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Improvements that most people WANT. (POSSIBLY)

  1. Improved graphics - the holograms should have smooth edges. Imagine a PC game with all settings on the max. The VSync, resolution and such. Being more immersive to a world that lies in the border of reality and holographic is truly captivating and would surely attract more customers.
  2. Awesome animation - you know, people are assuming that the demo in your videos is what they would get. So it would be nice if it is indeed like that on the device itself.
  3. Smooth performance - having a smooth performance and animation is an added thumbs-up for a breakthrough device like this.
  4. Increased field of view - it would be an unforgettable experience for customers if the field of view of the device inhabits the field of view of the human eyes. Don't be like Google Glass which have a tiny screen. PLEASE!! CONQUER THE WHOLE FIELD OF VIEW, (or at least most of it)
  5. Far more intelligent voice A.I.- Imagine JARVIS - in real life! It would be awesome if the voice assistant can do more commands than just call your friend or remind me of something. Make it better with natural language, being able to carry a conversation like a human, an AI being fluent in many languages, can socialize - make it act like human. And please, don't be obvious with the voice, telling you in the face that he/she is a robot. Make the voice natural. It should have a nice and certain accent. Also, make it possible to customize what it would call you. Give it an awesome name too.
  6. Scan animation - I saw one of the videos for Hololens where it scans your surroundings and like "That is awesome, dude!" It would be good if the animation in the video will be just as smooth and nice.
  7. WideR app store - the device should have FAR MORE apps and widgets that can be downloaded.
  8. Large storage space - it would be nice if it comes with either 200 or 500 gigabytes.
  9. RAM - give it a large RAM to be able to process those holograms.
  10. Virtual TV and virtual laptop - it would be nice if there would be a virtual TV and/or laptop that can be pinned to one spot.
  11. Natural Holographic Interaction - the way Tony Stark interact with JARVIS' holograms is so natural it's as if it exist. Make that happen, Microsoft!
  12. Fast Bluetooth - make the Bluetooth faster at transferring files, documents, videos and others.
  13. Long battery - it should be able to last more than 2 or 3 days.
  14. Accessories - it should have a carrying pouch, Fast charging charger, wireless charger (optional)
  15. Ports - it should have a USB 3.0 ports or later
  16. Emojis - everyone use Emojis. So put hundreds of emojis and some new emojis to your virtual keyboard.
  17. Tutorial - make an awesome tutorial for the device. DO NOT MAKE IT BORING! Make it entertaining.
  18. HoloTour - you know, it would be awesome if the Google Street View is in full immersive 3D with extreme resolution. You can interact with the people in that exact place like how you would in the real world. The ability to ride inside a car, swim in a virtual sea - other features.
  19. Waterproof and shockproof - the device should be able to survive 5-10 meters of water for an hour. It should be able to survive a fall from 5-10 feet too.
  20. Glasses- the glasses used should be shatter and scratch resistant as much as possible. It should be, as I stated earlier, survive 5-10 feet at least. It should also be able to withstand scratches from keys and other things.
  21. Customizable watchfaces and widgets - do you know why many people want Android more than iOS? Because customization is on steroids on Android. So make that customization a choice in the settings.

These are only some of my ideas that would make Hololens be the most advance tech yet. So please, I beg you - MAKE IT HAPPEN!

Answers

  • Jarrod1937Jarrod1937 ✭✭✭

    No offense, but I can't tell if some of these points are serious or not.
    Ideally, yes, it would be as powerful as a top of the line gaming laptop. However, putting that on your head will definitely cause some issues. That request also conflicts with a 2-3 day battery life, which you just can't expect from such a device (battery technology limitation more than the device). Even your cell phone will not last near that long when doing games, and it's not running other sensors that the Hololens has.
    In regards to bluetooth, I'll have to look at what standard they implemented, but bluetooth is a standard, Microsoft can't just make it faster, as it would more than likely not work with other devices. A standard is sort of a contract each device has to implement so they all can communicate together, if one alters this standard you may have compatibility issues.
    In regards to your animation suggestions. I am not sure I understand. Outside of the FOV being different, the videos represent the actual experience pretty well.

  • To continue this conversation, I'll share my reaction to your points. Some of what you say may get dismissed on these fora as too demanding, but there's nothing wrong with mentioning what you'd like to see. (What's better is if you can propose a workable means to achieve it.)

    1, 2, 3: I don't mind the current rendering limitations. I think they're pretty good, all considered. No complaints at this point.

    4: I'm among those who want better FOV and remain hopeful that it will eventually appear. I hope that Microsoft is involved in this expansion (rather than a rival company) because I like the direction of the Holographic development.

    5: Speech perception is challenging, especially when selling to a diverse array of dialects and accents, and AI is probably even more so due to the vast amount of knowledge required to understand context and nuance. However, with some experimentation you can program speech using existing APIs (which are documented). I recently added some speech recognition to a desktop application and it generally works. I currently think that it's best to let each developer provide their own set of recognized terms, though some command expansion seems useful and they've recently done that in the latest update. I anticipate more.

    6: Room scanning could be better but I appreciate what's there and how sophisticated it is. It's not easy to carry out that sampling and the "form fitting" needed to determine whether the latest scan is a close fit to a rotation of a previous scan. I hope to see larger spaces and linking of rooms/spaces so that we can walk through our homes and have the device make smooth transitions. I can be patient on this one.

    7: I think that everyone wants to see more apps and widgets, and that's part of the reasoning for the early release to developers. Microsoft wants to let people play with the kit and do R&D and iterative improvements before releasing to the general public.

    8, 9, 12, 13, 14, and 15: I'm quite happy with the current hardware, battery, and accessories. They've had to pack a lot into it and they've surely had to make several compromises. I think that they've done a good job (though I still hope for a larger FOV in the near future). I think that the case provided is intended for portability (note its design).

    10: I like this one -- a quick and easy virtual TV would be nice. You can open Edge and do a full-screen YouTube video, but a more direct path and simpler interface sound nice.

    11: I can wait on more natural interaction (as though we were, for example, directly moving holograms like objects with our hands and fingers). What's there is okay for now and it will get better. The Kinect-like approach to sensing hand gesture makes it tricky, not just perceiving the gestures with limited sampling points, but also perceiving various kinds of hands and perceiving as hands move. I suspect that worn hardware, if not cumbersome, may provide a good solution. Something like a light glove which doesn't totally cover the hand. Some users may opt for small implants or special fingernail paints, but this is another tangent which I won't pursue here.

    16: Emojis? Meh. Sorry, not a concern to me. Let some social blather app developer deal with that one!

    17: Have you done the calibration tutorial? I liked it. First time you try it, it really does feel that you're stepping into a new world. I've found the dev tutorials pretty good so far. I would like more, especially for those of us wanting to develop in c++.

    18: Good idea -- Google Street View and similar would be great for this and I second your suggestion. In addition to being able to tour distant places, imaginary ones, and "spaces" like a large, virtual model of things like cells and ant colonies, it would also be really nice to be able to preserve historical views of real geographical locations so that one day your kids will, at the age of 80, be able to tour their childhood hometown as it was when they were small. There really is a ton of possibility in 1) recording spaces and 2) 3D annotation of spaces (which will surely get abused for spam along with its beneficial uses).

    19, 20: The device seems so far sufficiently durable. My impression is that the SDK devices are better than they needed to be, both in quality and appearance. I'm fine with things as they, though surely added durability is a plus, particularly when you buy these headsets for your kids to use.

    21: Customizable watchfaces and widgets -- I can see your point in that people may want to customize their "desktop" and so on. You can, in fact, decorate your mixed world space with items which will persist. There probably do need to be more of what we can call Accessories, such as clocks, weather indicators, stock indicators, etc., which make good use of the extra dimension and offer a certain degree of personalization.

    I hope that others will add their thoughts as well. I'm curious to read more opinions.

  • JasonJason ✭✭
    edited June 2016
    1. Replace the volume and light stickers on the device as they are placeholders that easily fall off. The +/- symbols should be etched into the device as opposed to stickers that easily fall off (pretty minor).

    2. Try to reduce the weight of the device (which will eventually happen I would imagine with future version releases). Considering the various postural positions engaged while using the Hololens, the device weight of 1.2lbs could fatigue users or exacerbate neck/ spine/ shoulder/ upper back problems. I found while in a seated position, I constantly move and fidget and just slight postural deviations could give rise to problems (i.e. areas previously compromised by injuries, etc).

    3. The mapping ability of the device is impacted by lighting and surface conditions. The device does not perform well at scanning black/ dark, glass/ mirror surfaces in low lighting environments.

    4. Try to better optimize (automate) the lighting output of the device for natural light/ brighter room environments. Optimal lighting conditions of a room makes a much more immersive experience than brighter room environments.

    5. Object recognition/ querying in real time.

    6. Increase volume/ bass output (I'm an audiophile).

    7. I find that the resolution of text degrades when viewing pinned apps from angles (i.e. > 60 degrees) (i.e. a pinned internet browser on the wall with search engine results displayed). It would be an improved experience if the text resolution would be maintained while viewing pinned apps from fluctuating angles.

    8. Improve the scrolling capability of the clicker device. I find that I switch between the clicker (for air tapping) and my fingers (for scrolling).

    9. Build a solution that enables websites to recognize devices like the Hololens and formats the website for an improved user interface/ experience. For instance, the tiny controls on the Youtube player played through the internet browser are difficult to control from a distance. It would be "nice to have" websites automatically recognize the type of device accessing the website and then format the website to produce an easy to use menu system of controls. I believe 'WebVR' is trying to accomplish this goal: https://webvr.info/.

    10. Re-position the micro usb port for charging the device. Perhaps it is the way I've been charging my device however I feel that if the swivel arm is not returned to it's original location then the position of the swivel arm could interfere with plugging in the usb charging cable (which could wear out the cord or the micro-usb port on the device over time).

    I have only had the device for 24 hours and I'm thoroughly impressed with this device especially considering that it is the first developer's release product. My colleagues were impressed with the presentation and packaging of the device and did not expect it to be at this quality so early in the game. I'm eager to see what types of apps can be produced and I think developers will be encouraged to be more creative than they currently are given the current hardware capability.

  • 1) I just want it to have kinectv2 functionality. Skeletal tracking and a coordinate mapper to utilize the depth/user/color buffers like we get with kinect. Would take this thing to a whole new level.

    2) usb 3 support, let us extend the device with arduinos, sensors, etc whatever we dream of without having to build some elaborate networked experience with data sent to hololens from another computer running the arduino/sensors/etc.

  • Jarrod1937Jarrod1937 ✭✭✭

    @LeefromSeattle said:
    1) I just want it to have kinectv2 functionality. Skeletal tracking and a coordinate mapper to utilize the depth/user/color buffers like we get with kinect. Would take this thing to a whole new level.

    2) usb 3 support, let us extend the device with arduinos, sensors, etc whatever we dream of without having to build some elaborate networked experience with data sent to hololens from another computer running the arduino/sensors/etc.

    For #2, keep in mind the Hololens supports bluetooth, and it's (relatively) easy enough to integrate bluetooth into ucontroller development boards with.

  • Regarding Clicker Scrolling:

    Clicker is a 3DOF device. It provides only rotational input and a single click. Clicker does not provide position/translation.

    To scroll, gaze at the content you want to scroll, then hold down the main Click button and rotate your wrist up-and-down or side-to-side to scroll up/down or left/right.

    You can also bring up context menus on some apps/interface elements by gazing at the button and Clicking/holding on an element for a second or two. I use that to do things like pin/unpin apps, etc.

    Try it out!

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