Ever since its Minecraft demo at E3 2015, people have wondered about the gaming potential of Microsoft's augmented reality headset, the HoloLens. Yesterday, YouTube user Varun Mani posted a video of himself playing Halo 5: Guardians while wearing the headset, and the results are pretty nifty, though maybe not for the reasons you'd expect. Take a look:
Since HoloLens is augmented reality and not virtual reality, it's not like Mani is experiencing the world of Halo as though he were actually there. Instead, what you're seeing is the Xbox One streaming Halo 5 to a Windows 10 PC, which is subsequently streaming to the HoloLens. Since HoloLens lets you "pin" an app window in physical space, Mani has apparently pinned the Xbox app to his home's wall, letting him play without a television.
I'm impressed - the technology is still too new to expect holograms of Spartans running around the living room, but the fact that a game like Halo 5 can be streamed to a PC and then to another device with no hiccup in framerate or drop in visual quality is impressive. There seems to be a delay of about one second (which would make games with a lot of action nigh unplayable), but HoloLens is still in active development after all. Hopefully there's time to improve.
But enough about me, what about you? Does this make you excited for HoloLens, does it turn you off the idea, or are you pretty much the same as you ever were?
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