Our world is a magical place and today I played keys on a keyboard that was not physically there.
Initial Experience, UX
I reached my hand out and reality matched expectation. Not only did my fingers play individual keys, but I picked up a digital coffee mug as naturally as I would a real mug. I knew exactly how far to reach to grab it because the depth was perfect. As I moved around quickly, it kept up with me, no jitter, not even a flicker. It moved because I was holding it. I saw the bounding box, so I let go. It floated. I pinched the corner and it scaled with ease. That’s what really got me; it all was so easy, so natural. Microsoft has obviously spent valuable time using and studying this product. I wanted to know the extent of the hand tracking so I grabbed the mug and moved it downward out of my field of view until my hand was by my side. Then I looked down and the mug had moved probably 70 degrees of the 90 degree angle of movement. I pushed buttons, I moved objects, and I scrolled through a document. There was even a really cool digital mesh overlaid on my hands. My mind is still buzzing over the accuracy of the fully articulated hand tracking. It truly is an incredible thing. Steve Jobs loved the power of using a finger instead of a stylus, I’ll bet he would revel at the ability to use your hand instead of a controller.
Eye Tracking
The HoloLens 2 was not just able to accurately track my hands, it could also track my eyes. I focused on a point in a map and told it to “Zoom In”. I had already used the HoloLens 1 speech recognition for commands (which blew me away three years ago) but it still satisfied me that it understood me. It zoomed right into the part of map that I was looking at, then moved my eyes around to different parts of the map and it panned to that spot. I thought that it would feel weird to have the map to just move, but when I focused on a particular point, it stopped moving. The reaction was instant. It kept pace with me. My pessimism regarding the quality of execution was quickly diminished. I had read that it could do this and that it “feels like it is reading your mind”. I see what they were going for but I felt more like I had the beginning of a control that I never knew I needed. It was like when you click in the middle button on a mouse to pan around a website or pdf, but much better because it stopped when you wanted it to and it moved much smoother. The more I think about my experience with eye tracking, the more I like it.
Field Of View
The field of view was amazingly not noticeable. To calibrate the device, it tracks your eyes. In doing so, you look at various points which had me looking as far as my eyes could go without moving my head. I was worried that the difference from the H1 to the H2 would be just a little bit. But we won’t be disappointed. There will still be some moving your head from side to side to find all the objects. Although the vertical increase is enough that most of what you want to see is very well in-view.
Light
Ambient light is still the bane of all MR devices. Sunlight has so much presence that it is difficult to compete its power. If the ambient light is too bright, holograms still appear somewhat translucent. With the H1, as soon as the sun went down, the holograms look amazing, and I’d really like to test this new device in different environments and at different times of day. Even if all the lights are on, the clarity is beautiful.
The Future Is Beautiful
I genuinely believe that this device is world changing technology, and I look forward to utilizing all the new capabilities to build fresh and exciting experiences.
