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Hololens Usability questions
I have 4 basic questions regarding the hololens.
1. Is there any limit on the maximum numbers of users using it at a time?
2. How users/audience from different perspective can view the content? for example: If i use hololens in a meeting room with 10 attendees. Will the attendees see the same view as the presenter or the view would be different for all the attendees according to their perspective?
3. What if an attendee make a hand gesture? Will that affect the presentation?
4. Will the presenter use just hand gestures to navigate or there would be some other gadget in their hand?
Best Answer
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HoloSheep mod
Maximum of one normal size head fits inside a single HoloLens device at a time. :-)
Multiple HoloLens can communicate with each other over a network (usually through a server application) to create a shared experience. At the Build 2016 Holographic Academy I experienced a shared HoloLens session with about 9 users in our group that were all at the same location. I have seen mention somewhere that when you have more than 5 HoloLens devices in the same physical location that there is a possibility of interference between their sensor arrays, but we did not have any problems in our case. The Holograms 240 tutorial walks you through building the shared experience that we did at Build.In a multi user experience shared content that gets pinned to coordinates in the real physical world takes on that physical local when viewed from a HoloLens. So if a Hologram is placed in the center of a table, users will see it correctly from their position around the table. If a user walks around the table while looking at the hologram, they will also see the hologram from all sides as they gradually circle the table. Pretty much what you would hope or expect. So the 10 attendees in your scenario would all see the holograms from their perspective in a typical shared experience. However, it would be possible to program a sharing system that positioned the shared content differently if that were desired.
The gestures of the users will work and have meaning as supported by the shared application they are running and participating in.
As mentioned in 3. the presenter could use hand gestures, he could also use peripherals like the HoloLens clicker.
Windows Holographic User Group Redmond
WinHUGR.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - @WinHUGR
WinHUGR YouTube Channel -- live streamed meetings7
Answers
Maximum of one normal size head fits inside a single HoloLens device at a time. :-)
Multiple HoloLens can communicate with each other over a network (usually through a server application) to create a shared experience. At the Build 2016 Holographic Academy I experienced a shared HoloLens session with about 9 users in our group that were all at the same location. I have seen mention somewhere that when you have more than 5 HoloLens devices in the same physical location that there is a possibility of interference between their sensor arrays, but we did not have any problems in our case. The Holograms 240 tutorial walks you through building the shared experience that we did at Build.
In a multi user experience shared content that gets pinned to coordinates in the real physical world takes on that physical local when viewed from a HoloLens. So if a Hologram is placed in the center of a table, users will see it correctly from their position around the table. If a user walks around the table while looking at the hologram, they will also see the hologram from all sides as they gradually circle the table. Pretty much what you would hope or expect. So the 10 attendees in your scenario would all see the holograms from their perspective in a typical shared experience. However, it would be possible to program a sharing system that positioned the shared content differently if that were desired.
The gestures of the users will work and have meaning as supported by the shared application they are running and participating in.
As mentioned in 3. the presenter could use hand gestures, he could also use peripherals like the HoloLens clicker.
Windows Holographic User Group Redmond
WinHUGR.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - @WinHUGR
WinHUGR YouTube Channel -- live streamed meetings
Thanks for the response HoloSheep. That was really helpful.
@HoloSheep : I just wanted to check on something you said above. Let me set up the scene. We are sitting across from each other at a table. You pin a globe of Earth with North & South America facing you. I would also see it, but with North & South America facing me? Or would I be looking at the other side of the Earth from you?
@Jesse_McCulloch the typical shared experience would be if I see North & South America from my side of the table you would see Russia & China on your side (the oposite side) of the table, until one of use spun the globe.
This was the kind of shared 3D space scenario that you will see if set up the 240 tutorial that we did at Build this year.
I am speculating (with a reasonable level of confidence) that various other kinds of shared experiences could be programed and setup to meet other use cases. If it was desired and made sense for another use case where we both saw North America & South America from different sides of the table it would be a less conventional sharing scenario but I believe you could make those kinds of things work with a number of other caveats on how the interaction would happen... for example if I then spun the globe that I saw... should the globe you see spin as well? Those are details that you would need to decide for such a less conventional scenario.
Since the title of this thread contains the words "HoloLens Usability" it would probably be good to mention that there are a lot of good reasons to try to avoid creating such less conventional experience if you can, but hey is it possible to do, yes I think so.
Windows Holographic User Group Redmond
WinHUGR.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - @WinHUGR
WinHUGR YouTube Channel -- live streamed meetings
@HoloSheep - The experience you just stated is what I would have expected. It was the number 2 reply earlier that I guess I read the wrong way.