Microsoft announced its HoloLens at Windows 10 Conference last week and became the first to make a holographic computer. For simplicity lets discuss what is HoloLens and why do we need it?
Read More :A closer look at Windows 10
If you are a techie and love science fiction, you at least have listened the word Virtual Reality (VR). Virtual Reality is something to generate or render a 3D virtual world while user is connected to the computer. With virtual reality, you cannot move freely and you have to sit tight on your seat (in most cases) to avoid collision with physical objects surrounding you. Thus virtual reality ends in disconnecting you with real world.
But this is not the case with Microsoft HoloLens. Microsoft Hololens renders or generates Holograms, which make it possible for you to do other real world tasks while rendering Holograms of different objects and reshaping them. If you don’t know about Holograms, Holograms are the objects like any other real world object but they are made of light instead of matter. Thus we can view them with different angles and from different distances like we see physical objects but we cannot touch them as they have no mass.
The Holograms which are rendered by Microsoft HoloLens will appear life-like, you will be able to shaped them and change their dimensions. The HoloLens will be released with Microsoft Windows 10 and will be powered by a headset which itself will be a computer connected to other devices with sensors, without wires and connectors. This will let you experience your digital life while you will still be connected to the real world.
The idea of HoloLens is quite revolutionary, in fact it will introduce new terminologies with it like you will be able to ‘pin’ the holograms like you ‘click’ and ‘touch’ i.e. the digital content which can be 2D like your TV or can be multi-dimensional videos. The HoloLens is made of HD lenses and spatial sound powered by new Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) which lets you see and hear in the ‘world of holograms’.
Is this like Oculus Rift?
The new Microsoft HoloLens and Oculus Rift are much different despite the hardware looks same. The Oculus Rift takes advantages of virtual reality and when this helmet is on it teleports you to a different world. Actually it does not ships you to someplace else but tricks your brain to think and feel like you are somewhere else. Whereas the goal of Microsoft HoloLens is much different than it.
On the contrary, Microsoft HoloLens lets you render the 3D objects holograms and work on them. Let’s say you are in an operation theater and operating a patient. At certain time you need consultancy of a senior consultant who is far away from your location. He will connect to a camera on my HoloLens and then draw the diagrams signs, which I can see on the Holograms rendered by my HoloLens, to guide me what I need.
Microsoft has promised to release HoloLens with Windows 10, which means we can expect some time this year. There are no further details on Specifications of the hardware used in HoloLens and nothing has been revealed about the costs. Although Microsoft says it will benefit both Businesses and consumers.
