Here are some initial reactions after just receiving & setting up the MS Hololens.
Cons:
- Heavy, though you get used to it pretty quickly
- Narrow field of view
- Bad chromatic aberrations (difficult to wear this while expecting to do real world work – i’m typing this while wearing it & seeing all kinds of visual artifacts on the “real display”)
- Very limited set of gestures (though the multi-modal UI support is nice: air-tap, say Select or click button)
- Fatiguing to have to keep your hand raised to be in the field of view for it to recognize gestures
- I’ve already experienced some bugs with the menu system & it getting stuck requiring a reboot.
Pros:
- Pretty good job at providing other cues to compensate for narrow field of view
- Works well with glasses still on though must be placed correctly on head to avoid nasal bridge discomfort
- “Holographic” interior design is very fun (ie photo gallery over my desk, browser next to display, octopus on my desk, monkey eating pizza next to it, shark & astronaut out the window, etc.)
- Tracking works very well (the game where robots crawl around your house & you shoot them is fun)
- Projection mapping onto real world surfaces works pretty well (though obviously gets confused around windows)
- Spatialized audio is pretty decent (especially when playing back videos recorded on the Hololens indicating the mic array is good)
- It’s fantastic to be untethered from a computer/phone
Overall, this is a huge leap forward in consumer AR. Obviously much more immersive than phone/tablet AR, though the narrow field of view is much worse than other professional AR displays. The onboard computing power seems pretty decent. It’s easy to imagine this having a huge impact on society. Though at $3K it obviously won’t be that ubiquitous for a while.