Microsoft has said that it will unveil Windows Holographic SDK during the BUILD conference in 4/29~5/01/2015 . It also “plans to get Project HoloLens into the hands of developers by the spring“. It appears to me, there will be major unveiling about many things what don’t know about HoloLens. Its technical details will be shown, which gives us certain confidence on what it can deliver. Before that day, we are still in the dark about many things of our interest. Recently I am able to dig into some online discussion about Holographic application development, and found some interesting bits for developer who wants to know about HoloLens.
First is an entry on StackOverflow (a developer exchange site), stating “I’m building a HoloLens app and need to figure out how to dock a control along the edge of a wall within a room”. Obviously this dev is not aware that he in under NDA. So, we know someone is working on HoloLens application development.
Some Important Information About HoloLens
The second piece of information is on Microsoft own developer site: Channel 9, there is a post about something called HoloLens API: Windows.Mirage.Hologram Framework. It appears in Windows 10 build 9926. Here I quote his entire post:
well, in case you are interested, there are many new pdb files in Windows 10 9926 symbols packages are actually the Windows Holographic stuff, including device drivers, shell components, sample apps, HoloStudio, and SDK stuff like the simulator etc, among them there are some Windows.Mirage.*.dll files looks like the WinRT API surface for Holographics stuff, I extracted some symbols from them.
notice there are many 3D models/animations stuff, but also some UI controls like
Windows::Mirage::HologramFramework::Controls::Button
Windows::Mirage::HologramFramework::Controls::ListView
Windows::Mirage::HologramFramework::Controls::TextBlock
Windows::Mirage::HologramFramework::Controls::TextBoxand there are many “markup” related stuff, even mentions Xaml: Windows::Mirage::HologramFramework::XamlMarkupXmlNamespace
So, maybe we can build holograms in Xaml
This looks like WinRT namespaces instead of C#, but C# should have something equivalent too. Those should look very familiar to people who ever wrote code for Windows and Windows Phone apps. Question is how do they look? Also, it looks like xaml is used too. The mentioning of simulator is very interesting. I wonder how that works for holographic UI.
Two Important Questions About HoloLens
Finally, NUI World has found the following info from same Windows 10 build 9926:
Windows.Human
Windows.Human.Gestures
Windows.Human.Hands
Windows.World
Windows.World.Lighting.Prototype
Windows.World.Sensors
Windows.World.Surfaces
Windows.World.Surfaces.Prototype
So, combine with above we have:
- Human – Namespace for the HoloLens wearer, tracking gestures, voice and gaze, dealing with human interaction.
- World – Namespace for everything around the HoloLens wearer, which is 3D mapped by HoloLens.
- Mirage – Namespace for Holographic UI, 3D models, media(image, video, sound), animation. In other words, it represents the virtual world.
HoloLens: Future Is Months Away
Will There Be Low Cost HoloLens?
Will There Be Low Cost HoloLens?
