A brief analysis of Hololens' "holographic" application scenarios

From a technical point of view, Microsoft's Hololens is far from being a holographic image, but Microsoft calls it a new reality, a three-dimensional "holographic" image that can be integrated into the real world. However, from an interactive point of view, Hololens does want to use three-dimensional imaging technology to achieve a holographic computing interface. As long as it can promote the development of AR/VR technology, there is nothing wrong with using Holo in this way.

According to the information provided by the WIRED website, Hololens has a 120°× 120° depth of field camera, 18 various sensors, GPU, CPU, a unique HPU (holographic processing unit), and the most critical image display system. It is worth noting that the virtual image is generated by a device called a light engine through the lens. When photons enter the eye at a specific angle, the brain will think that it is the reflected light of real-world objects. The interactive interface includes motion and voice recognition, as well as eye tracking. Hololens can realize the functions of "holographic" imaging, virtual reality, and augmented reality at the same time.

After all, Hololens is still in the prototype stage. Microsoft also mentioned on the project page that "We have built the platform, but it is you who will bring it to life." The potential of this technology is still to be further explored. Then the process of computer graphics from 2D to 3D may be a revelation. In the production process of "Doom", Carmack has created a smooth three-dimensional world with limited polygons and dynamic scaling of ray tracing and material mapping. When he introduced the brightness attenuation to Romero, Romero's first thought was still: What can we do with this technology?

He asked Carmack, “So, you can change the brightness of a light, can you do that dynamically? Or does it have to be pre-calculated?”

"Well, I can make it dynamic," Carmack replied.

"Cool! Then we can have light bulbs! Imagine, you walk into this fucking room and suddenly—hiss, his—all the lights go out!"

Hololens demo is more of a concept demonstration. Compared to general computing devices such as smartphones and personal computers today, scenes such as games, design, visiting Mars, and repairing water pipes are still a bit too specialized, which is also the common dilemma of all AR/VR devices. At the Sundance Film Festival shortly after Microsoft's press conference, Chris Milk's VRSE and Oculus VR's Story Studio began to use VR technology to transform more specialized filmmaking fields. And the Kinect technology that Microsoft equipped for its Xbox is actually limited to games and scientific research fields that are farther away from the lives of the general public.

So, does Hololens really have the potential to become the next generation of universal computing interface? Most media and comments are taking a wait-and-see attitude towards this, after all, more detailed technical implementation details, including application development interfaces, have yet to be announced. Only then can developers give full play to their creativity on more universal applications.

In fact, compared with AR/VR devices, Hololens is more reminiscent of Iron Man's Mark Armor, specifically the display panel of the power suit helmet, and the artificial intelligence Jarvis in the power suit system is behind the interface to perceive and feedback all the information that can be obtained by sensors around it in real time. Therefore, with the sensor perception ability of Hololens and its industrial-grade real-time 3D modeling ability, it can be expected that Microsoft's personal assistant Cortana's ability to understand users instantly is unmatched by other personal computing devices. If I have to name a possible general application of Hololens, I think it must be a more useful personal assistant, like Tony Stark's virtual butler.

In fact, as early as the beginning of the development of personal computers, Jobs and Gates' ultimate vision for a general-purpose personal computing device was also some kind of virtualized personal assistant.

It has to be said that at this press conference, Nadella finally let people see Microsoft's own profound technical strength. With the help of Gates, Nadella's full efforts to transform Microsoft's corporate culture and R&D processes over the past year can be said to have begun to show results. But the question is, can Nadella bring Microsoft the product taste that Gates failed to establish? Moreover, there is a lesson not far away. Xerox PARC, the wealthy neighbor of Apple and Microsoft, had many research achievements. They created a graphical user interface and launched the "Xerox Star" computer, but the opportunity to transform personal computers still slipped away from Xerox. Jobs said at the time, "We can all see that Xerox failed to make the product well, but we can, and the price is much cheaper."

So, Nadella's Microsoft is just getting started, and Hololens will only have a developer version at first. Google Glass, which also has a developer version, has been on the market for three years, and from the current situation, the product is still not ready. In addition, Apple has confirmed that it will integrate sensors into smart watches. So who will be the next generation of personal computing devices? In fact, I am more looking forward to an unknown teenager like Romero who has a natural imagination of the potential of technology to intervene.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.