The Microsoft HoloLens

Today, Microsoft is shipping out their HoloLens development kits to qualified developers in the United States and Canada who preordered the (kind of expensive) $3,000 kits last month. With these kits, developers will be able to create and deploy Microsoft’s incredibly realistic holograms.

Included in the kit is the Galaxy Explorer Project, an app that showcases HoloLens features by visualizing planetary bodies.

The HoloLens is pegged as the first fully untethered holographic computer and will allow users to interact with high-definition holograms projected onto the real world. The system can respond to a user’s gestures, voice, and glances.

Augmenting Reality

The HoloLens was first announced during Microsoft’s Build Developers Conference last year. During the event, they offered a hands-on demonstrations of the HoloLens headset to an excited audience.

Since then, Microsoft has even sent the HoloLens headset into space. HoloLens still has some ways to go before a full commercial release, but Microsoft is making sure that it reaches the right developers before then, including universities and even NASA.