Are Hololens VR ready?

Question

The question is already quite direct and short:

Can the Hololens be used as a virtual reality glasses?

Sorry beforehand if the question is clear for those who have tried them out, but I had not yet the chance.

From what I read I know that they have been designed to be a very good augmented reality tool. This approach is clear for everybody.

Just thinking that may be applications where you simply don't want the user to have any spatial contact with the reality for some moments, or others where you want the user to forget in the complete experience about were s-he is, then a complete environment should be shown as we are used to with the virtual reality glasses.

How are the Hololens ready for this? I think there are two key sub-questions that may be answered for this:

How solid are the holograms?

Does the screen where holograms can be placed covers the complete view?

Answer 1

1) The holograms quality is defined by the following specs:
- Holographic Resolution: 2.3M total light points
- Holographic Density: 2.5k light points per radian
It is worth to say that Microsoft holograms disappear under a certain distance indicated here in 0.85m

Personal note: in the past I worked also on Google Project Tango and I can tell you from these personal experiences that the stability of Microsoft holograms is absolutely superior. Also, the holograms are kept once the device is turned off, so if you place something and you reboot the device you will find them again where you left them, without the need to restart from scratch

2) Absolutely not: "[The field of view] amounts to the size of a monitor in front of you – equivalent to 15 inches" as stated here. And it will not be addressed as reported also here. So if the holograms size exceeds this space they will be shown partially [i.e. cut]. Moreover the surrounding environment is always visible because the device purpose is interacting with the real environment adding another layer on top

Answer 2

The small FOV is a problem for total immersion, but there is an app for HoloLens called HoloTour, which is VR (with a few AR scenes in the beginning). In the game, the user can travel to Rome and Peru. While you can still see through the holograms, in my personal experience, people playing it will really get into it and will forget about the limitations. After a scene or two, they feel immersed. So while it certainly isn't as good at VR as a machine designed for that, it is capable, and it is still typically enjoyable to the users. There are quite a few measures to prevent nausea in the users (I can use mine for hours at a time with no problem) so I would actually prefer it to poorer VR implementations, such as a GearVR (which made me sick after 10 minutes of use!). Surely a larger FOV is in the works, so this will be less of a limitation in future releases.

Answer 3

As others already pointed out, this is a solid No due to the limited viewing window.

Apart from that, the current hardware capabilities of the Hololens is not capable of providing a full immersive experience. You can check the specifications here.

As of now, when the environment is populated with more than a few holograms (depends on the triangle count of each hologram) the device's fps count drops and a certain lag is visible. I'm sure more processing power would be added to the device in future versions, but as of right now, with the current power of the device, I seriously doubt its capabilities to populate an entire environment to give a fully immersive experience.

Answer 4

Actually my initial question is: can the Hololens be used AS WELL for VR applications?

No is the answer because of its small window (equivalent to 15'' screen) where the holograms can be placed to.

I am sure this will evolve sooner or later in order to improve the AR experience. As soon as the screen does not cover toe complete view VR won't be possible with the Hololens.

Answer 5

VR is related with substituting the real world that is why VR goggles are always blind. HoloLens are type of see-through so you can see the hologram and the real world. There are created for augmented reality where you augment the real world. That is why you can't use HoloLens for VR purpous

Answer 6

Hololens is not intended to be a VR rig, there is no complete immersion that I am aware of, yes you can have solid holograms, but you can always see the real world.