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Microsoft reveals Augmented Reality kit, presumably for Xbox One

K

Krejlooc

Banned
ashecitism said:
Yeah, Carmack in his last (I think) QuakeCon keynote said AR is going to be huge and multibillion dollar business and that Valve were leaning towards it, but then said "VR we can do now."
Click to expand...

Many of the major players doing AR research have basically admitted as much and are, at least in the short term, migrating to VR research. Valve infamously dropped Jerri Elseworth's team for their VR team, google just retired Glass as an X project (although it's moving towards a new iteration) while upgrading Cardboard to a full time project.

I never understand the posts which act like these are rival, competing, wholly different technologies. I look at VR as 2D rasterization, and AR as 3D computation. One tech largely depends on the other.
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
godelsmetric said:
I can think of some kind of interesting but marginal uses for something like this. For instance you could have the HUD and gun model rendered in the AR glasses. Or in something like Dragon Age, you could have the strategic view appear on the table in front of you.

I dunno, it seems extremely limited if it has to also conform to what you have in your room.
Click to expand...

Like VR, AR would have many more uses than just gaming. I would say, actually, that the non-gaming uses of AR are much more compelling. You can use triangulated depth sensing cameras to capture and stitch a person entirely in another space, then project them into your room from your vantage point as though they were there, even culling bits of them that appear behind IRL geometry.

True telepresence, in other words. Every step of the equation can be demonstrated independently, we just need to wait for our hardware to get much faster and more accurate to do it well enough for consumer technology.
 
Shin-Ra

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
AR's already useful for stuff like 3D map overlaying and realtime translation but for good gaming stuff you want something more stable, especially if it's right up in your face.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Krejlooc said:
Like VR, AR would have many more uses than just gaming. I would say, actually, that the non-gaming uses of AR are much more compelling. You can use triangulated depth sensing cameras to capture and stitch a person entirely in another space, then project them into your room from your vantage point as though they were there, even culling bits of them that appear behind IRL geometry.

True telepresence, in other words. Every step of the equation can be demonstrated independently, we just need to wait for our hardware to get much faster and more accurate to do it well enough for consumer technology.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was just thinking about gaming purposes. I'm sure that there's plenty of non-gaming purposes that both AR and VR would be great for.

It's much easier to think of good uses for VR in gaming than for AR in gaming, though.
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
I don't even know what I think of this. Show me that it's cool to use, Microsoft! That picture (and the imagination that comes with it) are really not that great!
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
godelsmetric said:
Yeah, I was just thinking about gaming purposes. I'm sure that there's plenty of non-gaming purposes that both AR and VR would be great for.

It's much easier to think of good uses for VR in gaming than for AR in gaming, though.
Click to expand...

What grips me about both AR and VR isn't gaming, actually, it's everything else. I think these will be transformative technologies when they are finally mature, consumer techs.

This is like a calculator in 1980 dreaming about where PC would be in 2010.
 
S

Sayers

Member
Good thing they stuck to their guns on Kinect so that all Xbone owners have one and are ready to use this. . .
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
Sectorseven said:
Is processing power even the limiting factor for such tech? I mean, how does a computer physically stop light?
Click to expand...

Cast AR, for example, works by directing and reflecting light into your eyes (onto a screen right in front of them). There are already experiments with display devices that draw a display directly onto your retina using beams of light. It's not hard to see how the tech will evolve.
 
L

loaf of bread

Member
I guess we know MS's E3 plans i guess. meh. Hopefully it's not as bad as the Kinect E3. Actually. . . hopefully it is as bad as that because that was hilarious.
 
Alx

Alx

Member
Presentation is not over yet, but I'm afraid we won't get more than the early glimpse of it for now.
*edit : or not. woohoo. ^^
 
S

STEaMkb

Member
Krejlooc said:
Again, we're just not there yet. VR is walking, AR is running.
Click to expand...

That's a really bad analogy. You don't [need] to step 20 years into the future to recognise that AR's gaming potential is constrained by the very thing it depends upon: Reality. Something many people like to escape!
 
K

Krejlooc

Banned
stemkb said:
That's a really bad analogy. You don't to step 20 years into the future to recognise that AR's gaming potential is constrained by the very thing it depends upon: Reality. Something many people like to escape!
Click to expand...

This is nonsense. AR is abstracted virtual reality. You don't need to adhere to reality to build an AR application.

Further, you seem to have entirely missed the point of the analogy - VR is walking to AR's running because they're built off the same concepts.
 
R

Raist

Banned
I like how what's on the TV doesn't match at all.

edit: man, the headset looks like a shitty photoshop copy/paste/crop from a Halo 1 Masterchief model.
 
C

cakefoo

Member
Krejlooc said:
3NcPUPU.png
Click to expand...
Hope they put more effort into the product than this picture suggests. It seems very crude.
 
S

Sidewinder

Member
Wow, they really stuck to their plan, thought they would rethink a little after their initial One project and Kinect 2 crashed and burned.
AR pales in comparison to VR, not interested in it at all. Good luck MS I guess.
 
J

jbug617

Banned
Wired has a write up and first impressions
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/microsoft-hands-on/?mbid=social_twitter

First Impressions

That’s when I get my first look at Baraboo. Kipman cues a concept video in which a young woman wearing the slate gray headset moves through a series of scenarios, from collaborating with coworkers on a conference call to soaring, Oculus-style, over the Golden Gate Bridge. I watch the video, while Kipman watches me watch the video, while Microsoft’s public relations executives watch Kipman watch me watch the video. And the video is cool, but I’ve seen too much sci-fi for any of it to feel believable yet. I want to get my hands on the actual device. So Kipman pulls a box onto the couch. Gingerly, he lifts out a headset. “First toy of the day to show you,” he says, passing it to me to hold. “This is the actual industrial design.”

Oh Baraboo! It’s bigger and more substantial than Google Glass, but far less boxy than the Oculus Rift. If I were a betting woman, I’d say it probably looks something like the goggles made by Magic Leap, the mysterious Google-backed augmented reality startup that has $592 million in funding. But Magic Leap is not yet ready to unveil its device. Microsoft, on the other hand, plans to get Project HoloLens into the hands of developers by the spring. (For more about Microsoft and CEO Satya Nadella’s plans for Project HoloLens, read WIRED’s February cover story.)

Kipman’s prototype is amazing. It amplifies the special powers that Kinect introduced, using a small fraction of the energy. The depth camera has a field of vision that spans 120 by 120 degrees—far more than the original Kinect—so it can sense what your hands are doing even when they are nearly outstretched. Sensors flood the device with terabytes of data every second, all managed with an onboard CPU, GPU and first-of-its-kind HPU (holographic processing unit). Yet, Kipman points out, the computer doesn’t grow hot on your head, because the warm air is vented out through the sides. On the right side, buttons allow you to adjust the volume and to control the contrast of the hologram.
Click to expand...
 
S

sinnergy

Member
Sidewinder said:
Wow, they really stuck to their plan, thought they would rethink a little after their initial One project and Kinect 2 crashed and burned.
AR pales in comparison to VR, not interested in it at all. Good luck MS I guess.
Click to expand...

I think you have it backwards ;)
 
Alx

Alx

Member
woah that thing is autonomous... I thought it would communicate with a main processing unit (PC, phone or console). So you're wearing a full PC on your head !

I can understand why Google reset their Google Glass project.
 
R

RexNovis

Banned
Watching the sales pitch for this in the stream is just painful. So many meaningless buzzwords and conceptual nonsense with literally zero technical explanation. Apparently this shut runs on magic because it's "beyond GPUs and CPUs in order to render Holograms." The call it the "HPU." Riiiight. I wish everyone could see how hard I am rolling my eyes right now. Oh Microsoft. I'll believe it when I see it but I'm not holding my breath.
 
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