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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

I used a Hololens and it was awesome (it fit over my glasses). Inference on Hololens could make you do so much more. Maybe you could use it to take scans of parts from a CNC or the CNC tool and create a system that could tell you if a similar piece will fail in the future. From what I have seen compared to Google Glass I think it could be possible for richer interactions and also it uses both eyes. But, I haven't heard any Enterprise users use Hololens.

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We got a couple at my company and I've built some protoypes for it, and threw up a little blog for it. The cool thing is the HoloToolkit which seems to be maintained by some xbox developers, and scripts all the functionality you need to get off the ground.

The hard part has been coming up with prototypes that go beyond a cool experience, and solve some customer's problem. It doesn't recognize what it's looking at, as much as it's just recognizing the shape of what it's looking at. You have to write the functionality to then determine what it is. Though the HoloToolkit does have scripts that will recognize walls, floors, tables. But it falls really short of the wild ideas my co-workers come up with. There are some example projects out there that will show you how to determine faces, which is cool. But the best ideas most people have, the beta Skype app already knocks it out of the park.

What is it about the beta Skype app that is so compelling?

The best possible business apps, including the Thyssenkrupp promo, revolved around conferencing with people in real time in an augmented reality space. Someone can help you while viewing what you're seeing, and interact with you using holograms, files from your OneDrive, and of course video chat. The Skype demo is by far the best implementation I've seen of this, and it's designed really well imo. The other user does have to download a skype plugin, but then they are able to interact with your space.

I've yet to test it with two devices, but there's a lot of shared experience functionality in the HoloToolkit.

Here is my explanation:

The Skype call will use the forward facing camera of the Hololens user. For the Hololens user the view of who you are calling will be presented in front of you as you move around. Also, people on the Skype call can interact and draw on objects in front of you.

See https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/apps/skype.

I haven't used it, but I feel fairly certain that the killer app for VR/AR is going to be eye contact. Skype with eye contact would be a major leap forward. Eye contact lets you negotiate speaking/listening handoff in a natural way, instead of using awkward procedural norms.

One of the best Enterprise uses I've heard for hololens is measuring spaces. The voices of VR podcast described a company that installs stair lift. Before theyd have to have multiple people come and take lots of measurements before the install. Now it's just one person who can get all measurements in less than 15 minutes.

The use cases are pretty varied. We're using some for a medical study looking to see if the HL can help lessen pain through distraction (tested against normal distractions like iPads). The HL is nice, as it lessens incidents of simulator sickness. We're also trying to get the thing to be used to scan the homes and backyards of long-term stay patients so that they can 'go back home' for a little bit while hooked into the hospital. Honestly, in our experiences, it seems like the best use of VR is 'live' events like concerts, sports games, minecraft, etc.

As an aside, you know you are a real adult when you are given the HL for the first time ever, full of 3-d potential and amazing sound and all the coolest things your 10 year-old-self could think of, and you immediately dive into the wireless and firewall settings.

The virtual home sounds more appropriate for VR than AR or am I missing something about the in hospital scenario - with AR you'd still see all the hospital just with some bright holograms trying to be "in front"

You know, I've never been able to pin down what the difference is between AR and VR, everyone has a different answer. Basically, yes, we'd use the non HL ones for 'home' visits while in the hospital, if the kids can handle the nausea (they tend to be on a lot of meds, things get complicated). Again, the 'hacker ethos' doesn't really work in a hospital, moving fast and breaking things is a no-go with the Hippocratic oath.

The way it's been explained to me:

VR -> Virtual Reality is where the entire landscape is computer generated, the viewer does NOT see anything other than what the computer generates.

AR -> Augmented Reality is where the viewer is able to see around them and the computer projects images to the glass surface, at the right size and color, so that they appear to be in the world around the viewer

Turn the lights off?

HL needs light for environment tracking. The best way I've found is to use sleep mask to block the light while letting cameras "see"

No it doesn't. Surface mapping is done via IR.

Turns out the patients like having the lights on, so do the nurses, so they don't trip over anything.

Pro-Tip: Want to change medicine and help the world? Find a way to get rid of the wires and tubes. It is really amazing how many wires and tubes there are in a room these days. Yeah, wireless charging and all that, but often that'll mess up a pacemaker (maybe) and so it's avoided. Also, bandwidth issues with a whole building of wireless signals. It's not easy, but it would help more so than a cancer vaccine.

haha, if only you could.

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