Reality Check: Comparing HoloLens and Magic Leap
The most impressive part of the HoloLens demos was the use of sensors to track where I was looking and gesturing, as well as what I was saying. My gaze was effectively a mouse, accurately highlighting what I was looking at. An up-and-down motion with my index finger—dubbed an “air tap” by the HoloLens crew—functioned as the mouse click to do things like paint a fish or place a flag in a certain spot on Mars. (I screwed this up a number of times; mostly because I wasn’t holding my finger up high enough.) Simple voice commands like “copy” and “rotate” worked well, too.
HoloLens is also really good at having virtual objects follow the user around. As I chatted with a Microsoft employee over Skype, the simple diagram he drew about how to connect a light switch hovered in the air near the electrical box on the wall, while his video-chat window remained in my field of view, even as I moved about. This fits neatly with the idea that augmented reality could help employees in the field make repairs to things like air conditioners (see “Augmented Reality Gets to Work”).
It’s clearly incredibly hard to make this kind of stuff work in a convincing way on a headset—once you’ve figured out how to make good-looking virtual images, there’s the task of cramming all of the necessary computer hardware into a wearable device, making sure it looks good as the wearer is walking around, and figuring out a way to power it. This raises big questions about how good augmented reality can really get, and how useful it will be in the near future. If it doesn’t wow you, both in form and function, why would you buy it?
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Apple has recently hired a number of people from the fashion industry. It is thought that they are working on the design of Apple's VR and AR products.]
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