Microsoft HoloLens is straight out of sci-fi
Remember those mind-bending gestures Tom Cruise performed in front of a glass screen in Minority Report or Robert Downey Jr manipulating a hologram while he was perfecting the Iron Man suit in the first Iron Man movie. Well, now with Microsoft’s HoloLens these fictional holograms are not a thing of fiction, but a reality.
The HoloLens is essentially a wearable that one wears just like a pair of spectacles. But these are no ordinary spectacles. They have a suite of sensors, cameras and it runs Windows 10. For the holograms, Microsoft even invented a new type of processor, which it calls the Holographic Processing Unit (HPU). Therefore, it is very powerful.
With the HoloLens, the user can blend the real world with the virtual world and manipulate digital holograms. Microsoft has figured out multiple uses for the technology. For instance, scientists working at NASA on the Mars Curiosity Rover are able to simulate the planet using the technology. Microsoft has created a special version of Skype for it and adapted the popular Minecraft game to the holographic dimension of the HoloLens.
The Redmond based tech giant even says that it can be used for prototyping hardware, which in turn can be 3D printed.
The demo was literally out of a sci-fi movie. It was something that one would see Captain Picard do in the HoloDeck of the USS Enterprise on the popular sci-fi TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The funny thing is that this unveiling comes at a time when Google is struggling to find use cases for its Glass wearable. Recently, the search giant announced new leadership for the team that develops Glass.
The thing is that ground-breaking technology of this kind has not been seen before in years. The last time Microsoft introduced something so innovative was when it showed the Kinect sensor for the Xbox console in 2010.
In fact, these days Microsoft is viewed as a boring company. The fact that the HoloLens comes from Microsoft is quite amazing.
Actually, the entire Windows 10 event was full of surprises that shows that Microsoft is trying to reinvent itself. Clearly, it yearns to be a "cool" company, not a company, which makes products that people have to use. It wants people to want to use its products and love them.
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella also said the same. “We want to move from people needing Windows to choosing Windows to loving Windows. That is our bold goal with Windows,” he told reporters at the event.
Honestly, Satya’s new Microsoft is off to a pretty good start. Windows 10 is shaping up to be a great operating system and the stuff they are doing with the Xbox One, the Surface Tablets and the new HoloLens ranges from awesome to absolutely insane.
Microsoft is certainly starting to look like the "cool" company, a tag normally reserved for Google and Apple. Now, it just needs to prove to the world that its mobile version of Windows just does not suck, but will have lots of apps with many takers.