What Happened to Microsoft’s Gaming Plans for HoloLens?

HoloLens is the future of personal and mobile computing for Microsoft, and also for gaming, but why hasn’t the software giant demoed anything relating to the device at its E3 2016 press conference?

[evrybanisxbottears]

what happened to illumiroom

[kneon]

Illumiroom was never going to work well in the real world. You can only project good images on light colored surfaces, preferably matte white. So in a typical room you would have lots of areas where you just can't project anything useful, this limits illumiroom to mainly just decoration, you couldn't put anything useful due to these limitations.

[jb227]

The Illumiroom project was scrapped & turned into the basis of HoloLens actually. I think they borrowed a couple piece of tech from Illumiroom & they streamlined the idea behind it. At some point if HoloLens happens & they are able to widen the FOV drastically, you can pull off illumiroom w/o all of the expensive projectors.

I'm still not sure that HoloLens will ever see a wide release though....at least not in its current iteration. It's a catch 22 because the technology begs to be portable & used in the wild but Google Glass already illustrated that the privacy concerns make that a tricky prospect.

[ShottyatLaw]

I think you hit the nail on the head. If anything, should the tech not materialize, it will get rolled into something else.

[Zediz]

illumiroom was never promised it was just a project, it did not work.

Hololens never had in their main goal games, but services and applications in various fields. Certainly and MS did right after discovering that the VR is a gimmick, expensive and only momentary interest.

[2pacalypsenow]

Same thing that happened to the "Power of the Cloud" and Project Milo

[xer0]

All smoke and mirrors...
That's all Microsoft has got.

[deanparadise]

You use the term "smoke and mirrors"... I don't think it means what you think it means...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[jb227]

I've seen people suggest that maybe Crackdown is being pushed to a Scorpio release to potentially achieve that destructiblity w/ the hardware itself instead of leaning so much on the cloud. It'd make sense to me, but its yet another instance of MS selling a product based on features that just aren't practical, only to ditch them entirely down the line.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Crackdown doesn't release on the XBO at all, or if it does it'll be severely gimped for that system & more functional on Scorpio.

[rainslacker]

Naaa...they just realized Halolens wasn't going to steal PSVR's thunder, so they are going to make the Scorpio to get Occulus support to steal that thunder instead.

More likely though, they realized it was nowhere near ready for prime time both from a development standpoint, and price standpoint for consumer adoption. Last years demo failed to really excite, and it's pretty much confirmed they staged the demo to not be representative of what the consumer would get, despite them asserting that would be the case(needing a special camera so we could see what the player sees), and the fact that HL just isn't really that exciting right now.

[Zediz]

Forgot PS3 120 fps, 50% more powerful, always Full HD, with 900p 30fps unchated.

[BlackTar187]

is 900p not HD? It is more powerful.

[2pacalypsenow]

To be fair Ken said that in an interview in 2005 while the Ps3 was being developed in an interview, not at a E3 or big show or talked about it every time he got interviewed.

The 50% was said by a developer not Sony.

Ps3- XB360- Ps4-Xb1 are always HD, 720,1080i are High Def resolutions

I also remember MS said HDMI wasn't needed, and how there wasn't a design flaw and only a few people had hardware failures with xbox 360s

[mezati99]

smoke and mirrors

[deanparadise]

You and @xer0 both. I think maybe you and all your agrees could find a better term to try and express your dismissal of the technology on display here...

[annoyedgamer]

We will see it again in a few years. It has huge potential as an RTS simulator on a tabletop.

[rainslacker]

I actually think it's pretty compelling technology from a lot of different gaming standpoints. I just don't feel it's ready for the general consumer marketplace.

It's actually pretty cool tech, but hard to imagine what kind of support it will get if it's confined to a super expensive peripheral, and a single platform.

[qwerty676]

If the author actually did some research they'd know that Microsoft never intended this to be for gaming right off the bat. The games created were merely to show off the tech.

[DeadManMMX]

They said this over and over but you can't tell people anything that just want an excuse to bash whatever MS is doing. Look up and down this comment thread. Smoke and Mirrors despite multiple people having tried it and wrote about it.

[BlackTar187]

Didn't they show it 2x at E3 playing games? Was hoping for a release date in the next year going by the new E3 standards.

It is smoke and mirrors just like Kinect and Cloud. You're not allowed to show things at e3 without release dates and why would you show something off at e3 that is admitted as not being really for gaming?

[n4rc]

Wasn't ever only a Minecraft demo? It was a good fit for illustrating the tech..

Tho I was never sure how viable it would be to the general consumer

[yeahokwhatever]

there were no plans.

[MurDocINC]

The dev kits cost $3000, there's no way this is coming to gaming with those prices.

[ShottyatLaw]

Eh, console dev kits are in the thousands, too, so I think that number needs to be put into perspective. Still, we're probably looking at something in the ballpark of higher end tablets and laptops. Something close to $1,500, hopefully. It's an untethered computer strapped to your face, after all.

[Bennibop]

Its stuff like this, illimiroom, the cloud and milo make me sceptical about Scorpio specs. Microsoft have a reputation for over promising.

[rainslacker]

If MS says it'll be 6TFlops, I'm sure it'll be 6TFlops. Unfortunately, 6TF is a rather meaningless number on the actual abilities of a chip. All Teraflops measures is how much data can be processed at one time, and it's usually an overall view of the system itself, not just a single part. There are much more important factors involved when determining system/chip performance, and if MS is looking for a console that can reach the mainstream price point, certain features are going to be withheld to make that happen unless MS wants to take a loss.

To put it in perspective, go compare graphics cards as if you wanted to buy one. While doing so, try to find marketing material that actually lists TFlops as a selling point for comparison. While these numbers are available to those who want them, you usually have to dig for them, and more often than not you find them in the tech analysis of the chips themselves before they go into production, because it allows for the reader to have a general idea of how much faster it is, but disregards if it will be able to do as much as some other chips with a lower TF rating.

To be fair though, if it's 6TF, and given the fabrication process and type of chips they're likely to use, they will have pretty good performance, however, price will be a factor on if they modify standard designs to make it cheaper, and those modifications will have a much bigger impact on what can be achieved than the Teraflops themselves.

While I'm not going to assert anything, it's possible to get more performance out of a lower rated chip if it's designed to do more and is more efficient. However, 4.14TF(rumored Neo specs) couldn't likely do more than a 6TF system in terms of graphics, but may perform better elsewhere....say if Neo uses double precision and Scorpio used single precision. double precision would allow for more advanced physics in this case.

[Bobafret]

They never "promised" anything except cloud to an extent, which is still on the horizon.

[ElementX]

It wasn't designed as a gaming device they just showed some of the potential

[DeadManMMX]

When did they ever say they had them? They have said over and over this wasn't meant for gaming and is currently priced out of home use.

[ninsigma]

It's a computing device more so than a gaming device so I don't get why people put so much stock in it for gaming.

[Wallow]

? They never said it was for gaming, only hinting that it might one day become a part of gaming. You can't call someone a liar for someone they never said.

[Bobafret]

If your opinion is based on a fallacious argument, you make it up as you go along.

[MachuchalBrotha316]

The problem is MS themselves dont know what Hololens is. You got someone saying its not a gaming device , yet everytime they show it...guess what..playing a game. Lol

Oh no its for real world applications....Minecraft isnt it.

[Errorist76]

All smokes and mirrors. The technology is far from being consumer ready anyway.