Microsoft shows off “Holoportation” with HoloLens for remote meetings
28 Mar 2016
Microsoft plans to bring HoloLens users into group conferences and chats with others present elsewhere, using a technology developed by its research division that enables "holoportation."
The product of Microsoft Research's Interactive 3D Technologies group, a YouTube video showed the technology with different people appearing in a room alongside Shahram Izadi, a partner research manager. While Izadi was present in the room in person, the other people who had joined him (including his daughter) were displayed as digital renderings while being recorded in another room.
The system uses a specialised capture rig to map how a person is moving around in real time, and sends a 3D image of them to the wearer of a HoloLens so that the two people could interact with one another.
There were still key parts of human interaction that were missing.
Though Holoportation users could not touch one another, it was possible for one person to walk through another in the middle of a conversation. There also remained the matter of the HoloLens's field of view -- users would see only their conversation partners through a rectangular window at the centre of their vision.
That meant people who holoport into conversations could look a bit like they were floating in midair. It was hard to know without trying out on the HoloLens hardware itself.
The capabilities of holoportation were revealed when Alex Kipman, who was leading the development of Microsoft's HoloLens, first showed off the holoportation capabilities in an appearance at the TED conference in Vancouver last month. He was joined by a holographic representation of NASA scientist Jeff Norris and the two discussed the potential uses of HoloLens in the field of scientific research.
Holoportation could also find application in the business world where the technology could theoretically allow several people at once to 'holoport' to their company's headquarters in order to remotely attend a meeting, for instance.