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December 1, 2015
Windows Mixed Reality

Announcing the Microsoft HoloLens ‘Share Your Idea’ campaign

The developer community anticipation for Microsoft HoloLens has been exciting to see, and we love the discussions about what you are planning to do with HoloLens and the Windows SDK.

We want to share everything we’ve learned about developing great holographic apps. To that end, we’re offering to jump start one of your app ideas. As you share your ideas with the HoloLens community, we’ll help you understand what it takes to build them.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Share Your Idea. Share Your Idea is a website and forum where developers can submit ideas – answering the question, “what experiences do you want to see on HoloLens?” Ideas will be shared across the site, and the community will be able to vote on their favorites. Ultimately, the HoloLens team will pick our top three among the most popular ideas and let the community vote on which experience we will actually build and release to the world! We will work to bring your idea to life and show you every step in the journey – and when we’re done, we’ll deliver the source code back to the community.

Of course, the best ideas should showcase the central feature of HoloLens – holograms. A hologram is an object like any other object in the real world, with only one difference: instead of being made of physical matter, a hologram is made entirely of light and sound. And they exist in the world with you. Just as real world objects occlude each other, real world objects can occlude holograms, and holograms can occlude real world objects.

When thinking about great holographic apps, consider whether they exercise these capabilities:

  1. World coordinates. Holograms can be world locked, which means they stay where you put them. You can walk around the hologram to see the other side of it, revealing new details as you go.
  2. Scale. Holograms can share the same size as objects in the real world, but they can also shrink and grow.
  3. Interaction. HoloLens uses your gaze to determine what you want to interact with. Combine that with gesture and voice commands, you can create holograms that are fully interactive.
  4. Spatial Sound. Holograms can grab your attention with sound, leading you in a specific direction.
  5. Spatial Mapping. HoloLens knows about your world by giving apps information about surfaces in the user’s environment. From that, you can place holograms on floors, walls and tables.

 

What now? Go to http://hololens.com/shareyouridea to participate. Here’s a recap on what we will do:

  • From now until January 11th, idea submission and community voting is open to everyone.
  • The HoloLens team will pick our top three among the most popular ideas and let the community vote on which one we’ll build.
  • We’ll build it and show you every step along the way, including team planning, storyboarding, developing, designing, build reviews and more.
  • Lastly, once we’re done, we’ll open source the code so the HoloLens community can start building from it

Ultimately, the nice thing about holograms is that they can act just like real world objects and they can do things that break the laws of physics. You are limited only by your imagination. We’ll offer commentary to shape your ideas. We want to share our knowledge with the community, and understand what information and support you will need when you start developing your own ideas. We can’t wait to hear your suggestions.