Hololens thoughts
Some reviews of later HoloLens demos indicate a much reduced field of view (FoV) than the original demos presented. And some demo videos have popped up from Microsoft, supposedly showing off the current state of the FoV. There seems to be a few people who say that the videos show the actual size and others saying it was smaller last time around. And of course, while Microsoft has confirmed that while it may be tweaked it won't get noticeably larger before the production units.
So, right now, we don't really know how big the effective FoV will be. For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume that the videos that are representative of reality. People are comparing the videos to their experiences a couple months earlier, so their memories could be wrong, or the FoV could have changed in the months in between. The videos are the most usable information. But, keep in mind, it could easily be that the PR videos are misleading as well. They obviously want to put the best spin on things possible and the argument that there isn't a final prototype applies to this as well.
If we accept the FoV from the videos though... things are not terrible. They aren't great either. And price point will determine which markets this is viable for. Clearly, it is NOT going to be a good enough value for the experience for gamers. MS has said HoloLens will cost more than a console, and this FoV is just too small for serious gaming. Some people with cash to burn will do it anyway, but for those people the value prop is an entirely different thing than for the average user.
The FoV IS however perfectly viable for education and science purposes. And even for many home office applications. There will also be other niche areas, but those would be more consequential than an actual reason to buy a unit. Such as having a friend or expert or whoever help fixing a leaking pipe as shown in early videos. The FoV is fine for that, the holograms will be rendered over top of what you're working on when you need them to be. But, you're not going to drop $500-1500 on a HoloLens for that reason.
More expensive education streams, like medical as was demoed, are also great places to use this tech. It is similar to the pipe example in that a user is only going to be focusing on a narrow area anyway while interacting.
For scientific purposes it isn't much different than a lot of the scientific work that went on (and goes on) with Kinect. People largely building proof of concept software or hardware or both are generally less concerned about FoV. The fact the tech exists and works for them is all that matters. If the science gets more funding and/or goes mainstream they can always buy newer gen hardware or even attempt to commission something from Microsoft.
I think the home office example is also fine with the FoV. A wider field of vision would help as this is still a consumer usage scenario, but as long as the FoV is big enough for me to replace my current monitor, I could effectively simulate multiple displays arranged wherever I want within my office. I would have to stare directly at each "screen" to make full use of them, but that would be a minor inconvenience at worst. Of course, this is a use case which is also cost dependent. I could justify something in the $500-750 range for the FoV shown in the PR demos, but if it hits somewhere closer to $1500, then it is back in the same boat as the games scenario where only those with money to burn would be picking this up in its initial incarnation.
So, right now, we don't really know how big the effective FoV will be. For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume that the videos that are representative of reality. People are comparing the videos to their experiences a couple months earlier, so their memories could be wrong, or the FoV could have changed in the months in between. The videos are the most usable information. But, keep in mind, it could easily be that the PR videos are misleading as well. They obviously want to put the best spin on things possible and the argument that there isn't a final prototype applies to this as well.
If we accept the FoV from the videos though... things are not terrible. They aren't great either. And price point will determine which markets this is viable for. Clearly, it is NOT going to be a good enough value for the experience for gamers. MS has said HoloLens will cost more than a console, and this FoV is just too small for serious gaming. Some people with cash to burn will do it anyway, but for those people the value prop is an entirely different thing than for the average user.
The FoV IS however perfectly viable for education and science purposes. And even for many home office applications. There will also be other niche areas, but those would be more consequential than an actual reason to buy a unit. Such as having a friend or expert or whoever help fixing a leaking pipe as shown in early videos. The FoV is fine for that, the holograms will be rendered over top of what you're working on when you need them to be. But, you're not going to drop $500-1500 on a HoloLens for that reason.
More expensive education streams, like medical as was demoed, are also great places to use this tech. It is similar to the pipe example in that a user is only going to be focusing on a narrow area anyway while interacting.
For scientific purposes it isn't much different than a lot of the scientific work that went on (and goes on) with Kinect. People largely building proof of concept software or hardware or both are generally less concerned about FoV. The fact the tech exists and works for them is all that matters. If the science gets more funding and/or goes mainstream they can always buy newer gen hardware or even attempt to commission something from Microsoft.
I think the home office example is also fine with the FoV. A wider field of vision would help as this is still a consumer usage scenario, but as long as the FoV is big enough for me to replace my current monitor, I could effectively simulate multiple displays arranged wherever I want within my office. I would have to stare directly at each "screen" to make full use of them, but that would be a minor inconvenience at worst. Of course, this is a use case which is also cost dependent. I could justify something in the $500-750 range for the FoV shown in the PR demos, but if it hits somewhere closer to $1500, then it is back in the same boat as the games scenario where only those with money to burn would be picking this up in its initial incarnation.
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