Microsoft's Mixed-Reality Plans Go Far Beyond Hololens

When Microsoft made the surprise announcement of a new augmented reality (AR) product at a Windows 10 event in early 2015, the Microsoft HoloLens headset wasn’t the first thing the audience saw. Instead, as he unveiled the new technology to the world, Microsoft’s Alex Kipman — creator of both the Microsoft Kinect motion controller and the HoloLens — showed a logo for Windows Holographic, the Windows 10-aligned software platform underpinning Microsoft’s AR ambitions.

- Rob Marvin

More than two years later, the software powering Microsoft’s growing AR device ecosystem is still the best indicator of where the company plans to take its mixed-reality (MR) future. It’s got a different name now—Microsoft re-branded Windows Holographic to Windows Mixed Reality—but the goal hasn’t changed. Microsoft wants to build an interoperable network of AR, VR, and mixed-reality headsets from different manufacturers, all talking to one another and running Windows 10 Universal Apps.

There are three prongs to this approach: Microsoft’s first-party hardware (HoloLens), the evolving software stack housed within the Windows Mixed Reality platform, and Microsoft’s third-party hardware partnerships with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to build $299 mixed-reality headsets running Windows 10. The first of these, the Acer Windows Mixed Reality Development Edition headset, is already shipping to developers.

WHAT IS MIXED REALITY?

Microsoft isn’t the only AR company that has started using the term mixed reality to differentiate among points on the AR/VR spectrum. On AR side are the monocular glasses you see from companies such as Vuzix and smartphonebased AR popularized by apps such as Pokemon Go.

On the other side are the more immersive, binocular, head-mounted experiences (displays in both eyes with a 360-degree field of vision) offered by devices such as the HoloLens, the ODG R-9 glasses, and the still-unseen Magic Leap. In oversimplified terms, you can think of AR as adding overlaid information or virtual objects in more of a two-dimensional way on top of what’s in front of you.

But the continuum in which these kinds of technologies exist goes deeper than that. A spectrum with the physical world on one side and true virtual reality on the other would look something like this: