fine-tune the fit. It wasn’t light, but it wasn’t too heavy, either.
Field of View: The best way to describe it is like looking through an 8-inch tablet a few inches from your face. The holograms aren’t visible outside that frame. Much has been made of this limited field of view, but as soon as those fireballs started flying, the lack of peripheral vision was the last thing on my mind. A larger field of view would be better, of course, but ultimately it’s still a cool experience.
Developer Tools: I’m not a developer, but the combination of the Unity game engine and Microsoft’s Visual Studio was easy for me to follow, with help from the instructors. Microsoft’s main goal here is to get developers coding for HoloLens, and thinking about what they can create, and the use of these standard development environments will make it much easier for developers to pick up.
Responsiveness: I didn’t notice any lag in the experience, and the on-screen cursor easily followed along with my gaze. Like Matt Weinberger of Business Insider, I strayed at times from the intended demo and used the “bloom” gesture (holding my hand up and opening my fingers, with palm to ceiling) to bring up the Start menu, floating in 2D in mid-air in front of me. The menu quickly followed my gaze, zipping through the air and re-centering itself as I looked around.
Takeaway: The virtual fireball fight at the end of the Holographic Academy was brief but amazing — letting us first shoot fireballs at each other and then at virtual characters flying at various depths of a pit that opened up in the table. When it was over, I didn’t want the experience to end.
HoloLens continues to hold huge promise, in my mind, and its ultimate fate depends largely on the experiences created in the months ahead by the developers that Microsoft is courting here this week. As one of our hosts said at the outset of the session, “In order to achieve a holographic future, it will require all of us and learning and building together.”
With lots of fancy lights and dance music in the background, apparently.
