Microsoft Research’s Shahram Izadi shows how a clip of his HoloLens-facilitated interactions with his daughter in a remote environment can be played back in 3-D. (Credit: Microsoft Research)
As Microsoft gets set to ship its HoloLens development kit, it’s previewing a “Star Wars” application called holoportation that takes full advantage of the mixed-reality headset.
The effect is like that scene in the original Star Wars movie, where Princess Leia pops up in a hologram and tells Obi-Wan Kenobi he’s her “only hope.” (The same concept is behind other holo-conferences sprinkled throughout the sequels and prequels.)
In a demo video, Microsoft Research’s Shahram Izadi shows how it works.
Astronaut Scott Kelly wears a HoloLens headset on the International Space Station. (Credit: NASA)
After his return from nearly a year in space, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly gave Microsoft’s HoloLens headset a big thumbs-up for work on the International Space Station – and for shooting down aliens in his spare time.
“It worked great,” he said today during a news briefing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Texas. “I was really surprised. We messed around with it for about two hours, and immediately I sensed this is a capability we could use right now.”
The orbital test was part of Project Sidekick, a Microsoft-NASA collaboration to see how augmented-reality tools like HoloLens could facilitate operations on the space station. The HoloLens glasses can superimpose computer-generated graphics on the wearer’s field of view, and show someone else what the wearer is looking at. Both functions were put to the test in orbit.
“It had some cameras on it, and we could also see a display that’s in your field of view, The person on the ground could be drawing things in your field of view, and pointing to things, and I could be doing the same thing,” Kelly explained.
A photo tweeted by NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shows the International Space Station’s robotic arm about to grab onto a commercial Cygnus cargo ship. (Credit: Scott Kelly / NASA)
The International Space Station’s astronauts got their Christmas presents early today, in the form of HoloLens augmented-reality headsets from Microsoft and more than 7,000 pounds of other nice stuff, courtesy of a Cygnus commercial cargo ship.
Orbital ATK’s uncrewed Cygnus arrived at the station three days after Sunday’s launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Florida. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren used the station’s robotic arm to grab onto the 20-foot-long (5.1-meter-long) capsule at 3:19 a.m. PT and bring it in for its berthing.
In a tweet, space station commander Scott Kelly joked that the delivery arrived “just in time for Christmas.”
