Holograms for all! We’ve expanded our strategic collaboration with Microsoft to include full support for Microsoft HoloLens holographic computer. Microsoft made the announcement today during the keynote at the Build conference in San Francisco.

For those unaware, Microsoft HoloLens is Microsoft’s self-contained holographic computer headset, enabled by Windows 10, which is able to render high-definition holograms. HoloLens holograms are fully interactive digital objects and spaces that blend with real-life environments to make them seem like they exist as physical objects in a room. This kind of display, untethered to traditional displays like monitors, means a lot more of creative freedom in how we want to create applications to view and interact with information, education, entertainment, creative tools, social networks, and remote healthcare among other things.

The Unity toolchain and pipeline are being augmented to leverage the unique characteristics of the HoloLens such as spatial mapping, spatial audio, gaze, gesture, voice recognition, and the ability to anchor holographic objects to specific locations in the real world. This ensures full integration for a seamless and efficient development experience that takes full advantage of the unique features and capabilities of Microsoft HoloLens. And of course, Unity for HoloLens tools will be included with Unity Pro and Unity Personal Edition with no additional cost.

Unity’s HoloLens support follows the recent announcement that Microsoft and Unity would be working together to better integrate Unity and Visual Studio. This agreement has an important impact for the many developers new to Unity looking to develop game and non-game applications for HoloLens. Increased discoverability through shared installations and new scripting templates will make creating a new HoloLens project fast and simple.

We’re still very early in development but have made enough progress that Microsoft are holding Unity for HoloLens “Holographic Academy” training sessions at the Build conference using a very early Alpha of Unity’s Windows 10 HoloLens tools.

We’ll be sure to share when we have more information about HoloLens support.

Update:

We have had a fantastic few days working with developers at the Microsoft Holographic Academy and getting lots of great feedback! Check out some pictures below and a video courtesy of Microsoft.