The HoloLens is basically a self-contained computer, with its own dedicated CPU and GPU. There's also what Microsoft calls a holographic processing unit (or HPU) that tracks the environment around you, what you're looking at, and what you're doing with your hands.
Microsoft is using see-through lenses in HoloLens to allow users to see augmented versions of their environment, similar to Google’s Glass headset. Packed into the headset are cameras for capturing photos and video, as well as numerous sensors and speakers that tell where your head is and feed you binaural audio to recreate the sense of sounds coming from certain parts of your environment.
Instead of working with "Virtual Reality", the complete transference of your senses to a fully immersive, separate plane of existence, HoloLens works with Augmented Reality. This is the overlaying of objects onto the environment you're already in. Instead of being transported to a whole new place, HoloLens plants objects and interfaces on the room you're in. You'll interact with these objects and interfaces as if they're really there, while to everyone without the headset on, you're touching air.
Unlike the most well-known virtual/augmented reality headset today - Oculus Rift - Microsoft HoloLens is untethered. This means you're free to walk around anywhere with the headset on, not worrying about cords. The first demonstration of HoloLens back in January had a cord connecting the headset to a Windows 10 PC. Now we're able to have the whole setup resting inside the headset itself.
The hardware is as you see it here, without tether, without a lot of buttons to fiddle with.
• Volume buttons - one convex, one concave
• Row of LED lights to show system status, battery, power
• Button near LED lights to activate lights
• Speakers above either ear
Inside you'll find the following connections:
• WiFi 208.11ac
• Bluetooth
• microUSB port for charging and PC connectivity.
We do not know what processor is inside - no word yet on CPU or GPU, or battery life for that matter. The lenses used in this headset are relatively small compared to our full field of view. The demonstrations you see - like you're seeing below - are great to show, but don't necessarily represent what's being seen by the wearer of the headset. Unlike a virtual reality headset, where everything that isn't virtual is blocked, this headset still allows you to see what isn't being augmented.
Once Microsoft finds a way to cover our full field of view, our mind will be fully "tricked" enough to believe in the vast potential for the headset. Inside HoloLens you're using what Microsoft calls Windows Holographic. In this environment you're using gestures and the pointing of your face to control all elements around you.
There's a simple circle at the center of your field of vision with which you'll be selecting items like the pointer of a mouse. To select something - to "click" it or "tap" it as you would on your desktop computer or mobile device, you have to "pinch" it with your fingers. Not so much of a "pinch" as it is a tap of your index finger against your thumb.
Microsoft does not intend for users to wear HoloLens all the time. Thank goodness. Instead, they seem keen to aim the device at these use cases specifically, in no particular order:
• Entertainment
• Communications
• Education
• Business
Of course gaming will be in there too - but Microsoft is clearly steering away from direct confrontation with the virtual reality gaming universe. They don't want this to be an us-vs-them sort of deal. This headset is being positioned by Microsoft to be bigger than the gaming world alone.
