One of the very strange features of the HoloLens 2, the ability to interact with holograms just by reaching out and "touching" them, is one of the highlights of the new version of the headset, which Microsoft announced in late February, and will soon be available for businesses to pre-order for $US3500, plus the cost of any software services that run on the headset.

The HoloLens is designed for front-line workers, who have better things to do with their hands than fiddle around with a notebook PC or a phone, and so the services can include remote help, where an operator expert in some task can remotely project holograms onto a real-world site, to guide the front-line worker through the task.

But the other strange feature of the HoloLens 2, the way the edges of holograms disappear from your vision as you get closer to them, isn't so much a highlight as something Microsoft is feverishly working to improve.

It's called the "field of vision", and it's the main thing standing between mixed-reality headsets as they exist today, and the mixed-reality reading glasses that exist in science fiction and in TV shows such as The First.

Potential for 'infinite' field of view

Alex Kipman, the technical fellow for artificial intelligence and mixed reality at Microsoft, who's in charge of its ambitious HoloLens project, is convinced his team can get HoloLens to the point where its field of vision matches human vision, so projected holograms don't fall away as you approach them.

Compared to the original HoloLens, released in March 2016, the HoloLens 2 has already doubled its field of view, as well as "tripled the comfort", meaning the new model is smaller, lighter and much easier to wear.


"Do that a few more times and you're talking about wearing a pair of glasses," Kipman told The Australian Financial Review at the launch of the new model, at the MWC conference in Barcelona.

Indeed, he says, much of the technology needed to get the field of view to where it needs to be is already in the new model.

HoloLens 2 lets experts give remote guidance to front-line workers, by projecting instructions onto the task at hand.

In order to render holograms in front of the wearer's eyes, at a resolution high enough for them to read any text in the hologram (remember, the device is for front-line workers who might need to read instruction manuals while they're repairing an engine) Microsoft already has the equivalent of two 2K monitors built into the HoloLens 2 – one for each eye – and as much graphics processing power as can be fit into a headset that can comfortably worn on the head.

So in order to widen the field of view, Kipman says he's looking to use a technique known as "foveated rendering", that will only deliver sharp holograms where the wearer is looking, and that will allow the quality of the hologram to fall away as it fades into the wearer's peripheral vision.

With foveated rendering, he says, the HoloLens could achieve "infinite" field of view, just like in science fiction, without the device becoming "much bigger and much more power-hungry", and while still maintaining the "the level of comfort required for us to get customers".

Getting more glasses-like

The technique would require two things, though: eye tracking, so the HoloLens knows where it needs make its holograms the sharpest; and the ability to project the photons of light that make up the holographic image onto wider areas of the glass surface that carries the image to the eye, like the heads-up display in a fighter cockpit.


Kipman is convinced his HoloLens team can get it to the point where its field of vision matches human vision.

Both of those things, says Kipman, the HoloLens can already do.

The new version has eye tracking, taken from Microsoft's Windows Hello biometric login system, that allows users to interact with holographic widgets just by looking at them and speaking. (Wearing a HoloLens 2, I was able to look at items floating in front of my eyes and make them disappear, one by one, just by looking at each one and saying "Pop!". The system works very well.)

And the new 2K displays are already capable of "steering photons" to other parts of the screen, which "which "motions towards being able to fix the display-engine constraint" that currently limits the field of view, says Kipman.

Though the elements are in place, users are not going to see an infinite field of view suddenly activated through the mother of all firmware updates on HoloLens 2, he stresses: users will have to wait for HoloLens 3 before they see the results.

An attendee wears a HoloLens 2 headset at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, where Microsoft showed of its latest version of the device. Angel Garcia

"We're incrementing forwards, to get towards what ultimately will be like a pair of reading glasses with an infinite field of view."

In the meantime, there's always the outstretched-arm technique, like a zombie.

John Davidson attended MWC in Barcelona as a guest of Microsoft