Sports are a pretty intuitive place for augmented reality: we already watch them with a bevy of numerical overlays, replays, and commentary. So Microsoft's "future of football," featuring its HoloLens headset, unsurprisingly makes a lot of sense. It's a highlight reel showcasing every possible football-spectatorship-related use of HoloLens, from getting an expanded view of the screen to watching tiny 3D figures enact plays on your coffee table. I'm not sure whether most viewers want life-sized models of players to burst through their walls like the Kool-Aid Man, but then again, I'm not much of a football fan.
HoloLens videos have a tendency to oversell what its images actually look like, but most of the uses here are at least theoretically feasible. The field of view, for example, can accommodate a medium-sized coffee table from a reasonable distance. It's a little harder to buy a wall-sized video screen, but that depends largely on how much space viewers can put between themselves and the wall.
THE BIGGER QUESTION: IS THERE ANY NON-AWKWARD WAY TO WEAR HOLOLENS AT A PARTY?
The bigger question is whether Microsoft can manage to make using a headset during a Super Bowl party look anything but excruciatingly awkward. It's a compact device considering how much tech is packed into it, but it's still the world's bulkiest pair of sunglasses, and I'm not totally confident in its ability to stay put while you're cheering. Then there's the issue of etiquette when only some of your party guests have headsets. Microsoft suggests that this is not a big deal, but it's also the ultimate version of being stuck in a room where everyone but you is texting each other.
Either way, a select group of people will be able to enact this fantasy in the next couple of months, when Microsoft starts releasing prototype kits to developers who apply. They'll pay $3,000 a head for the privilege, which — while admittedly a lot of money — is still significantly cheaper than a ticket to the actual Super Bowl.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/2/10900132/microsoft-hololens-future-of-football-augmented-reality
I still have my doubts about HoloLens as much of a gaming platform, but that's just cool. Oh, anyone else think it's funny that each of those living room has like $12,000 worth of HoloLense headsets in them? haha
Bet with Adamblaziken:
I bet that on launch the Nintendo Switch will have no built in in-game voice chat. He bets that it will. The winner gets six months of avatar control over the other user.
