Ask HN: What are your impressions of the HoloLens so far?

Some bullet points I wrote when I tried it:

- The display technology is very nice. I was very impressed by how good the object permanence was: when you put an object somewhere, there is no lag or jitter when you move your head and it stays anchored to the spot. The holograms are reasonably bright and opaque.

- Also, when you pin an object somewhere, it stays there even when you walk around the room. It even stays if you pin it in like the middle of the room where there are no obvious reference points or anchors to use.

- The field of view is neither great nor terrible. It's usable but more would of course be better.

- The major downside is the interaction: "air-clicking" is not great and the gestures to trigger various actions aren't very reliable. It really needs hand controllers like the Vive has.

- The unit itself is comfortable, much more so than the Vive. There was an annoying lens-flare-like glare below the field of view. Not sure if that was my unit not set up correctly or a problem common to all of them.

Overall I'm quite impressed, although I probably wouldn't buy one even if I had $3,000 to burn. V2 will probably be the one to get, if they expand the FOV.

I've been making apps on it since mid last year. It's an amazing device, the image stability and quality is very good and in a well-designed app the small FOV becomes an afterthought.

Clicking/selecting objects with gaze is often an antipattern. Much better to use alternate input.

Analytics is kind of a mess.

Everybody recommends unity but performance will suffer. I wrote my own framework instead. Most of the open-source code is bad, if you have figured out how to make apps it's a competitive advantage. MS wrote literally thousands of new APIs for UWP and mixed reality so many many features are barely documented with no real world examples.

It's a totally new paradigm in UX. Most designers fall back to poor decisions like using small buttons or overly detailed models.

Feel free to ask anything specific I'll do my best to answer.

I've been doing development on it for a bank for about two months now.

Things I like:

-Let's you have an infinite number of virtual monitors with applications such as word, outlook, browsers etc. -Developing for it is really easy with tools like Unity -Battery life is not too shabby, rarely have to take it off to charge while I'm doing something -Great demo piece

Things to work on:

-Field of view isn't terrible, but could still use improvement -Price point precludes a lot of consumer applications -Feels like you're always wearing sunglasses indoors. This takes away from the augmented reality bit as it can be pretty hard to interact with the real world sometimes (e.g. hard to read my real monitor when I have it on) -Gets kind of uncomfortable on your nose after a while, though that may depend on your face morphology -Interacting with voice commands in an office setting can be awkward/amusing -My colleagues think I'm never working

Been using HoloLens for about a year now, it's awesome, probably my fav bit of tech I've tried since the first iPhone. It's kinda exactly as you'd expect, a pretty decent but not mind blowing projected holographic interface augmented into reality. FOV is very mediocre, and you have to put that aside to enjoy the device, but if you're willing to look past the FOV, you really get a sense for where this will go. As others have said, the gestures are super annoying. It also doesn't really fit well and hope they refine the actual way the device sizes to your head. We do software for cities, so as you can imagine there are very many places you can take AR and city planning. FWIW: I think there is a lof of VC cash deployed into this space, but I also think it's a paradigm-shifting technology and is one of the few things I feel the hype around is justified. As a side note, I went to college for digital imaging technology and started a started a studio out of college with a buddy (13 years ago) - we took advantage of the transition from analog to digital filmmaking and ended up winning three Emmys and building a 10MM rev business. If I wasn't doing what I was doing, I'd be focusing on that shift here, there will be a lot of opportunity for very forefront startup VR studios. Here is a video of me messing around with a hololens at office last year: http://john.je/iDpX

HoloLens is cool but most of the HoloLens applications you write will be consumed on the $299 software-compatible Mixed Reality headsets that ship later this year (it's amazing how few people are paying attention to this announcement - Microsoft uses Mixed Reality as its branding but these are basically high end VR headsets with integrated tracking for a third the price of Rift and Vive devices)[0][1]

From an application developer's perspective, the only difference between HoloLens coding and Mixed Reality coding is that when constructing 3D scenes your HoloLens app should have a transparent background so the person can see their room through the viewport because that's what they're buying the expensive headset for and in Mixed Reality you should have an opaque background because it's VR not AR.

The really big thing though is that $299 is roughly what you'd otherwise pay for a pair of big monitors. Full on virtual desktop support with floating windows for these devices is being shipped to every Windows 10 machine starting this week via Windows Update with the intent being you don't need old-school monitors just work in the headset, or with your monitors, or however you want.

Windows now has (or will shortly depending on your Windows Update timing) a built-in developer mode simulator for application testing of Mixed Reality code without a physical headset. The simulator is still a little buggy and incompletely undocumented (remember to shut it off when you're not using it) but it's pretty incredible and more than enough to start building and testing applications.

[0] https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/12/acer-microsoft-vr-mixed-...

[1] https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality

I was recently at a Microsoft Training Centre, where we also had a chance to test the Hololens. All in all, it's crap. It is pretty heavy, so I can't imagine wearing it for more than 10 min. The latency was ok, but still somewhat disturbing. The gesture recognition was bad. I, and later on also the Microsoft guy, had to tap twice several times to trigger an action. The shown floor shop example was a bad choice. Speed at the shop floor is key, for workers and for other functions, and this is what the Hololens didn't have. During the show off they had to restart the Hololens - a clear fail I would say, but judge for yourself.

Last year I was able to play with one for a couple of hours. The most impressive and exciting part for me was that it wasn't bad. I don't know about others, but I had expected an unpolished feel, and to be continuing to say "oh this will be great when they ______". The latency is much lower (comparable to modern VR) than I expected; the occlusion of virtual objects by real ones works surprisingly well, even with weird shapes; even the gesture recognition worked well. My overall takeaway was that it was much further along than expected. It was genuinely fun to play with, and I felt able to walk around my office while wearing it. Obviously the FOV is an issue to be worked on, but overall I was just impressed. I wish I still had one I could play with.

I've used it over a period of a few months.

Pros: Very intuitive controls after maybe 5 minutes of using it. Building in voice commands is easy in Unity, can't speak for other platforms. AR has more practical applications (but VR is more mature). Microsoft listens, and will try and add features that people ask for. The forums were very helpful for someone a year out of programming to come back and learn. Spatial mapping was really cool. I didn't think something could be that accurate in the space of a few minutes.

Cons: Controls can be a steep learning curve for older individuals (based on my experience). Development setup was hard when I started, but has gotten much better from what I hear. Trying to show what you're doing in the hololens live was very hard. Had to build that in, but I think now they've cleaned that up as well through Unity. I think the previous con points out that this is a very new platform, and things are going to change. Keep that in mind, and don't get too mad if things break. It's not super powerful, so you'll have to move to directx if you want to pull every inch of performance out of it. Shaders are your friend (I'm a newbie when it comes to game dev, so this was a lot of learning for me).

I know that people mentioned that FoV is bad, or could be improved, but honestly I didn't have a problem with it. With AR, and how you can still see the world around you, it wasn't a hindrance for users that would demo. That being said, I wouldn't oppose an improvement!

I'm thinking to buy hololens. But I'm concerned about some aspects i've been reading and watching. Hope you guys help me. My main use would be for write/read several documents in word at same time (like 10 different word documents). Do you recommend to buy hololens for this purpose? What about resolution for read/write? Is it possible to have 10 different documents working at same time? What about FOV, will it be enough for this use? would you recommend me hololens or meta 2 or magic leap. Or even Htc vive?. I'm opting to choose AR instead VR because I think it's better interact world and work(AR), instead only work (VR). Comments are welcome too

As hardware, it's a nice job. It's self-contained and wireless. The form factor is tolerable. Compare the HTC Vibe, which is as clunky as the VR headsets of the 1990s and still needs cables. The HoloLens has much better balance, too; the VR headsets are far too front-heavy. None of this gear is really compatible with wearing glasses, though.

It's surprisingly good at "drawing dark". It can't, really, so it just puts a neutral density filter in front of the real world to dim out the background. This, plus some trickery with drawing intensity, allows overlays on the real world. At least the indoor real world; the grey filter is fixed, and the display will be overwhelmed in sunlight.

The field of view is too small for an immersive illusion. The resolution is too low for the "infinite number of monitors" some people want. It's useful for putting an overlay on what you're working on, which suggests industrial and training applications.

It's not clear there's a mass market for this. Certainly not at the current price point. If it became cheap enough to sell to the Pokemon Go crowd, it might work for that.

A useful metric is, "Is it good enough for Hyperreality?"[1] As yet, it's not. But it could get there. Watch that video. What hyperreality needs is 1) really good lock to the real world, 2) adequate but not extreme resolution, 3) wearability, 4) wide field of view, 5) useable under most real-world lighting conditions, and 6) affordablity. The Hololens has 1 under good conditions, has 2, arguably has 3, lacks 4, 5, and 6. Not there yet.

[1] https://vimeo.com/166807261

There are a lot of very impressive things about the device, but for me, the dealbreaker is the FOV. It's distractingly small. I haven't done development on it though (just tried it out).

I was at a talk with someone who demoed building an application from scratch in about an hour using the unity hololens vr toolkit(?).

And I was able to try on on at a meetup.

Considering all the whole thing is self contained and is handling the rendering on the device is amazing. With some of the dev tools you can see it building models of everything and one in the room in real time.

I played the Conquer game which was fun to watch the characters hide behind chairs and stuff. And the maps sort of build them selfs to the room and worked even with lots of people in the meetup.

Getting the hand gestures take's a second but are pretty intuitive with "clicking" stuff sort of pinching your index and thumb together.

The field of view is actually only the glasses under the visor. The visor I believe is more to help with improve contrast and block a bit of light.

I'm quite biased on the whole AR thing, as I worked at Meta for almost three years, but I think that the HoloLens is a fantastic piece of technology, and that Augmented Reality Head Mounted Displays will be the next big computing revolution.

Currently I'm working on a large HoloLens project for the aircraft industry. But the amount of possibilities I can think of with a HoloLens (or similar device) is limitless.

The HoloLens has amazing tracking and latency. In a couple more years, when HoloLens and/or competitors release a device with a large field of view, HoloLens-like tracking/latency, and leap motion-like hand recognition, it's going to be very exciting.

There have already been some developers asking for feedback and other discussions on https://www.reddit.com/r/HoloLens/

It's a revolutionary device. I was blown away during a demo. When the public sees it they are going to go apeshit.

The demo will blow your mind. My biggest takeaway was that AR probably has more potential in the long-term than VR. VR is immersive sure, but you quickly run into physical boundaries or your mind becomes out of sync with your body. AR has all the benefits of VR but layered on top of your physical environment, enriching it and providing a reference point.

To speculate, I'd say VR will find its killer app in gaming/entertainment (similar to TV), and AR will become the next great I/O interface between humans and computers (similar to phones/tablets).

We received our unit in August of last year and have documented our experiences with it using our YouTube channel: The Holo Herald. Some quick things that we noticed:

-While the FOV is less than ideal it is not experience breaking

-The device is more comfortable than most headgear technology out today(there is also adjusters such as a nose piece and headband that make it more comfortable for a long duration)

-It is intuitive. This device can and will be easily picked up by many people. We found older people who could barely stand trying to operate a smartphone throw it on and almost instantly understand it. There is just something about this device that makes people feel like they can handle it without too much work. And the fact is that they can, it is very simple to use and the hand gestures may be the main reason for it.

-While the hand gestures may not be the most reliable it does come with a clicker that remedies this quite satisfactory. To give this Vive-esque controllers would completely ruin the experience and what Microsoft was trying to accomplish.

-The UI and operation are unobtrusive which means that while it doesn't have much productivity use right now, it will in the future.

If you would like to get a better idea of what the HoloLens does and can do we urge you to find our YouTube channel. We try and deliver our content in a non-technical way as to explain how an end user really see's it without all the tech jargon getting in the way.

I tested one in November.

Very narrow field of vision: I had to fish for objects turning on myself and looking up and down. Not good for AR.

No black, obviously. They can't block light from going through rendered objects. This in turn makes colors somewhat ghostly.

Very stable. Once I get an object I can walk around it and it stays there like a real one.

"Clicking" on an object is hard, but maybe it was hard with a mouse when I used it for the first time.

I had a high school student working with me last summer who did some development on it (no previous experience with unity/c#). His goal was to visualize crystal structures. My main comment is that the FOV is small and the question of what makes for a good user experience is still open. I wish I had more time to play with it.

I'd be impressed if someone could give me a grab bag of real world use cases for the mass market. I'm just super not convinced that this isn't a Kinect sitting on your face.

And Lego/Minecraft on the tabletop.... no thanks I don't want games set in my lounge room, that's an incredibly boring place to set a game in.

I've had the opportunity to develop with two HoloLens. From a consumer standpoint, it's a wash. You're spending $3,000 device on a device that can't do more than pin UW apps to your walls. There are no killer apps yet.

From a developer standpoint, it's terrible. Unity only just now supports UWP apps and only just, many many libraries just don't work. We are making a collaborative 3D app that needs access to the entire screen and a lot of system level resources. The only nice thing is that the anchor system is an operating system level abstraction.

TL;DR: After using one regularly for a few months, I'd say pas on this device, it's a barely usable AR platform with poor battery life and poor FOV, and it's absolutely unusable AR gaming platform.

I worked on HoloLens software at MS, so I was more or less using one all day every day. We all just sort of pushed them to the backs of our heads while we were coding. Anyway, my impression is it's fucking amazing.

Customers love it. It a huge wow factor when you bring it into a place.

Positive: Voice Commands, No Computer needed, Unity is great - development is easy

Negatives: Field of view is just weird, Not as intuitive as it could be, Cannot sell it - dev only

I've tried the development hololens from the March 30, 2016 batch several times.

My observations:

Getting it to recognize my air clicks is the bane of my existence. Object permanence works very well.

Before I used it, I thought people were hyperbolic when mentioning the narrow AR FOV. It really limits the experience.

Moving objects around is very annoying when it doesn't seem to recognize half my gestures. However when it does recognize my gestures it's fairly straight forward to move objects on each of the three axis.

Peers make fun of you for wearing something cumbersome.

My initial review was here - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5w3MwzG3IiQ - where I was really impressed with great industrial design and very promising features.

After playing with it for a while though, I have to conclude it's not yet a consumer product and probably won't be for many years. Maybe it will find a Place in the enterprise.

Have done significant work for it (source: work in consulting) and its feeling like a new paradigm much more than VR or anything else. Biggest thing is the "layer on the virtual world" onto what you are looking at.

I would say info isn't that sparse (as it used to be). Search the Holographic Academy, watch their youtube channel, and subscribe to the Windows MR blog/newsletter.

Have demos of stuff I built, feel free to DM if you want to see.

Underwhelming, to say the least. I've had the opportunity to use HoloLens on many occasions, interacting with many different types of applications, and in many different environments. The extremely limited FOV cripples user experience and usability. There is no feeling of immersion whatsoever.

It's a fun proof of concept, but not much more.

Have only used ours a few times since we got it. I like the display tech and image stability. I dislike the incredibly narrow FOV, imprecise and cumbersome gestures, and how difficult it is to get a comfortable fit on my head. I wouldn't pursue the first generation unless they make tons of progress on FOV and fitting.

Almost completely useless as an actual device for doing real work, but much more in line with what future such devices will be like. In contrast, the HTC Vive is useful, usable, and a much more pleasant experience all around, but also kind of a dead end in terms of design.

Get a Vive now, wait 2 years before getting an AR device.

The AR experience is great, but the hardware in the HoloLens is a bit slow, only 2 GB of RAM. If You develop bigger apps you will notice some lag, ie separation of white lines into red, green and blue when you move your head. But overall an nice Gadget.

Is there any reason why HoloLens can't be both VR & AR?

If I want to watch a movie in a public area for instance, I'd love a VR mode to tune out everything else.

I've spoken about this before on here. We developed on HoloLens for a couple months. Working on the HoloLens app was actually my first foray into 3D development, and also required converting ThreeJS JSON into Unity models which was a mess.

The user experience --------------

HoloLens is mesmerizing. I'm not big into VR or anything, and will often make the arguement that VR hype will die out and is a fad. But there's something very different about what Microsoft is doing. The ability to incorporate reality as a first class citizen in your 3D applications (or vice versa) is groundbreaking. People often complain about the FOV when they first try it out, and I had the same complaint, but your brain is able to compensate once it gets used to it, and then you stop noticing it. That's something you don't get from a short trial of it at a tech demo. The user inputs are indeed very clumsy still. We'll need vast improvements in this area before HoloLens can feel immersive. But the amazing thing is that this first pass isn't that bad. It can track your hands and it's a computer that sits on your head. I mean, come on! I'm only 22 and even I think that's amazing.

The developer experience ------------------------

One of the major short comings of HoloLens development is its dependency on Unity. C# isn't the problem. I love C# and use it daily now for web development. The problem is Unity uses .NET 2.0, and good luck finding C# libraries that are compatible. So for every new thing you want to do, you're going to have to find a "Unity compatible" C# library, which is very annoying.

Unity will work for what you need most of the time, but it turns out if you want to try something custom (like your own gestures) then you're out of luck, because the Unity APIs are limited in that way.

I suppose I'm mostly just not a fan of Unity's component model. Constantly switching between adjusting settings in the IDE and coding feels like a bad way of developing.

Okay, so maybe you want to try something a little lower level. Microsoft offers a C++ API as well, and for the most part this is what you want if you need to harness the limited power of the HoloLens. I haven't played around with all of the APIs, but I know of one in particular that left a bad taste in my mouth (this applies to Unity too) -- the spatial anchor API. For those of you who are unfamiliar, the spatial anchor API is the only way to acquire a durable and persistent reference to a real world location. This is done (I think) with sensor data (orientation, lighting, and images captured by the 4 on board spatial mapping cameras.) This is really an incredible feat of engineering, however it produces a binary which is around 15MB. Far too large to store in a database at scale. I'd like to see MS open up raw access to those sensors so middleware developers can try their hand at improving this aspect of HoloLens.

If C++ isn't your thing, there's a library called HoloJS. You guessed it, it's a JS runtime for HoloLens with access to native libs. I actually started my own variation on this (called HolographicJS) before Microsoft released theirs, but I'm happy they've taken over.

The future ----------

So what does this all mean for a device that seemly has its share of problems to overcome? Well, after trying it I'm fairly confident that MR as Microsoft calls it, is here to stay. The ability to mix reality with virtual reality, and augment that with a layer of environmental understanding is really incredible. I think we're just scratching the surface of the possiblities.

HoloLens is the first in a new field of devices that I believe will come to replace all forms of computers we currently use: phones, laptops, desktops, tablets, etc. Even things like IOT devices. Why spend time building your own interfaces when you can just augment the users'?

If v2 had better FOV and improved input tracking, I'd consider it a major success. But if it also included improved spatial mapping and a reliable GPS, that could bring us into a whole new world, quite literally.

The way I see it, the first company to solve outdoor use of an MR device, and solve what I'm calling the "universal spatial map" problem, will run the world of tomorrow.

Imagine every machine being capable of interfacing with you without the need for a screen or separate device. Imagine walking down the street, gesturing to a restaurant and placing an order before you even get inside.

Further down the line. What if we could transfer consciousness out of a dying car crash survivor into a computer. What if that person could then be virtually transferred back to the scene of the accident, to be greeted by those who are augmented.

Anyway, that's all crazy futurism; but the point is that reality starts with what is being done with HoloLens, and I think it's an incredible thing to be a part of.

To me, HoloLens feels like the Apple II.