
Microsoft demos 'holoportation' 3D presence tech with HoloLens - Impossible
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/holoportation/
======
hanniabu
I was waiting for this, knew it was only a matter of time before Microsoft
came out with something like this since it's right in their field of office
products.

Hopefully this is the catalyst needed to create better work/life balance and
lower the barrier for remote work and make it just as productive as being
present in the office.

~~~
dominotw
For remote work, what are the advantages of this over a good video
conferencing/screen sharing type of setup.

~~~
hanniabu
It's really hard to say exactly what it is, just as I can't tell you exactly
why being physically next to somebody is better than a video conference, but
it is. This would bring us one step closer to being physically present without
actually being so just as video brought us one step closer than we were with
just phone calls.

------
LarryMade2
Nice "demo"...

Microsoft lately seems to be really good at being a "proof of concept
developer." Which is cool and all that, but then people wait and forget why it
was so cool.

As a comparison, Apple holds back their tech till it is polished and ready for
market, so people are excited and start literally lining up to get whatever it
is... And when they get it for the most part they aren’t disappointed, because
it is pretty much exactly what was presented on stage at the show and they can
show it off while its still a new shiny idea.

~~~
overgryphon
This is a demo from Microsoft Research, which does research into new areas,
not a product group.

~~~
cldellow
This is a point worth repeating. Does Apple even publish its research? I've
benefitted from many papers published by Microsoft and Google's research
departments, either directly through learning something I can apply myself, or
indirectly through processes that end up in open source technology.

Does Apple even publish research? Some Googling failed to turn up anything. In
fact, I found an HBR paper that said Apple specifically does not publish its
research.

IMO, this makes Apple much less praiseworthy than Microsoft/Google/Facebook.

~~~
kuma4
Steve Jobs abandoned Apple Advanced Technology Group. Apple isn't interested
int technology researches.

------
neals
I never hear or see anybody mention this, but I feel that it is important to
note that the actual surface area of the HoloLens is currently way to small to
give anything resembling the presented experiences.

They always show the hololens used from a third perspective. Filmed with a
camera, not the actual Hololens capture.

The hololens that I got to use (admittedly, almost a year ago now) was just
nowhere near the expierence of any of the demo's. It's just a tiny tiny
augmented display, compared to the massiveness of the headset.

Let's say it's more toward Google Glass than towards Oculus rift.

I really believe in this (type of) product, I have clients in certain fields
where augmentation is just a obvious next step, but it is not going to be what
they currently display.

And they know it, because there isn't a single image on the internet where you
see what the Hololens user is actually seeing. Though I'm sure I'll be proven
wrong at that in the comments below.

[Edit] Yes, I see there is a small render of the Hololens in the bottomleft
corner, but you really need to see it compared to your full field-of-vision to
get how small it is.

~~~
ickwabe
These folks have a ted talk video on their front page where they show the view
from inside their headset. Seems reasonably expansive.

[https://www.metavision.com/](https://www.metavision.com/)

~~~
shpx
Likely wont be coming to market though. It's also tethered.

[http://augmentl.io/ar-manufacturer-meta-being-accused-of-
ste...](http://augmentl.io/ar-manufacturer-meta-being-accused-of-stealing-
designs/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMALYjGcKFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMALYjGcKFc)

------
sigmar
Pretty cool, but my first thought is: how authentic will communication be when
"holoporting" to each other if you both have those big hololens mounted on
your head? It will be hard to pick up on each other's facial expressions and
impossible to look into each other's eyes.

~~~
cududa
In a generation or two they'll do facial tracking. I imagine you'll get a full
3D model made of you, and it'll pick up the facial movements and transpose
them onto your avatar

~~~
sigmar
Yea, perhaps. Like in the recent "face2face: realtime face capture and re-
enactment video"[1]. and your reference to "your avatar" reminds me of the
scene from the matrix where Morpheus describes "residual self-image"[2]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohmajJTcpNk)

[2] [https://youtu.be/AGZiLMGdCE0?t=26](https://youtu.be/AGZiLMGdCE0?t=26)

~~~
bloaf
See also Ghost in the Shell:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poKi7YyuamI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poKi7YyuamI)

------
lipanski
Is it just me or HoloLens sounds a bit like a Hooli product?

All jokes aside, given that the rendering quality improves, this could have
interesting applications for scientists researching facial and body
expressions in certain environments. It would enable them to replay scenes and
emotions which current 2D/3D video fails to capture, especially because it
allows you to change your viewpoint.

I doubt this will be a game changer for teleconferencing, mainly due to the
oversized device you have to wear, but then again all these gadgets tend to
look a bit creepy in their initial phases (e.g. the Google Glass prototype).

~~~
r3bl
NASA already uses Hololens to get the scientists to feel like they're walking
on Mars. Rovers basically capture the footage from Mars in all perspectives,
these pictures get transferred back to Earth, and scientists are able to
"walk" on Mars with as low delay as possible (of course, it takes a while to
transfer the images down to Earth). It's a remarkable thing and I really do
feel like Hololens (or some other Augmented Reality project) will have a
_huge_ impact on the scientific community.

I did an interview with a software developer from NASA about this project:
[https://opensource.com/life/16/1/scale14x-interview-
parker-a...](https://opensource.com/life/16/1/scale14x-interview-parker-
abercrombie-nasa)

~~~
soared
Why would they use AR and not VR? AR actually seems useless for that use case.

~~~
m4x
AR would allow you to interact with your co-workers much more naturally than
VR

------
Qworg
Here's the actual page on the research - [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/projects/holoportation/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/projects/holoportation/)

Compare this to previous work at Microsoft, just last year:
[http://techxplore.com/news/2015-07-microsoft-hololens-
video-...](http://techxplore.com/news/2015-07-microsoft-hololens-video-
creation.html)

------
cb18
How do they define which aspects of the captured image to extract, model, and
transmit? If they were just modeling the humans, I could seeing using motion
detection, or infrared perhaps, but they seem to have also extracted and
modeled the little girl's toys.

So i'm curious what method they use to extract just specific bits of the image
captured in the holodeck. Perhaps this is answered in one of their papers.

If anyone knows and has a quick overview, or link to a relevant paper that'd
be great.

~~~
miguelrochefort
The setups are identical, so it seems obvious that they capture everything
that differs (i.e., not part of the floor and cubes).

------
mpnordland
I realize that I'll probably never get something like this, but dang, that was
cool.There seemed to be a distinct quality difference in the realtime created
models, and the prerecorded models. The realtime ones had issues, where as the
prerecorded ones (like the girl with the dog) were smooth and nice. I
definitely think that if this goes mainstream, higher quality models will be
generated in most cases and only use real time stuff if there isn't one
available.

~~~
blisse
Honestly, given how rapidly technology is advancing, I think that it's not
unreasonable to expect a consumer-friendly version of this within 10-20 years.
It's happening!

~~~
ChicagoDave
Five years.

------
noobie
Downvote me if you want but HOLY FUCK! I got goosebumps when he started
replaying the interaction in reverse! This is really reaaaally cool!

~~~
supergetting
It was really cool! the replay with him and his daughter reminded me of a
scene in the Minority Report, but much cooler!

------
DanAndersen
This is pretty exciting because of its potential for telementoring. I've been
working on a research project using tablets and augmented reality for surgical
telementoring in austere environments (
[https://engineering.purdue.edu/starproj/](https://engineering.purdue.edu/starproj/)
), but a setup like what MS has here would offer so many benefits. Imagine a
trainee surgeon being able to feel as if a mentor surgeon was actually present
and able to gesture and give instruction during the course of a live surgery,
for example.

------
kazagistar
I see they learned from their previous campaigns, where they focused on the
ability to "work from anywhere" and were criticized[1] for creating a strange,
dystopian vision of all work and no leisure. Now, they are focusing much more
on the personal aspects in their marketing, even though their primary market
is fairly likely to be business.

[1] [https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3683-microsofts-dystopian-
pit...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3683-microsofts-dystopian-pitch-for-
remote-work)

------
blaze33
If you look at the tv that's in the room, it looks like it's actually showing
the real live 3d reconstruction with what I'd guess is a 500-1000ms latency.

So the main video that is in sync (when the guy has it's own holograph in
superposition) was certainly edited afterwards..

------
veritas3241
He seemed extremely careful not to let his daughter walk through him. He
always made room for her. I wonder if there have been studies done to assess
how creepy it might be to have a family member walk right through you...

~~~
blisse
I think it was more of a gut reaction of "here's something moving towards me,
let me get out of its way", rather than being extremely careful. I don't think
we're at all ready for having things passing through us.

~~~
ibejoeb
I believe he was demonstrating spatial awareness, or perhaps it's merely
because the compositer doesn't do well with intersection.

------
stuart78
Remarkably impressive, but I have to admin to being a bit creeped out by the
save and relive stuff at the end. A bit too close to the dream machine in
"Until the End of the World" for my taste.

------
ksec
Give them another 4 years time to perfect their technology, that is 2020,
another 5 years again to iterate and adoption. I can see in 10 years time this
will have massive impact to office work. Less Business trip to travel.

I dont think it will replace business travel. But there will be a lot less of
it. And it is also dependent on the countries broadband quality. ( May be in
the future the Job requirement will write you need 100Mbps broadband + low
latency results. )

------
eganist
So, an idea:

How much work would it take to segregate just the augmented reality displays
as a pair of glasses that a user can wear while receiving the display data
wirelessly? I say this because once you can do that, you can have (for
instance) an executive conference room setup with a number of identical
conference rooms scattered around the world, each with a server performing the
hololens rendering logic and rendering across _n_ glasses per room. No bulky
hololens computers-on-head and an eerily realistic recreation of one
conference room with all participants in-room.

I don't know the exact patents Microsoft filed on the display technology they
have for the visors, but I suspect it's not yet easy enough to compress them
into anything close to Google Glass yet (you'd need larger glass in any case),
but one can hope.

~~~
bnj
Once we get there anyone will be free to re-enact Kingsman at will

------
kodablah
Install this at sports stadiums and not only make my own viewing more
"embedded" in the action, but allow replay to get any angle (granted lower res
than they are used to for really tight calls). I imagine that many sports
organizations would be lining up outside MS research's door with cash in hand.
Though the tech probably needs to advance quite a bit more to capture that
many 3D objects in real time.

------
rosme
Just this week I wrote a blog about how to build your own holographic studio
by using multiple Kinects and RoomAlive Toolkit. Nowhere near the
sophisticated capture that Microsoft Research demoed of course.
[http://smeenk.com/build-your-own-holographic-
studio/](http://smeenk.com/build-your-own-holographic-studio/)

------
Heliosmaster
This is not cool just for work. I can definitely see myself using it to feel
closer to my family, a few thousands miles away.

Also, this is research. Too many of these comments are bashing it, mostly
because it comes from MS I guess. We can still hate their products, but the
research is really useful.

------
CM30
Hey, this looks pretty impressive. It also makes me want to imagine some of
the video game uses of the technology, like say, how cool a Five Nights at
Freddy's game would be based on this tech...

To some degree, it also reminds me a bit of a certain villain from Teen
Titans...

------
freekh
Pretty cool demo! Maybe they got inspired by what this guy did a while back
with 3 kinects:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgbycqb92c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghgbycqb92c)?

------
fuddle
Thats very impressive, looking forward to seeing this advance in the next few
years.

------
gajomi
It's expensive, which makes me want to think of who would buy these first.
There might be a market in medicine (think Vilayanur Ramachandran style
phantom limb therapy) and psychiatry.

------
imron
Shrinking it all and putting it on the coffee table was a nice trick.

------
azinman2
So amazing. Can't wait until all you need is a few tiny webcams and something
like magic leap allows it to be in your glasses so you can actually see the
other person unobstructed.

------
breezest
The concept is great but the equipment must be very expensive.

It seems multi-national company may make money by providing a private room to
enjoy the 'holoportation service'.

------
foota
This team must have the best remote standups.

------
jonny1090231
Very impressed! I can't even begin the possibilities that this tech could
bring to the table.

------
davkap92
Microsoft Office 3D here we come, walking past life size graphs and real life
spreadsheets

------
iamleppert
I can't even, the video "demo" has been so obviously post-produced.

------
hiharryhere
very very cool. The guy in the video is an excellent presenter too.

------
murbard2
The case against supersonic plane travel..

------
kordless
These things will be the end of all of us.

------
maxpert
Microsoft just made PORN more convenient!

------
happi-live
It's very cool!

------
dang
Url changed from
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/268997/Microsoft_demos_ho...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/268997/Microsoft_demos_holoportation_3D_presence_tech_with_HoloLens.php).

------
greenspot
1st thought: next Skype

2nd thought: 4 cameras and some space required

3rd thought: command-w

------
vic_nyc
The first and only promising technology from Microsoft I've ever seen :)

------
hoodoof
Microsoft seems to be fiddling around in research while Sony runs away with
the Virtual Reality cup.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
As a point of clarification, this is Augmented Reality, which is actually
quite different than Virtual Reality in practice and scale.

So it's an apples to bananas comparison.

~~~
renox
The Vive has one camera on the headset, so it can do a kind of AR too..

~~~
AndrewKemendo
No, it doesn't and this has already been discussed ad-nausea around the VR
world.

~~~
renox
I'm sorry but could you provide some explanation (hint or link)? I'm probably
wrong but your correction is a bit short IMHO.

------
deckar01
I don't understand why they need to pretend to support features they haven't
developed. It makes something that is obviously advanced feel cheaper and fake
in some way. The daughter is obviously a recording, but they call it "live",
say she can't hear him, then he gives her audio queues. Who is editing this
and what are they thinking?

~~~
elisee
He says "you can only hear me but you can't see me" (since she isn't wearing a
hololens). I think it is actually happening live between him and her.

~~~
muglug
Yup and you hear an echo of his voice (presumably because she's in an
adjoining room). That wasn't pre-recorded.

