Considerations about using HoloLens (or any other AR glass) inside an exhibition

In a previous post I highlighted the problems that current generation of augmented reality headsets have (if you haven’t read it, read it!). Today I want to show you the problems that can happen while showcasing an augmented reality application in an exhibition or such.

On Friday I went to Novara to test a project I’ve been doing with Politechnic of Turin professor Andrea Bottino (and his right wing Francesco Strada) involving the use of HoloLens for medical applications. Purpose of the test was to make doctors to try our solution and make them express feedback. No-one of them had ever tried HoloLens and some of them had even no idea about what HoloLens were… so they were the ideal people to test our super-nerd stuff.

Feedback about our solution has been great, but this is not the topic of this post… (but a good reason to be happy)

Accurate representation of me after Friday demo (Image by KnowYourMeme)

Here I want to talk you about problems I had during the test… and how I tried to address them. It has been the first time that I’ve used HoloLens inside a public showcase with non-technical people, so I think it’s interesting to tell you all the problems I had.

Sketchup Viewer for HoloLens review

Today I felt super-rich. It has been like the moment when I had the opportunity to take a lap inside a wonderful red Ferrari car thanks to EIA accelerator. I felt rich for some minutes and I looked at the other super-poor people envying me, like Paris Hilton looks at us standard people… and then after 3 minutes I was again Tony, the average poor guy :(. Today’s richness was due to the fact that I’ve been able to try Sketchup Viewer for HoloLens. Marketplace cost $1499,99.

I spent $0, of course. Thanks to epic university teacher Andrea Bottino (of Politechnic of Turin) and his right-wing Francesco Strada, I had a chance to try it and feel like Uncle Scrooge for some minutes. In ten minutes I’ve tried a $1500 app on a $3000 device: I’m like a gold-digger.

Anyway, I’m here to write my impressions about it.

Microsoft HoloLens plans make me think about AR/VR product cycles

Yesterday there haven’t been many interesting news about the VR world, but my startup buddy Gianni sent me a super-interesting link that made me think a lot.

The article I’m talking about is this one: it talks about Microsoft skipping HoloLens v2 developments to concentrate directly on version v3. The news is far from being official, but the author talks about some unspecified “sources” confirming this.

So, HoloLens v1 is two years old, but we won’t see a restyling soon: we’ll have to wait for 2019 to have a super-incredible HoloLens v3. Why Microsoft is doing this? According to what the article says and mixing it with what I think, the reasons are:

HoloLens problems show us that AR is still not ready for the mass market

HoloLens is maybe the best AR glass on the market nowadays and I had the pleasure to try it some months ago and to write an enthusiastic review about it. I was delighted by its capabilities, potentials and the incredible spatial positioning of its “holograms” (hate this term, since they’re not holograms, just virtual objects you see through a lens, but… whatever).

In the last month I had the pleasure to work in a HoloLens project, so I spent some days developing for it using Unity. It’s great, but as within a long term relationships living with your partner you discover a lot of hidden problems… working with HoloLens I started discovering lots of defects it has.

HoloLens scene initialization

Yesterday I started collaborating in a little project that uses HoloLens (with Andrea… do you remember the guy of presence vs immersion article?) and as every normal guy working with this new device, I started looking at Microsoft Academy videos and articles.

First thing I discovered is that HoloLens requires you to change lots of settings in scene and in build parameters and this is soooooo boring. So I’ve said to myself “why can’t I write an editor script and do all this stuff automatically? I’ve already made something similar for our multi-build setup of ImmotionRoom, so it is something that I know how to do in few minutes”. Two hours of scripting later I discovered that maybe I over-estimated my capabilities (and the documentation of Unity Editor classes). And, even worse, I discovered that this feature is already present in that swiss knife that lies under the name of HoloToolKit (if you develop for HoloLens in Unity and you don’t use the HoloToolKit, you’re just a fool) 😀

Total facepalm (image by knowyourmeme.com)

Microsoft Hololens: a little review

Yesterday has been a super-day: thanks to epic Microsoft MVP Marco Dal Pino (which is also Intel Black Belt and other 1000 stuff like that), I’ve tried Microsoft Hololens for some minutes! It’s been so cool, considering that in Italy there are only more or less 10 Hololens… I’ve been so lucky (thanks Marco, I love you!). I’m writing a little review here, since I’ve little time due to organization of our DTC event… after that I’ll write a more detailed review on our Immotionar website.