Acer may be the first to start shipping an inexpensive, quality headset for Windows developers — but this $300 device is no HoloLens.
Acer’s opaque, VR-style headset for Windows developers.
This week, as Acer starts shipping the first developer-oriented headset, we’re finally coming to a full understanding of what that actually means.
During the 2017 Game Developers Conference here in San Francisco, we got an early hands-on look at what it’s like to use Windows on a headset that isn’t built for games, and spoke to Microsoft HoloLens team leader Alex Kipman about the vision behind these new headsets. (Hint: Xbox is a big part.)
Microsoft’s idea of mixed reality is an umbrella covering practically everything from augmented to virtual reality. And that’s the way it should be, according to Kipman. “What happens when your VR headset of tomorrow has the ability to see the real world and put holograms on it? The proper term is mixed reality. ”
But these new more affordable Windows mixed reality headsets, like Acer’s, don’t see the real world quite the way you’d expect. Unlike Microsoft’s HoloLens , these devices aren’t cordless and don’t have see-through visors. They’re opaque, like VR headsets, and tether to a Windows PC, or come 2018, an Xbox One or Project Scorpio game console, with a long cord. They cost about $300 (roughly £250 or AU$400 converted).
Because they have cameras and “six degrees of freedom” tracking to work without external sensors or markers, like the HoloLens , Microsoft wants you to see them as something special. But many upcoming VR headsets might also have those capabilities.
As Kipman admits, by his own definition of mixed reality, the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are capable of mixed reality, too. He’s referring to taking real-life scanned items and putting them in VR, versus taking virtual things and floating them in the everyday world (AR).
But as Microsoft’s own demo showed us this week, an opaque, VR-style headset can make a lot more sense for a lot more software as of today. Where the company’s HoloLens developer kit has a narrow field of view that makes it tough to see even an entire application window at once, much less an entire Windows desktop, that wasn’t a problem with Microsoft’s VR-style rig.
