Microsoft Hololens: an ambitious punt on wearable technology

Apple has its Watch. Facebook has the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset. Google has - or had - Glass. Now Microsoft's big bet on wearable technology is almost here: the Hololens, perhaps the most ambitious of them all.

Microsoft revealed the Hololens to an unsuspecting world in January. Nobody was really expecting Microsoft, which has lagged behind in the smartphone era, to leapfrog Apple and Google into the next generation of mobile technology.

But as it showed off goggles that were able to mingle digital "holograms" with the real world, controlled by hand gestures and speech recognition, it became clear this promised to be a genuine advance.

I was among a group of reporters and developers at Microsoft's Build conference last week to try the latest prototype. It resembles a pair of reading glasses resting beneath a ski mask, attached to a pair of chunky interlocking plastic headbands.

It is not as uncomfortable as that sounds but it is hardly a subtle look. The bulk is necessary because unlike smartwatches or Google Glass, the Hololens is a self-contained computer, operating untethered from any PC or smartphone. But I would not want to walk down the street in it.

Where Oculus-style virtual reality immerses the viewer entirely in a digital world, "augmented reality" of the kind attempted by Hololens - and, less successfully, by Google Glass - allows you to see the physical world too.

Where Hololens marks a real step forward is that its "holograms" appear to be just as fixed in the real world as actual objects. The images (not strictly speaking holograms, but it is a useful metaphor for this strange new technology) do still look computer-generated, but if a digital notepad is sitting on a physical table, that is where it stays, no matter which direction you look in. I had to shake my head violently to break the illusion.

The sound is perhaps even more impressive. Hololens' miniature directional speakers create sounds indistinguishable from other noises in the (real) room. These achievements are seriously impressive.

At the Build conference, aimed at developers rather than consumers, we were taught how to adjust and manipulate a small collection of digital objects, including balls of paper resting on a pile of blocks. By speaking a specific phrase or holding my hand in front of my face and bending a finger, I could knock the balls off the pedestal or move the entire collection from a coffee table to my desk. At the end of the session, the ball became a bomb that blew a virtual hole in the table. A little digital world appeared beneath, with birds circling a geometric volcano.

These are simple demonstrations of a prototype. For the most part, they really worked. While virtual reality is being aimed initially as an entertainment technology, with games and films, Microsoft wants Hololens to sit alongside Windows PCs and its Office software as a productivity tool - but one that does not require sitting at a desk.

However, to bring this vision to reality, Microsoft has had to make some difficult trade-offs. The most obvious is the little window through which this virtual world is viewed.

While the Hololens hardware covers much of the face, its images are confined to a narrow rectangle in the middle of the field of view - about the size of a laptop screen.

When I was close up to my little collection of digital objects, not all were visible at the same time, which could be a real limitation. It means using Hololens falls well short of the initial vision shown in Microsoft's promotional videos.

Microsoft says this is to preserve the wearer's peripheral vision, and it is true that I was able to write notes without removing the headset, something impossible in VR.

But when wearing something so large over your eyes, you inevitably lose some spatial awareness. As I looked around a room at several dozen people all wearing Hololenses, all looking at their own personal digital worlds, I did wonder whether we really need this much technology, this close to our faces.

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