When Microsoft launched the Hololens in 2016, there was a lot of buzz and speculation surrounding it. With many VR players already monopolising the HMD(Head Mounted Device) market, the Hololens was announced with a promise of an artificial intelligence component. And this, without even connecting to the Internet or some data cloud or any other device. The Hololens boasted of its own computing power and now we know that rightly so, that the Hololens is its OWN Windows 10 computer. So basically, you are wearing a full-running computer on your head.
I’m not going to talk about the hardware in depth- because Microsoft itself and many other tech blogs out there have done a very good job of doing that. See one such example here by Tom Warren from the Verge. What was particularly exciting was the Windows SDK that came along with it which allowed developers to build cool stuff with the Development edition of the Hololens. They even made available an Academy which offered tutorials of the existing features of the Hololens. Even if you couldn’t get your hands on the Hololens itself (which was initially my case because of its $3000+ price tag), Microsoft allowed an Emulator version of it to see how your built apps looked on the Hololens. Think of the Emulator as a simulator for the real app on the Hololens device.
So, I was excited like a little bunny when I tried the apps out. And being generously provided all the tools and resources from Microsoft to build my own apps, I jumped right into the world of Holographic Computing. Things have only been exciting from then on. You’ll see in my upcoming posts that I have simplified the features I could uncover, along with a basic understanding of the Unity game engine. So I would be providing code snippets and Unity scene screenshots to assist you in your Holographic adventure.
