Friday 2 June 2017

Hololens



Today we tried the Hololens at Microsoft in Mississauga Ontario ( about a 40 minute drive west of Toronto). I went in feeling quite skeptical about all the hype I had heard but left feeling like this might be the perfect HMD ( Head Mounted Display) for our project especially if we can use it in situ on the very land that Steinberg proposed for a Jewish refugee settlement. I couldn't help but get excited about travelling to the Kimberleys, donning the Hololens and seeing all of our models in situ. The perfect device on which to view all of the content we've been making over these last two years. Unlike the HTC Vive, this device allows you to see reality with added virtual content- true mix reality. For our purpose this is really fantastic, however, there are a ton of questions to be answered. Will the device work outside? Theoretically is should if it can scan trees or some other visible marker in the landscape that allows it to position you in the world. One major problem is that it won't work in daylight- liken it to how hard it is to work on a laptop or other device while in sunlight. However, we could use it at dusk. A lot to think about... The beauty of it is that it is untethered and we can do video capture of exactly what our eyes are seeing. The field of view doesn't include peripheral vision so there's still a letter box that augments appear within but with the right lighting the rectangle does seem to vanish, or at least it diminishes. We'll see if this is the one to use or if the HTC Vive is the way to go. In either case it will take a fair amount of development in Unity. More as it happens...