Microsoft Camera Rig Gives HoloLens Developers Video Hack
Microsoft has come up with a new camera rig that allows HoloLens mixed reality app makers to capture video from a HoloLens and make it easier to show a person interacting with that app, something Microsoft dubs “spectator view.” The details of the hardware-software combo were published as open source on the HoloLens’ GitHub page. The HoloLens headset is wireless, which lets the user move around the room freely, and is based on four cameras, lightly tinted lenses and a holographic processing unit.
The Verge calls the new camera set-up, “a small step, but it’s one headed in the right direction for head-mounted displays,” that comes at a time when VR/AR companies are “running into ethical boundaries as well, sometimes relying on special effects rather than ‘real’ video to get their points across.”
This new “spectator view” solution simply requires any camera with an HDMI output. The user mounts the HoloLens to the camera, stabilized on a tripod (which requires a custom-made mount), and then wirelessly connects it to a PC running Unity, to share positioning data. Next step, the user outputs video via an HDMI cable, sending positioning data and video to the PC. Unity takes care of processing the data, and the result is “video of people walking around the room wearing HoloLens headsets” as well as “the apps and the digital objects and the games they’re playing around them.”
Reed notes that HoloLens customers have been requesting this new tool, although “it’s still unclear exactly how many HoloLens users are out there in the world,” with Microsoft saying only that sales are “in thousands.”
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