Today in NYC, Microsoft ran a developer preview of the HoloLens letting folks learn hands-on. Being skeptical after the whole Google Glass experience, I didn’t think much of the product before trying it out. But boy—was I wrong.

The HoloLens demo we participated in was a short 15 minute game called “X RAY”. It started with a little spiel about the product and a quick overview on how to use it. The product employs eye tracking to focus on elements, much like a mouse, then to select an object you either air-tap with your index finger, or voice (done with Cortana). After the intro, each one of us had the distance between our eyes measured to calibrate our HoloLenses. Eventually, the release version will automatically measure this distance. We were then led to three separate rooms where the device was fashioned onto our heads.

To be completely honest, for a non-commercial product it’s pretty sleek (much more put together than the Oculus DK or DK2), for a commercial product and more specifically B2C, it’s still a bit bulky. Undoubtedly, Microsoft will make a few improvements before the HoloLens hits shelves. Once on, the eye tracking worked incredibly well, wherever I looked, the crosshairs were there. As I moved my eyes the crosshairs followed without delay.  When I was on the game’s menu, I only had to air-tap to start.

How It Went

The first thing I needed to do was to map the room. The app asked me to look around in 360 degrees then the ceiling and floor as well. When mapping, the interface gave feedback as a series of orange polygons (similar to the image on the left). The woman running the demo was also mapped and I could see her figure outlined in the same orange polygons.

Once the app finished mapping my surroundings the game began. The experience was surreal: the wall in front of me broke and a flying 3D robot, reminiscent of Wheatley from Portal, came out of it. I tried to kill it but it told me “not to be alarmed” and then gave me it’s space super powers – or something like that.

GPU

GPU wise I’d equate the graphics to those of an XBOX360. From what we know about the HoloLens, it uses an Intel Cherry Trail GPU which should put it around XBOX360ish graphics if I were eyeballing, which I am. Considering the machine is a standalone – as in everything is rendered on it, it’s quite impressive.

The HoloLens is entirely wireless, apps install on it like they do on your phone (potentially tethered). According to a conversation with the development team today, Windows 10 apps will be able to run on the device. The sound is multidirectional, which is also pretty cool, I could hear holographic walls being broken as the game played.

The game itself was a simple 3D shooter where alien robots come out of the walls and you had to blast them by focusing on them with your eyes then firing with the air tap all while physically dodging their laser beam attacks, and truth be told, closer to the end, I worked up a little sweat, oh and it was Awesome!

However, during all this movement the HoloLens’ biggest flaw came out – field of view – in short it doesn’t account for peripheral vision. Whether that’s something Microsoft is planning to address is unfortunately not something that I was able to ask their developers. Is it something that completely ruins the experience? Not at all. Though it is something that detracts from the overall effect and takes a bit of time to get used to.

What We Think

Considering everything, this device is impressive and a formidable start to Microsoft’s augmented reality hardware, and I feel fortunate to have tried it this early on.

Compared to Google Glass, well, to be honest there is no comparison, this device blows Glass out of the water, and while $3k is a lot for a prototype development device, the value the HoloLens brings in terms of thinking about product in a truly augmented reality way can be justified by the price tag, on the surface, its easily worth two of Google’s Glass devices which came in a 1.5k for the developer preview.Lastly in terms of HoloLens applications, I can see this being huge for architecture, interior design, 3D modeling, and gaming. The HoloLens is a device that I definitely can’t wait to play with in more depth.

Stay ahead of groundbreaking tech here.

We’re thrilled to announce that SWARM has been recognized as an innovation leader in the emerging technologies and interface product design space by SVIEF (Silicon Valley Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum).

We were one of thirty companies globally to receive the award and couldn’t be happier.SVIEF has historically seen Bill Clinton and Al Gore headline the keynotes. This year’s Keynote speaking being Ashton Kutcher. While we weren’t on the same panel as Mr. Kutcher, we did speak about the future of connected devices and the smart home. This took place alongside Ed Hemphill CEO of WigWag and Gerry Lui VP at the Wistron Neweb Corporation. Zhanggen Ni, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Mlily Inc. was also in attendance.

We’re going to try and get the video of the talk and post it on our YouTube channel as well as here.

A few months back we started the NY Emerging Tech Meetup, which is run here at SWARM HQ in the Flatiron District. From it, SWARMcast.tv was born. Thus far, we’ve had two really exciting sessions. One on VR/AR applications and the other on connected devices. The trend of awesome sessions continues! We have a few really interesting ones coming up:

• Machine / deep learning
• Quantum computing
• The quantified self and behavioral change
• Real live holograms (not kidding)

We’re not only excited about this stellar lineup, but we’re also thrilled to be learning so much from our panelists. It’s been an honor listening to them disseminate their knowledge. We’re electrified to see who we get into the room next! It’s always been a goal of ours to help spread knowledge of emerging technologies with this tech meet up. Which is why we’ve been recording them.

Although it took us a bit longer than we wanted to post the vids, they’re finally online. Going forward, recordings will be made available in much more timely manner.So here they are, in order of appearance, our first two NY Emerging Tech Meetups. Beyond the Oculus: AR/VR Applications Panelists were Joseph Werle, the CTO for Littlstar and Sophia Dominguez, founder of All Things VR.Connected Devices and the Smart HomeWe spoke with Robert Cervelione of cerver.org and Oscar Torres of Keen Home about the current status of IoT, connected devlices, cloud to cloud, and some of the challenges facing this emerging technology.And see you at the next meetup.

SmartTV

As a company, we’ve always been bullish on SmartTV and second screen applications, so when Apple announced the new tvOS paired with an AppleTV that anyone could build applications for, we were thrilled.

Thrilled because we’ve already worked with AppleTV rolling our first app for the platform back in May 2015. It was for a major television network and is now accessed by millions of viewers a month. But that was then and this is now. tvOS is, simply put, exciting. It does everything AndroidTV does and more, while also dramatically decreasing barriers to entry to build on the platform.

Looking at it from the onset, we’d expect your most usual suspects to make the first appearance: mobile game ports, and additional video / streaming channels, twitch anyone? But for us the real innovation can come from those companies that will think outside the box. Using tvOS we’ll be able to ideate, design and build new innovations in home automation using home kit, even home security and your door might now be opened from your living room.

Looking Beyond

Looking beyond the phone, you have peer-to-peer communication, the possibility to stream live video from services like Meerkat or Periscope. This will stream directly to your tv without the need to AirPlay or Cast the feed. Most importantly, the freedom to design the TV app’s UI is going to be monumental. That’s not to say that barriers don’t exist, market penetration of Streaming Media Devices devices was at 20% of broadband connected households (source: http://www.parksassociates.com/), with Roku (37%), Google (19%), Apple (17%), Amazon Fire TV (14%) making up 87% of the overall market.

Will these same users “trade in” their older hardware for new? Will the people who bought Chromecasts move to tvOS and AppleTV? And what about backwards compatibility and support for those AppleTV apps running on AppleTV 3 and prior? There are still a lot of ifs, but times are thrilling nonetheless.

When SWARM started as a Mobile Agency, it was always our goal to sit at the forefront of emerging technologies. The majority of our team owns some form of smart watch or at least a wearable. We enjoy experimenting with new gadgets, IoT (Internet of Things) interface design, beacons, and really anything new. That’s why we’re introducing NYC’s first Emerging Tech Meetup

A part of this experimentation is simply because we like to try new things, but the bigger part is that we like to deconstruct these technologies in order to understand their wider business implications.

So What Are They?

• What is the value of an Apple Watch, and what about it can be made better?
• When if ever will Google announce Wear for iOS? And what does that mean for the Apple Watch? Would Apple allow this?
• What are the technical challenges that we will face with the new wave of augmented reality applications, from the MSFT Holo Lens the Sony AR glasses?
• At what point will the IoT reach saturation? Who are the emerging players in the market and what type of a market-split dynamic, if any, will we see in this industry?
• What are some of the forthcoming implications of quantum computing, and how will they affect the consumer space?

These are some of the questions that we ask ourselves; these are things we do internal show and tells on; yet we know we can’t be the only ones in NYC who want to know more. Which is why we’re starting NYC’s Emerging Technology Meetup this July 14^th at our offices which we share with Quotidian Ventures. The topic will be Beyond the Oculus: Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality Applications and we would love to see you there.

To RSVP for our upcoming talks please join the meetup, and for those of you who can’t make it or live outside of NYC, we’ll be recording these sessions moving forward and posting them to our brand new YouTube channel SWARMcast.tv.