5 things you need to know about Microsoft HoloLens

Microsoft surprised the world with its HoloLens headset. Which superimposes virtual objects over your field of vision. Here's what you need to know about this ambitious hardware. Despite the name, the HoloLens doesn't really create holograms. Instead, it's augmented reality. See. A technology we've seen before that uses movement aware sensors to make it look as if a virtual object is there in real life. Hololense doesn't obscure your whole vision like oculus rift, so you can still see the rest of the real world, including your hands. This frees you up to use gestures like this mid-air click to select objects while voice commands give you extra control. Holo Lens deploys three processing units crunching data from a large number of sensors. It's covered in cameras to handle head tracking or record video while light is bounced between three layers of glass in each lens, all of which goes into tricking your brain into seeing something that's not there. Microsoft demonstrated using Holo Lens to do things like build a virtual object to be 3D printed, get futuristic DIY help over Skype. Explore alien landscapes and even play a minecraft style game. Microsoft owns Minecraft so the popular block-building phenomenon could be the hollow lenses first big hit. Loads of virtual gadgets we've seen have been prototypes or not yet ready for ordinary shoppers but Microsoft reckons we'll see a hollow lens release within the windows. THis ten time frame that's vague but this is a virtual reality gadget that might actually get a main stream release. Here's hoping because frankly Hololens is the most exciting thing Microsoft's made since the Xbox