We received 2 x Hololens (what is the plural of Hololens?) this morning and although a busy day prevented me getting all the playtime I wanted, I had about 45 mins to get it setup and gather some first impressions.

First it is packaged & built like a commercial product, not a dev kit. I posted some photos on twitter earlier. It’s easy to get comfortable and get it turned on. From there I was really impressed at how good a job Microsoft has done in making it “just work”. After building my own Hologram systems twice now at Dekko, where we did it on an iPad, and then Samsung where we built a very hacked & simple wearable version, it is very hard to hide the tech. No one else comes close to this. Going from a system which works in a controlled environment (a dark controlled room, scripted content, limited user interaction etc) to something which a random person can make work in a random environment is a HUGE accomplishment. It’s hard for me to overstate this, as it’s so easy to overlook if you haven’t tried to do it yourself.

The setup process was very straightforward. My biggest complaint was how much a pain it was to type in my username (long email) & password (complex mix of characters) several times one airclick at a time…. I’m assuming there’s a better way that I haven’t found yet. Cortana?

Positional Tracking was incredibly stable, again it just worked. Again, a massive invisible accomplishment by microsoft.

Input (so far) is confined to a few simple gestures which worked robustly and weren’t treated as the “silver bullet” but were integrated into an overall UX which was coherent and made sense. It still seemed “PC centric” with tiles and mostly 2D content, but it definitely met today’s concepts without getting too clever with novel 3D concepts and fancy chrome which probably would have confused most people.

The optics (especially Field of View) has come in for some criticism in the press, but I think Microsoft are making the right choices. It’s Binocular Stereo, so depth cues match what my eyes expect (compared to the Meta2 which has split each eye into Binocular Mono, to get a wider field of view at the expense of depth cues being coherent with the real world). Also the Hololens display is sharp, legible for text and bright. These are critical for the user experience in AR. AR is a “real world” medium, and being able to read text easily is a fundamental requirement, compared to VR where motion and graphics are more appreciated. Our user testing at Samsung validated this over & over. For a given pixel budget, making them smaller and cramming them into a narrower FoV results in a better UX as the text is now readable. Obviously the cropping is a pain and peripheral vision isn’t augmented, but this only feels weird in quick demos. When using the device for more than 5 minutes, you are focussing on what’s in front of you and reading what’s on the screen. I really think Microsoft has made the right trade-offs here. FYI — we tested a similar display to microsoft while at Samsung that could deliver a 70 deg field of view and it was beautiful, but also cost $40,000. These prices will come down fast in the next 12–18 months and I would expect a higher FoV Hololens to ship to consumers, with all the benefits of legibility and stereo depth.

One thing I still don’t get re the Hololens was the decision not to go with a HipTop processor connected to the HMD. This would have given a lot of freedom to the HMD industrial designers to make it more attractive & comfortable, while giving the mech/elec eng team more freedom too. This was the design we settled on as being the best right now in our research, and I know some other AR companies are going the same way. I know Microsoft prototyped a HipTop and even loaded it with the projectors for the display (connected via Fiber to the HMD) so it was definitely a conscious decision to go with an all-in-one design from Day 1. I’d love to learn more about why this decision was made.

So, based on a quick setup, this reinforces my belief that Microsoft is many years ahead of anyone else in this market. Other devices may give a more “wow” 5 minute demo, but only Microsoft has solved the incredible number of problems that need to be solved before AR glasses can become consumer products. Others will copy & catch up faster than Microsoft developed it, but their headstart will ensure they have a better understanding of what the market wants & needs for quite a few years yet. It’s also incredible considering how many problems they have solved, that there are many more still to solve, particularly in regard to natural & contextual multi-modal input, use-cases & applications as well as continued refinement of the hardware engineering and optics.

If you are interested in trying them out and learning more, or you have a smart idea that you’d like feedback on, please get in touch, and we can arrange for you to drop in and try them out

Matt