The HoloLens

D straw. Yeah, alas I was about to say, now, Joe, you usually complain if I go beyond one line on a song like but I was going to say, yes, truly, we could be talking about hollow since we're talking about the hollow lens today. All due to the request from one of our wonderful listeners, right Andrew on Facebook. That's right, So Andrew posted I Believe on our Facebook wall and said to us, Hi, guys, I just want to say I love your audio podcast. I listened to them on

the way to work. On the way to work and and from work is often where I listen to podcasts too. But anyways, Andrew continues Anyways, I'm not sure if you do request, but I think this would be a cool topic to talk about. And then he links to a Wired article about the Microsoft Hollo lens. He says, or

he continues, it is Microsoft's new holographic goggles. I think it would be a sweet topic if you talked about the tech in future of holograms with these and other devices, and also how these types of devices might affect our day to day life. Again, love the podcast and let me know what you think. Well, Andrew, thank you for the flattery, but also thank you for the great idea. I hadn't thought to talk about this on the show. Yeah, I um, I actually missed out on the official announcement.

It was one of the few times where I was not following a live event, you know, bit by bit, and only heard about it after the fact, and then I heard everyone talking about it. Well, I mean, the thing is is that the live event in question was about Windows ten, which is less tantalizing than a holographic headset. Yeah. I I just essentially thought it was going to be the same thing as Windows eight, just with two more two more windows copies of the icon actual physical windows

like in the building that they were going to. Oh yeah, well I like windows. I do. I mean, we have plenty of them in our new office. We do. If we sound entirely strange to you right now, it's because we're in a whole new recording studio. Also, we all are a little strange. Yeah. Well, the new studio smells kind of like freshly cut wood and still pickle chips. Yeah. Yeah, the whole office does have that fancy new office smell that makes you think that you're inhaling cancer right there.

To be fair, the building we're in is an ancient building, so the rest of the building has that ancient building smell. Yeah, and that good like avatoire kind of look. Well, let's just let's say that you working in let's say a space that's less interesting than our office. Like our office is pretty darn cool to be, to be perfectly honest, But let's say you're working in kind of a more drab office environment and you have to get work done.

Wouldn't it be interesting if you could augment that work, if you could end up using your physical environment and augment that through technology, creating these digital overlays of stuff so that your work now is not just more interesting. It becomes more intuitive, and you suddenly have new ways to manipulate the work that you previously would just be using keyboard and mouse to to, you know, to interact with. Why Jonathan, you sound like one of the presenters giving

the pitch for the Microsoft Hollow Lens. Well, you know, I am trying to groom myself for such a position. No, dude, I hope not. I mean no offense to those people, but sure you want to be a little more objective and not such a pitchman. That's true. That's true. So the hollow lens is a really cool piece of technology. I mean, I I am intrigued. I would be lying

if I said otherwise. However, there are also some elements to the hollow lens height machine that we will address as we go through this this episode this podcast to kind of talk about, you know, what it is, what it really does, and whether or not we think it's going to be a success. I honestly don't know what you two think about that, So that would be really fun thing for me to find out. Yeah, well, Jonathan, first I want you to soothe me by telling the

story of the hollow lens. Gather around children here in Liza Taled. So when it was being developed, the Hollow Lens was called Project Baraboo, not Baba Duke. Not Babba Duke. No, but when Baba Duke comes knocking, don't answer the door. But Baraboo is totally different. So this is an interesting project. It was led by Alex Kipman, who is also the same person who had pitched the idea that became the

connect sensor. Okay, so here here's someone who's interested in user interfaces, interactivity, immersion, all of those kind of of terms that some people consider buzzwords but really do have meaning. You know that these are meaningful words. Sure well, he wants to change the ways that we interact with data.

Sure yeah, Well, when you look at the way that we've interacted with data, it has not changed significantly for two decades, right, I mean more than that, really, I mean once the mouse came on board, essentially when the Mac was introduced, it's been pretty much that since then. Not only that, but it's something that the people behind

the Hollow Lens keep pointing out. It's not just that you use a mouse and keyboard to do almost everything on your computer unless you've got some kind of specialized system like a drawing pad or something like you but it's that you do all your computing in the exact

same place. It's right behind this rectangular screen. Sure. And it's also interesting that this is another attempt to change the way we interact with our machines, similar to how Windows eight was trying to get us to go to a touch screen interface because tablets were such a big thing. But obviously that was not something that got uh universally adopted. A lot of people rejected the Windows eight approach. Thus

Windows tin coming out so quickly. So let's talk a little bit more about the HoloLens and and how that is trying to become this new method of interacting with our data. UH. Before it was unveiled, a few journalists were able to get a demo of this product back when it was still called Baraboo. It had not been officially unveiled and named yet. It wouldn't be until late January of this year, two thousand fifteen, when Microsoft held

an event for Windows ten. Like Lauren was saying, and during the event they revealed a couple of other things. Because I guess and operating system, you know, that's for some people. That's exciting news all on its own, but

it's not the sexiest thing. It's not the thing that's gonna get a lot of people talking, particularly if the people feel like that operating system is meant to be an answer to a previous perhaps not up to par product, you know, kind of the same way that Windows seven is like, look at all the amazing things here, forget about Windows to kind of kind of similar here, Windows Tan is Windows Tan, forget about Windows eight and um.

They also showed off a couple of other things like the Microsoft Surface Giant table as well, but the whole lens was really what captured a lot of people's attention. And it's supposed to allow you to see quote unquote holograms. Uh now, really what's happening is there's a projector, really to projectors in this pair of glasses ready imaging, not hologram. But but that's that's our that's Jonathan and my message from Captain Pedantic, right. Yeah, it's what you're seeing are

the reflections from projectors that are inside the glasses. So it's like you're looking at a movie screen, but it's a stereoscopic image, so it's like you're looking at a three D movie screen, things seem to have depth, they seem to have a presence beyond the flat surface of the screen, or for example, something out of if you've ever demoed the Oculus Rift, yeah, something like that, where you have this this illusion of depth, and this illusion

is very very convincing, and you can have something that looks like it's a free standing object made out of light, which is what we would tend to think of as

a hologram at version. Sure, the Princess Leia R two D two projections right exactly, the Arnold Schwarzenegger in total recall, right, right, And and you can walk around those objects made of light as if they are physical, so you can get a full view of them if you can, if you have clearance to walk around every edge, you will move around as if that thing were truly present in the space you are in. However, it's not actually there. You know, if it were a hologram, then anyone could view it

in that space without wearing glasses. That's only that's projected within the glasses themselves. It's not actually a hologram in the same sense as what we tend to think of in that in that respect. You don't need glasses to see a regular hologram. However, it is a very handy way of using it as shorthand, so yes, we'll probably use it a lot. We we we kind of. I I off offline Joe and I and apparently Joe and Jonathan also had very similar conversations today about about that terminology.

I was confused about what y'all were saying when you said, while it's not really a hologram, because I thought you meant it's not really a hologram photographs in using the

lasers to make you know, laser interferometry too. Well, it's not that either, which is I think actually in the strictest sense, I mean when you say hologram, though that's not usually what people think anymore right now, And that's that's actually that That's actually my like captain pedantic argument here is is that holograms are real things that are really cool that exist all around us today. You probably

have one, like on your credit card. Um It's it's an image that is used that is created on um specific film using a specific laser process that is actually so cool, like so awesome. It's difficult to describe and real difficult to describe. We we we actually didn't entire two podcasts about what holograms actually are way back in May of um, so you guys can go check that out

if you want to hear the rest of this rant. Um. But I you know, it's it's I oh man, I just I just really like real holograms, and so I get kind of itchy when people called three D imaging holograms. But at any rate, it's it's so, it's it's not it's not a hologram in that sense, but it's not even a hologram in the science fiction sense of a free standing digital image that you can see and walk around without the use of some other equipment. Everything is

being projected within the glasses themselves. So if you were wearing let's say something like the Oculus Rift that was capturing a picture of your environment, so you're looking at video of your environment, you wouldn't, you know, because the difference between the hollow lens and the Oculus rift, well, one of the many differences is that with the hollow lens, you are looking through a pair of goggles essentially, and you are seeing the physical world around you, whereas with

the Oculus rift you're looking at screens monitors, so you're you know, they're not transparent. But if you were to feed video through those screens, so it's the actual physical surroundings around you, you could mimic something similar to what is happening with the Hollow Lens and it would you know, again, you wouldn't call that a hologram because it's just three

D projection, but it's really cool implementation of three D projections. Yes, UM, And we none of us sitting at this table, perhaps obviously UM, have have seen the Hollow Lens, or rather the developers demo version of the Hollow lens, so it's hard for us to say exactly how it winds up looking UM, but some people who are on the internet have talked about it um after after having received a demo after that Microsoft press release, and two of those

people are Deeter Bon and Tom Warren. For the verge Um. They published a piece called up Close with the Hollow Lens, and they described a particular demo in which a Minecraft castle was laid out on the real coffee table in front of them. And I just want to quote them really quick, because it's better than anything that we can probably say about how these images look right now. So they said, it's not shimmery, but it's not quite real either.

It's just sitting there perfectly out on the table, reacting in space to your head movements. It's nearly as lifelike as the actual table, and there's no lag at all. The castle is there. It's simply magic. Yeah. There was also a good ride up of it in Wired by Jesse Himpel, and this was actually the one that Andrew linked when he asked us to do it, and she was also impressed by Like she she seemed to think

that that it was actually pretty good. It reminds me, actually, that description reminds me of when I got the Nintendo three DS to play with here in the office, and it came with cards that allowed you to use augmented reality apps where if you look through the camera of the device, you know you're looking at the screen the camera's capturing the card that sent a command for it to generate a little three dimensional animated figure like pop up thing that you would see on the screen that

was projected or not projected, I suppose, added onto or added into the image that you were looking at on

the screen of your actual desktop. Right, So if I'm looking at the screen, and I'm looking at the card that's laying on my desk, then suddenly a three dimensional image of Mario pops up and starts to prance around, and it looks like Mario is standing on my table as long as I'm looking through the three DS screen, It's like that, except of course, instead of being a handheld device, you're wearing this pair of goggles, and it's capable of showing you, you know, practically anything on practically

any surface with the right programming behind it. So it's not limited to, uh, you have to have this particular, you know, image for us to display something on top of it. That's the way a lot of augmented reality works, right. You've you've tied an app to a specific image so that when you hold up a device like a smartphone, it recognizes the image through the camera and thus you

get the augmented reality effect on top of it. This is a little bit more versatile and start to really show the potential uses of augmented reality beyond something like a clever little marketing. Yeah. Another thing that I thought was really interesting about it was the idea of projecting media screens within the environment, and in an interesting way, this makes goggles like these an alternative to the screens

everywhere environment that we've started to see lately. You know where there's there's a touch screen on your refrigerator, and there's a touch screen on all your appliances. Now your coffee maker has a screen. You've got a phone in your pocket, you're carrying a tablet, um, you've got a laptop at your desk. Yeah, you got a thermostat that responds to touch. Right. So the alternative here is that

you don't need screens on any of those things. Potentially with glasses like this, if they can project whatever kind of interface you need onto these objects. So instead of a fridge with a screen, you could perhaps look at a fridge and see the interface for your fridge projected on it. It's not on the fridge in real life, it's just in your goggles, right. And then there's some sort of connectivity between the goggles and your other devices

so that you can make adjustments, change things. You can even have it where you call up the interface when you're nowhere near the object in question. Let's say that you're working in your home office and you think the temperature is a little warm, and you want to adjust the climate. You pull up the climate controls in your view,

you make an adjustment, you send it away, and you're done. Granted, while you don't need screens everywhere, you do have to wear a pair of goggle and and these things are not lightweight or refined quite as of yet. Yeah, they're there. I would say that they have a bit up more aesthetic appeal than Google glass does for at least some people, and a lot of folks. I mean, Lauren's making a face. I think you might feel otherwise. I I feel distinctly otherwise.

I think, well, I think because the hollow lens is not meant to be worn outside of your room, than it has you know, whereas google glass was meant as a thing that you wore all the time always. That also plays a part in it, because because I have I have a feeling of I'd be willing to wear that thing in my home where no one can judge me. I was opposed to I will wear this thing where everyone will judge me. But at any rate, Uh, that is a great example of a potential use for these

kind of glasses. And that's you know, just one of a billion that we're going to talk about you. Yeah, and of course the other thing being screens as in for projection of media like television. I mean, so instead of having uh TVs everywhere in your house, you could actually just have goggles. You can look at a wall and the TV that you want to watch is on

that wall. Now, which obviously you could also have it just the size of the screen that you want to see based upon the image, you know, your field of view within the goggles themselves. So if you're thinking, I want to watch this as if I had a television and then you just see like a corner of Molder's foot and episode of X Files and you have to look way up into the right to see what's going on,

you could potentially do that. It's not something that was you know, advertised in the Hollow Lens demo, but you could do it. Yeah, we're getting a little bit away from what the Hollow Lens currently is, although we we do certainly want to talk about the future of the technology, being that this is a future based technology show, y um. But but let's before we get back into that, let's go back into the reality of what it currently is now. I mean, this is a pair of goggles. How how

are these goggles doing this? From what I've read, they have crammed a really impressive amount of computer power into this headset, and you can see why they need to, because think about the kind of computing job that this

thing needs to do. If it's going to be staying consistent with with really low lag or latency, projecting three D images and onto places in your environment and recognizing where they should go continuously even if you move your head around, uh, continuously updating based on your movements, and it's just got to be dealing with so much data every single split second. Yeah. Yeah, and right now, the demo kits of this actually have a thing that you kind of hang around your neck where some of the

computing process lives. Um, I'm not sure whether or not Microsoft is planning on changing that to a headset only thing or Yeah, I think it's supposed to be just the head So the pictures that that they've shown at least don't seem to have that same I read the same thing that don't seem to have that demo pack there. It's been kind of menteurized and optimized. Obviously when you're creating a prototype, then you're not worried about the final

packaging or anything like that. But when you've you want to market it to either consumers or prosumers or business professionals, however you want to determine your market. You wanted to look like it's very sleek and it's going to just work out of the box. So, yeah, this thing has to be able to track motion. It has to be able to map the images to that motion and to the physical environment that you are in. If you wanted to do something like create a a uh image of

whatever a prototype that you had in mind. You have designed something and you want to be able to look at it and have it sit on a table and then be able to walk around the table and look at this thing from all angles. It obviously has to be able to render all of that and update it in as close to real time as possible. Like Joe was saying, without latency, I mean, if you add latency in there, then that's going to be an unpleasant experience

or at least an unsatisfying one. Uh. Be a little bit different than something like the oculus, where your latency is part of the problem about you know, you get that nauseated feeling. And it's also because the environment you're looking at in the goggles is different from your actual environment.

That's one big advantage hollow lens has that you're constantly looking at your real environment, assuming that you haven't completely covered it up in digital imagery, and you can you know, as you're moving around, your brain is able to say, oh, I'm walking around a real environment. It's just a real environment that happens to have these hyper real things in it. So yeah, it's it's really cool that they got this

technology to all work together. I mean, this is something that we've seen in other you know, like handheld devices and cameras and things like that, but never in a

wearable that could respond in real time like this. Even Google Glass was not capable of doing this sort of stuff right right, And if you're if you're wondering how the controls work on this kind of thing right now, it seems like look controls are a really big part of how you interact with this augmented reality environment around you.

It's it's basically pointing your head at whatever you want to interact with and using your head and neck gestures gestures and floaty quotation marks UM as though they're augmented reality quotation marks to to tell the computer what you want to interact with. And there are some gesture controls,

but not a full suite of them perhaps yet. Right now, it's mostly what they call an air tap, which is clicking in your field of view with a finger as though you're clicking a mouse button almost, And that's another thing that it has to be able to do, right.

It has to be able to judge where your physical like where your hand is in in regards to this this uh image that you can see but of course is not actually in the space that you are you are in, so that if you want to tap on something, let's say that you create an app where there's depth in something. Let's say you've got like a cube of images. I don't know why you would do this, but I've seen this sort of demo before where you've got a

cube of different images. So it's kind of like a a um, you know, a slide show, except it's it's slightly a scus. So you can see that there are rows and columns of these pictures and it has you know, it goes back like ten pictures deep and you want to select something that's in the first column, third row, but two images back. Then it would have to be able to sense the depth of your hand in relation to the image it's projecting, so that it actually selects

the right image. Otherwise you're going to end up with the wrong thing, and again it will be an unsatisfying experience. So that's another thing it has to take into account. And of course, right now, like you were saying, Lauren, they don't have the full gesture control worked out, but that's something that's supposedly going to be in the finished model. That and voice controls as well, right right. Voice controls

are part of the current demos. But yeah, you it's more like, um, it's more like playing missed almost if if all y'all can remember, it's a point and click kind of thing, more so than the Tony Stark image of being able to pick up an object, a virtual object, and play around with it right and then stretch it out or turn it upside down, push it away. I just made a gesture. I knew exactly what you meant, but yeah, no, this is this is exactly that you know.

This is where we're headed. It's it's I expect that a lot of those gesture controls will be worked out by the time this thing does hit the market, and they're they're talking about it being available for developers this year, so it's we're talking we're talking soon and uh. But again, this is something that was proposed by the same guy who proposed the connect sensors, So gest your control is

definitely something that they know a lot about already. Now let's look into some of the future possible uses of this stuff, like, you know, why, why would you want it? And we've talked a little bit about the idea of turning all the different services in your home into screens if you wanted to, or being able to interact with different systems that way, if you could interconnect them. But

what are some of the other ways we could talk about. Well, one of the things things that I've thought about before is simply how this could be the way we actually create the experience of viewing what people think they're talking about when they say holograms. Because as as we talked about in our old podcast about holograms, I mean, as far as I'm aware, there is still really no satisfying technology that will create that thing people think already exists,

but doesn't the Princess Leiah or the Arnold Schwarzenegger in total. Recall, the projected image made entirely of light that stands alone, not based on a screen, and can be viewed from any angle. That is, as far as I know, that is not a thing in reality, and I don't really see how it could be without without some other medium there, like a cloud of particles that you're using as a screen. And even then it's problematic, right right, without some kind

of technology that we cannot currently foresee. Yeah, uh, And so you know, for a while, I guess we were just kind of stuck with that. I mean, you, you're never going to see Arnold Schwartzenegger walk into the room unless he's really there, unless you've got a really clever three D screen right behind where you're looking. But with this,

you could kill my dream. You you would just wear the goggles and everybody could wear the goggles, and in that way you actually could have some sort of collaborative three D hologram experience if everybody in the room is wearing these advisor like this. Sure, and keep in mind that you're still looking at a screen, the screen that's very close to your eyes and that you can also see through exactly as opposed to like a three D television, which is creating an effect that appears out in front

of itself. This is a screen that's creating an effect that appears beyond itself. Yeah, it's it's creating that that illusion of depth and presence. Yeah, And there are tons

of different potential applications. One of the as I I talked about, and I've mentioned it a little bit already in this episode, as the idea of prototypes, I specifically in our notes talked about think about it using it to design a new kind of car, and you've got all designed and you wanted to see what looks like as if it were a real vehicle, without having to

actually build the thing. You could end up using these these glasses, you know, have a space large enough for an actual car to be in, use it to project the image of the finished car, or what the finished car would look like, and be able to walk around the entire perimeter of that car and get a look at You could even spin the car around or even flip it upside down if you wanted to, which obviously

would be somewhat problematic with a real vehicle. But when yeah, effortless with this and you know, yeah, and you could even I could even imagine this being something where you can network multiple pairs of this stuff together so that people could all be in the same space, looking at the same physical location, seeing the same virtual creation, and even if you design it properly, have it so that their perspectives are all uh created from one model, so that way, like I have it where the front of

the cars facing a window, in the back of the car is facing a door. For everyone else, it's the same orientation, and then you can just walk around and see it. You know. However, uh, I could see that being a possibility. But another one is that the idea that you know, you could have a mechanic working on an unfamiliar system and get guidance on how to prepare that system. This, I thought was actually one of the best cases I saw projected by the people who were

creating these promo videos. And it was not exactly what you're saying, but a situation kind of like it where they had one person sitting there trying to fix a sink with the goggles on, and she uh so, she in her goggle display pinned to the wall a display of somebody who knew how to fix the sink, and the person who knew how to fix the sink could see what she saw and could draw on it in her vision, like circle part of the pipe and say,

you need to tighten this bolt here. Uh, and the person would be a face on the wall talking to her while being able to see from her point of view. So it would be like having an interactive tutorial video that can actually look at exactly what you're trying to do. Right, yeah, yeah.

The current demo that they're using is done through Skype and so right, so you've got that little floating face or of floating webcam shot and they can write, they can they can circle parts on on your screen or point little arrows at where you need to make it go or right. Yeah, it's amazing. It makes me think you could have a future where there could be a plumber or or an auto mechanic who doesn't yeah, who

doesn't even actually have to touch your stuff. They could be a call in service like tech support or some thing like that where you just look at what you're doing, you get in contact with them. They point at things and say do this, and you can do it yourself. Yeah, exactly.

Another potential use for this is shopping. I'm actually super excited about this because I've been buying furniture recently for my house, and the scary part about buying furniture is that even after you've done all the measurements and you go to the store and you make sure that the thing in the store you're gonna buy fits the measurements you've made, you really don't know how it's gonna look in the space till you get it in the space.

And by then you've spent a lot of time, effort, and possibly money to get it there, and you think it doesn't look the way I wanted to, but is it worth the effort to return it. This would give you a chance of being able to see stuff without having made that final, you know, commitment of purchasing something. The example I read in a blog post was all out.

How imagine that you get Ikea and Ikea creates a virtual catalog that is hollow lens compatible, and you think, I want to see what this dresser would look like in this space in my bedroom, and you you choose that one with your hollow lens, and now you can see what it would look like if it were set up there, and then you think, I don't really like

that one. Let's try the next model. You could do that and you could actually walk around it, see how it fits in your space, whether it complements the rest of your furniture, that kind of stuff, And as simple an application as that is, I totally want that right now, especially since I've gone through this furniture thing for a few weeks and a Matt wits end. But no, this this to me, this actually does sound like a really cool application that could appeal to a large consumer base,

not just you know. The message I see a lot in this is that it's going to be great for business applications, which I don't doubt, but I think there are a lot of consumer applications that would be excellent for as well. Another one that popped up was the idea of making a recipe. So let's say you've got all the ingredients, you know, maybe it even tells you

where those ingredients are. If you've used an application that has you know, you've got a database that tells where you keep stuff, and it tells you, oh, you need to go over this cabinet because you've forgotten such and such stuff. You don't have that laid out in here, and you haven't measured anything out yet, you've got all the stuff ready. It gives you a step by step approach to building whatever it is you're gonna build for your recipe. I can't believe I'm using building and stepp cooking,

but there you go. Uh. And it even tells you how much you're using while you're dishing it out, so you don't need like a measuring cup and say, all right, you've got about a third of a cup there you need. You need to do two more of those, and then you've got your cup of stuff. I'm skeptical that it would be able to look at a quantity and say

how much it was. Well, if it knows, if it knows the general like if it can sense if you can hold up a spoon, for example, and they can do measurements, it can do some calculations on the fly about how much of all you ma can hold. There's no reason maybe couldn't. I'm not saying no way, I'm

just saying I'll need some convincing. Yeah, well, I I thought that maybe something more along the lines of building a bookshelf for hanging a picture on your wall could be an intermediate step between these things, you know, like maybe your headset could show you where on on a piece of lumber you want to make a cut, um you don't you know, like like give you a guiding line for for your saw, or help you figure out where to put the nails so that your picture will

be equidistant from the things around it on on your walls something like that, Like like kind of more basic measurements again with air quotes. Yeah, I mean these would be really useful if you're an amateur who wants to do surgery, like with the help of a real surgeon through Skype. Well, Joe, at first, I require you to complete all of the missions and surgeons simulator and get at least an A on all of them, So I want to see that first before I allow you to

oper rate on me. Another thing we could talk about is that Microsoft owns a particular game, Specifically, they own the studio that made the game, and they've talked about how this particular game will be playable on a hollow lens headset in the near future. That game, of course, is Mind Sweeper Minecraft. Man, I would play virtual mind. I would like to let my listeners know that I am a Minecraft player and I too feel your hate. No,

it's been Minecraft. Minecraft is generuinely a fun game. It's really but you know, you don't normally think of it as immersive. It's just it's it can you can get really focused on it, and sometimes that focus can border on obsession, but you don't tend to feel immersed in the world necessarily. But this would allow you to actually create Minecraft playing services in your in your physical space, like turning tabletops into a playable service, or the floor

or other areas. We've talked about this with augmented reality in general. Before the idea that you could create video games that take place in physical environments, there was somebody a while back who created this great YouTube video. It wasn't actually a game, but it was just a sort of video simulating a game where it was like a two D side scroller, but it was in your living room Mario Mario jumping on your coffee table and on

your coffee machine and right. And apparently some of the reports I read said that there was a game like this that the people who got to play with the prototype of the hollow Lens tested out. Yeah, they're those Verge kids were talking about this Minecraft demo that they had played, where, um, you know, they blasted a hole in their wall and realized that it was this like nether scape full of I don't know, Minecraft. It was

essentially a portal into the Minecraft world at that point. Yeah, yeah, you know they could they could punch your fake hole in their wall and see the building material that the wall was made of, which is Minecraft blocks. I admit, I think that's pretty cool. I also think, you know, just imagine the first hollow Lens survival horror game in your house. Nope, nope, Oh cool. You can learn to be afraid of the home you live in. I do not meet pym at head knocking on my doors. Oh man,

that's great. These would be the best alarm clock ever. So you go to bed with your hollow lens on, and then at a certain time in the morning, it's like it's six thirty. It knows you've got to get up, but you don't respond to that buzzing alarm clock anymore. You just slap it turn it off. So with these things, it wakes you up with the sound of scraping metal against concrete and suddenly there is a man with a sack over his face, leaning over you, grabbing you by

the throat, and it's time to get up. You're describing my typical windesday morning, good morning. Yeah, you know, we're juice. I'm not sure this kind of takes us to the dark side of hollow lens technology. Yeah, so one, this one is sort of like, you know, the those wonderful novels that talk about the the sapping uh suburban lifestyle that just drains everyone of of jois de vivre. Imagine that you're you're in the house. You've got several members of your family there, and you are all wearing a

pair of hollow lens headsets. You're all sitting down on the couch staring at the same television, which, by the way, is not even switched on because you don't need it to be on, because what's happening is the hollow lens is projecting whatever it is you want to watch in your field of view as if it were on that TV screen, So you don't even really need a turned off TV there. You could just be staring at the wall.

You could be, but it's easier to imagine if there's a TV there, because it acts as an actual anchor point for everybody, right, because otherwise everyone could be looking at a different point in the house. But if you have a TV, there's an anchor point saying this is where I want the screen to live, and everyone is looking at that. Potentially every single person could be watching his or her own favorite movie or television program or whatever.

And you know, you've got the headphones on, so you're hearing the audio from whatever it is you want to see. You're watching the thing. The person saying next to you is watching an entirely different movie or TV show. The person sitting next to them is watching something entirely different. You can look to your left and right and actually see the people who are there with you, but you're all experiencing something different at the same time. And I

can't decide that this is something that's awesome or terrible. Um, I'm gonna go on and say terrible. I most mostly my brain just popped directly to kind of like the worst case scenario wherein like, you're watching reruns of Friends on Netflix and the your your betty next to you is watching like Hotel Rwanda, uh and and so your laughter is increasingly and terrifyingly inappropriate. That would be an

excellent way of saying this is terrible. Also kind of a highly specific scenario, Not really, I mean, if you're thinking about this becoming a ubiquitous piece of technology, it's certainly something that would happen, right, I mean, I could certainly like say, like, it's family time, let's all spend it together doing something. Each of us is doing a different thing and not communicating with one another, but we're

physically in the same space. Obviously, this particular example, as ridiculous as it may be, or as specific as it may be, that's just one thing I picked out on the ether. There are plenty of things that could be problematic with hollowlens technology, right, sure, Well, extending the same thing you just talked about, you wouldn't have to imagine

people sitting on a couch staring at something. I mean, this could just make it easier and easier for all of us to spend more of our time stuck individually with screens and less face to face time with each other. But we already managed to do a lot of screen time that's basically alone, even when we're physically around other people. I mean, I don't know. I would probably be really shocked and unhappy to find out how much of my time I spend just looking at the screen, not talking

to another human being. Sure. Yeah, And I have had plenty of experiences going to dinner with friends where the first thing that happens as smartphones hit the table, and you think, well, I don't want to be that guy. But now no one's listening to me and they're all looking at their screens, and I kind of want to

know what's happening on Twitter. So I mean, there is that that's but that's something again, like you point out, Joe, it's something that exists independently of the hollow lens technology. It's not as if hollow lens is bringing this on to us. And there are other issues as well, but it's the same sort of issues that we also see with other technologies. It's not something unique to this particular headset. So it's not like, you know, talking about the danger

of hacking. Well, that's true with any device that's a computer, specifically a computer that has any connectivity to a network. It's really an issue that you have to be cognizant of. But it's not unique to the hollow lens. And ultimately, this is a device that you can remove. It's not something that's implanted where we have no choice but to see the things that are being displayed. Okay, how long until we can get these implanted? Are you wanting them

or do you want to put them into someone else? Well, we've got some staples right here on our table. I'm sure we can just staple the headset right to Yet we've wanted to throw them away, but we don't have a waste basket. We don't need waste basket. Apparently not other things to talk about. As far as the future is concerned, I do see there being a huge amount of innovation and a push for development of applications on this platform. The buzz that has surrounded it has been

overwhelmingly positive. I mean, there's been a few people who have pointed out things that they think need improvement before it actually debuts, But more more than not, I've seen lots of enthusiasm about this, more enthusiasm about this Microsoft product than I've seen for any Microsoft product in a long time. Yeah, one of the things that could be classed as a pro oricon, depending on your point of view is the fact that this is specifically designed for

indoor use. Yeah, and you know, I personally think that it's probably a better approach to go this route. Something that people can get comfortable around. They can see the promise of augmented reality in an environment that is safe, that's familiar, whether it's the office or it's their home whatever. Uh, and they don't again, they don't feel like there's any sort of social stigma because they're not wearing the stuff

out in public. I think that that's a way to kind of build up han the promise of augment reality and maybe eventually get to a product that's more like Google Glass more meant to be something to wear all the time. Uh, that all will be more accepting of. And of course there are other products, not just the hollow lens. There's also you guys have heard of Magic Leap. Magic Leap was a company acquired by Google, or at least they're they're partnering with Google for many millions of

dollars to develop a similar product to Hollow Lens. It's another kind of augmented reality pair of glasses. So I expect what's going to see like tons of development just in this space in general, not just for the hollow lens, but for other augmented reality glasses, because I think we're finally getting to the point where it's a viable platform

to develop for you know. I want to report on a very strange phenomenon I observed in some comments on YouTube videos and articles about this, which was factional arguing about VR versus a R, so virtual reality versus augmented reality. I think of VR and a R as two sides of the same coin. They take very different approaches but are trying to do similar things in the sense that they are marrying physical reality and digital reality, but they're

doing it in different ways. The virtual reality approach is to create a virtual environment that you appear to inhabit, and that your actions in the physical environment are translated to the actions within the virtual environment, whereas augmented reality is all about bringing virtual information into your physical environment. So you are chiefly present in the physical world, but

you have augmented virtual information or graphics or whatever. So these are two different sides, the two sides of the same coin in my view. Uh and I can see why some people prefer one to the other. And and Honestly, I think virtual reality has a more limited appeal because I think the most the most accepted use of VR is in gaming, which means that you are marketing towards gamers, but not necessarily the a wider audience. Oh yeah, it

depends on the application. Another demo that Microsoft was running for those verge kids who I mentioned earlier was something that they've partnered up with jp L and NASA about, which is a simulation of walking around on Mars and seeing what the Curiosity rover is seeing, which is really cool. They also reported that it was not an environment quite

as immersive as something like the Oculus rift. Right, So, so you know, so they're going to be gaps and differences in how you're going to want to use two different, two differing technologies like that. But I don't think it's a right. I don't think it's a competition. I think I'm hoping. What I'm really hoping is that it will encourage development of both of these technologies for the greater good of all of us. Yeah, I mean, they seem

like they have largely different applications to me. I think the applications of augmented reality, like you said, are going to be broader. Virtual reality has a lot of potential in gaming and in I don't know, sort of like environment exploration and maybe even just in like creating mood experiences and stuff like that. But with a R you've

got a broader range of experiences. I like the way some of the people, as I was saying earlier, put it in their promotion of this, which is that it's not just tagging things around you with data, but it's bringing computing out of the screen. It's that you're you can do computing anywhere now, it's not just you have to go to the machine with the screen on it and do computing on that screen. Well. And it's also

I mean augmented reality. You have the option of actually moving around your physical environment and not tripping over something and killing yourself because you can actually see your physical environment along with the digital stuff, whereas with virtual reality, unless you've set up a very specific kind of of you know, environment for you to move around it where you have a boulder where your couches for example, yeah, you generally want to kind of uh stays still when

you're using DR NO. I imagine the kinds of games they'll have to create for these where there there is just a rock that happens to be shaped a lot like a couch, and one that shaped like a coffee table. I think one of my favorite articles I read, and now I want to say it was in the Verge, but I could be wrong about this was a guy wrote about potential uses of the hollow lens that he really really wanted to see come to pass, and they

were all ridiculous, purposefully so. And my favorite was you could play a really intense game of the floor is lava. The floor is always lava. Like, man, that's awesome. Play that game. Can you imagine what this office would be like with like rivers of lava everybody. We're just watching people leap from to and fro to try and get to their desks. Would be really entertaining. I basically already do that all the time. This would just explain your

erratic behavior. So I can't step on the lava. It's lava, guys. You can see it too, now, Yeah, so you know that these are we We're gonna be seeing a lot more of this sort of stuff, like not just the jokes, obviously, not just the the competitors to the Hollow lens. But we're going to see a lot more I think, expansion into what computing really means and how we can experience it.

The question I don't know the answer to yet is will enough people accept that to make it a viable new form of computing or will it simply be a flash in the pan kind of thing like Google Glass was. Oh, even even though Google did end Project Glass. Uh and and we we just we just pointed out kind of off off camera that they ended at the same day that this was announced. Yeah, the hollow lens was announced. Yeah,

it was a big day in augmented reality for different reasons. Um. I don't think that that kind of thing is is dead. I don't think that even even Glass is dead. I suspect the Google is still working on it in some kind of sub basement like they do. Um And and also keep in mind that there are lots and lots of other smaller or perhaps less visible companies that are

working on virtual reality and augmented reality. Yeah. I if I had to make a prediction right now, and I guess I don't have to, but I'm gonna so they're Um No, I think that we're going to see a big boom and in this kind of thing in the next three to five years. Now, I have another question

for you, guys. This is just a personal question. Let's say, all right, hollow lens comes out, and there are a decent suite of applications, whether work related, gaming, related, entertainment, whatever, that are supported by hollow lens, and you happen to have a device that you know allows you to access this the way it's meant to be. Um, would you get a pair? Assuming that's within your price range? Obviously? Would you Is this something that you personally would be

interested in? Joe? Your answer? You know, I think I might actually be. You'll probably know this about me. Despite how interested I am in technology, I don't buy a lot of new technology. I'm not what you would call an early adopter. Often I'm an early read about her. That's fair. Um, But with this I can actually see a lot of uses. I mean, if it's actually comfortable, useful, I mean, if if all the hype proofs true personal uses,

I can imagine a lot um. I don't have a lot of counterspace in my kitchen, and I very often want to be like watching a cooking video or something like that. While I'm trying to cook something and there's not space for my laptop on the counter, or I've got to put it way over here and keep looking

back and forth. It would be kind of cool if I could just have this video in the corner of my screen, or pin it to the wall, or or you know, even just to not have to get your your sticky egg fingers all over your laptop screen whenever you want to scroll down in the recipe. Oh, you are dead on with that concern that at my chicken hands on the Yeah, now, I like getting as much

salmonella as possible all of my technology services. Of course that's not the only reason, But I can actually see this being something that's pretty cool and pretty interesting, especially just for the the mobility of screens and computing within this interface. Right, and Lauren, what about yourself? I suspect that for me personally, the price range would have to be extraordinarily reasonable, perhaps far more reasonable than they are prepared to make it in anything like the near future,

for me to want to buy one UM. But again that like, like I'm I am definitely not a new adopter of technologies, and so that that's more the reason, Like I can see it being extremely useful. But it's the kind of thing that I can see myself going like, well, I can live without it. What if they what if Hell Stuff Works were to purchase some for people to use the office, would you be willing to put one on?

Knowing how many cameras are also in this? Yeah, tomorrow, I think we should just do mock ups of the hollow lens that have absolutely no transparency in the lands interest seeing people bump into walls and stuff and take video of that. You guys, I put stupid stuff on my head all the time. It doesn't even give me. We don't. We don't. We're We're not asking you to be covered in blood for once for one of our videos. Can't do both? Well, yeah, if you really want to,

we can do both. We can. I'm sure we can work something up. I would definitely test one out. I mean, I think that'd be great. Yeah. I wonder though, what the terminology is going to be, because of course, like with Google Glass, we got our own, you know, derisive terminology. You have heard what that is. I don't need to say it on here, and I think going back to our the beginning of our show here, it's going to be the hollow men h o l oh men seems

seems rather gender specific. Well, it's it's poem specific, it is it. It's a literary reference specific. So so so, Jonathan, would you if she come on? I own a pair of Google glass of course I would get one of these. And so here's the thing, um, I love. I love this implementation specifically because of that penning ability, the ability to to assign a virtual construct, whatever it might be, a physical anchor, so that way, it's not constantly in my vision. It's in my vision when I want to

look at it. I think that's brilliant because of course, the difference between that and Google glasses. That glass had a little monitor that you would glance up at to see right, but it was always right there in the periphery of your vision. You could never look away from it totally. I mean, it was always going to be there and you wouldn't necessarily have it obstructing your view. But it didn't feel really natural. It did mean that you had to move your eyes up to look at it,

which meant that you were no longer looking forward. So you could be walking for example, hazard could like a dog walking in front of you, perhaps and you don't notice that it has stopped, and you continue to walk while you're looking up at your screen. So I I really like that particular part of the implementation of hollow lens.

Did glass have any gesture control capability? It had. It had swept control because it had a little touch sensitive surface on one of the leg the the little sides of the glass, so you could use that for control. It had voice control as well. I know about the voice control. It did have just your control in the sense that you could said it so that if you're if you incline your head at a certain angle, you

could you could wake it up from standby mode. But no, you couldn't swipe it stuff in front of you and control it with your hand. There's no way for it to Yeah, it couldn't detect depth in that way, and it also, um, you know, it was very limited in in that sense. Well, this is another criticism I have of that kind of thing. I think technologies that are too dependent on voice controls do not have a very

bright future. I think voice control has a place, but most of the time people want to be able to be quiet while they're controlling their devices. Yeah, yeah, well that they don't want other people to suddenly hijack their devices. Yeah, and the like you know if I say okay, Google and then it goes Badique and someone yells out, you know, search my little pony, and then I decided to pick

something simple. I mean, granted, I that's in my search history already, but if it weren't, I might find that embarrassing, well, or not embarrassing, but just annoying. Like you were trying to do something practical like check your email, and all of a sudden you're looking at ponies and it's really not pony and it could be it could be something way worse than that, And knowing my friends, it would

be okay, glass make me really conspicuous. One more thing that I do think that this kind of headset is going to allow us to do, is um get any member of a family to answer a video call privately, especially if that member of a family is Michael J. Fox in drag. Oh, you're taking us back to Back to the Future Part two, Part two, I think so. I think so. Yeah, it was back to Back to

the Future to part two. Yes, that we talked about that, um so huge shout out to Microsoft for doing this event about the hollow lens precisely a week after we released our podcast about this, and we're all like, well, we certainly don't have anything like that in reality. Well, and the year two thousand and fifteen, the year that Marty McFly travels to and Back to the Future Part two, I think I think they started planning this like the week that we released that podcast, just to punk us.

You know, here's a question for you, guys, just just final question. Do you think there are any other technologies and back to the Future too that had not previously come out that some companies are going Guys, we seriously need to finish this because this is the year the telescoping baseball bats. That's what you as I recall, that's what you felt the entire film really was about. Yes, was that piece of technology? Did you know that there is a Back to the Future wiki page about that

baseball back on the Back to the Future Wiki? I doubt not. Um, All right, I'm going to say that everything this year is We're going to suddenly get the technology to have everything sound like it's hydraulic. I think that that was the best take off. If nothing else, will each be issued a little sound effect button that we just press whenever anything happens to give it that hydraulic sound. Now, I want it to be fully automated. Yeah, I do too, but we may have to make some compromises.

Is what I'm saying. Does not compromise. We don't really compromise either, folks. We are so thankful to have listeners who write in and ask us these awesome questions because it creates the most insane conversations that I've had on work hours. And I sit next to Josh Clark, so that's saying something. So Andrew, thank you again for sending that request. And if you out there, any of you

have a similar request. You want to know how something is going to pan out in the future, You want to hear our take on any sort of science fiction out there, anything along those lines, you should let us know. Send us an email that addresses f W Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. On Twitter and Google

Plus where f W thinking and over at Facebook. Just search fw thinking in the search bar will pop right up and we'll talk to you again really soon for more on this topic. In the Future of Technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places