Microsoft Exec Streams Second Life Into HoloLens AR Glasses in Cool if Confusing Demo

Upload VR has the scoop on a pretty impressive* demo from Jim Reichert, a Senior Creative Technologist at Microsoft, streaming a 360 view of Second Life into his company's upcoming augmented reality HoloLens glasses:

Jim Reichert, a Senior Creative Technologist at Microsoft, flagged this up to me as he’s a huge fan of Second Life, an online, multiplayer social virtual world, and was excited when last week the first 360 video footage was recorded in the SL Metaverse, featuring Jo Yardley’s authentic rebuild of 1920s Berlin... The result you see in the test at the top of this article is therefore 360-degree footage, which had been recorded live in a virtual environment (Second Life) and then projected back onto the augmented reality (AR) gear, superimposing it, in real time, with the real-world background of Jim’s office. And if that doesn’t make your head hurt just a little bit, you’re not doing it right.

This is accomplished by a very clever hack which uses six video feeds pointed in six opposite directions from the same spot in SL, which are then stitched together and subsequently squirted into the HoloLens display. As a tech demo, this is exceedingly cool -- however, as a demo of HoloLens or Second Life, it's somewhat confusing. (Hence the "head hurt" part.) As an UpLoad VR reader points out:

The entire point of AR / MR is to *fuse* virtual realities / holograms with physical realities / architecture. *IF* this person was in the Berlin train station modeled, accurately geo-tracked, and matched to real world geometry, that would be far more compelling... however, it appears that they're in an office, with no physical relation to the projected movie.

So this would be much more a killer app of HoloLens if Jim was walking around in modern day Berlin, cutting back and forth between that reality and Berlin of the 1920s. (But then again, I'm not sure Second Life in particular could accomplish that, due to difficulty matching 1:1 scale with the real life buildings, not to mention low frame rate and slow rendering.) That said, I can definitely see new, custom-made SL locations which exactly replicate the size and architecture of a real world location would work well in a HoloLens demo. It doesn't even have to replicate the actual content of the location. For instance, what if someone created a demon-strewn dungeon with the exact layout of Jim's office, and streamed that onto his HoloLens?

* Update, 8/19: Actually, Jo Yardley blogged it first.

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Comments

[Carlos Loff]

Very interesting because this shows how Virtual Worlds are still important for VR and not just dedicated engines or specific platforms, but this guy should choose better where He makes the video - VR or RL ? VR or RL ?

[Jo Yardley]

What is the definition of scoop?
Because I could have sworn I blogged about this a few days before UploadVR...

[Jim Reichert]

Hi, Wagner! I'm the creator of the HL port of Ardueen, Drax, Phil, and Jo's 360 video. The image of the blonde fellow is a co-worker of mine and seeing him in the context of this article doesn't make a lot of sense.

Also, I wrote a rebuttal to the person who didn't understand why anyone would put a 360 video in a HoloLens. There's ample reason, which I describe.

[Wagner J Au]

Jo -- thanks, updated to credit you with the scoopage.

Jim, thanks for commenting -- I added the screengrab of the dude to convey AR aspect. (Also, was hard to get a good screengrab of the SL feed that didn't look weird and washed out.) I see what you're saying in the Upload VR comment, but as you acknowledge there, "it may not leverage the value-add of mixed-reality in the HoloLens at this stage". I'd love to see a video using this 6 way camera tech that does do that -- are you creating any, by chance?