The HoloLens 2 is now available to purchase for regular consumers in the United States, direct from Microsoft’s online store. Previously, the AR headset was only available at an enterprise level, and businesses were required to contact Microsoft to discuss placing an order.
Microsoft’s second enterprise-level AR headset, the HoloLens 2, began shipping in late 2019. However, now just over a year later, US consumers are able to place an order for the headset online through the Microsoft Store. Upon launch, the headset was aimed at an enterprise level, priced at $3500 per unit — $1000 above the Magic Leap One Creator Edition. Any prospective business looking to adopt HoloLens headsets had to contact Microsoft to discuss purchase options.
A screenshot of the HoloLens landing page, featuring a new ‘Buy Now’ button.
However, on the US Microsoft site, the device is now available to be purchased directly on the HoloLens webpage — any visitor is able to add the HoloLens 2 directly into their cart and place an order. At the time of writing, Microsoft offers a 2-day express shipping for the headset as well, so you wouldn’t have to wait very long for it to turn up on your doorstep.
However, don’t get too excited — just because the HoloLens 2 is available to purchase online doesn’t mean it’s any less pricey or overflowing with consumer-facing apps yet. If you’re sitting at home and fancy placing an order, you’ll still have to shell out a hefty $3500 to get your hands on one.
Did you miss out on the UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition? Check out every trailer, article, announcement, interview, and more from the UploadVR Showcase right here.
The HoloLens 2 is now available to purchase for regular consumers in the United States, direct from Microsoft’s online store. Previously, the AR headset was only available at an enterprise level, and businesses were required to contact Microsoft to discuss placing an order.
Microsoft’s second enterprise-level AR headset, the HoloLens 2, began shipping in late 2019. However, now just over a year later, US consumers are able to place an order for the headset online through the Microsoft Store. Upon launch, the headset was aimed at an enterprise level, priced at $3500 per unit — $1000 above the Magic Leap One Creator Edition. Any prospective business looking to adopt HoloLens headsets had to contact Microsoft to discuss purchase options.
A screenshot of the HoloLens landing page, featuring a new ‘Buy Now’ button.
However, on the US Microsoft site, the device is now available to be purchased directly on the HoloLens webpage — any visitor is able to add the HoloLens 2 directly into their cart and place an order. At the time of writing, Microsoft offers a 2-day express shipping for the headset as well, so you wouldn’t have to wait very long for it to turn up on your doorstep.
However, don’t get too excited — just because the HoloLens 2 is available to purchase online doesn’t mean it’s any less pricey or overflowing with consumer-facing apps yet. If you’re sitting at home and fancy placing an order, you’ll still have to shell out a hefty $3500 to get your hands on one.
Did you miss out on the UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition? Check out every trailer, article, announcement, interview, and more from the UploadVR Showcase right here.
Most of Apple’s key executives and engineers are anonymous, never appearing on stage or in news stories, but Rubén Caballero is an exception — a long-term wireless engineering VP who helped develop multiple iPhones dating back to the original model, and reportedly red-flagged the iPhone 4’s antenna design internally before it became infamous. Now Caballero has joined Microsoft, his LinkedIn page confirms (via Bloomberg), and his new role could be significant: He left Apple during its 5G modem development drama, and is likely to bring significant cellular and related wireless expertise to his new employer.
Caballero’s new position includes hardware design and technology engineering for Microsoft’s mixed reality and AI division, which he notes will include “HoloLens, Special Projects and more to come” — the sort of open-ended purview that suggests eventual involvement with many Microsoft-branded devices. During his 14 years at Apple, Caballero was significantly involved in the wireless chip and antenna components for not only iPhones but also iPads, Macs, recent Apple TVs, and the final AirPort wireless routers, which is to say that his work for Microsoft may eventually include improving the cellular or wireless performance of Surface computers and AI-fueled “smart devices,” in addition to mixed reality hardware.
Today, HoloLens is one of the key Microsoft products that could benefit from his cellular engineering expertise. The current-generation headset uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for communications, but it doesn’t have integrated cellular capabilities — something that the last two all-in-one HoloLens designs might struggle to deliver given their placement of all hardware on the user’s head. While cellular phones are widely considered safe for brief periods of direct head exposure, radio emission guidelines typically recommend limiting up-close ear use to short periods of time, with headphones or speakerphone modes as options.
Leading AR headset makers are all working towards lighter, more comfortable wearables with integrated high-speed wireless connectivity, though companies may vary in choosing Wi-Fi (such as Wi-Fi 6E), one of several 5G cellular frequency bands, or a future Bluetooth standard. In any case, familiarity with cutting-edge antenna and chip designs will be critical for engineering next-generation devices with smaller sizes and less power consumption.
Immediately prior to leaving Apple last year, Caballero was reportedly sidelined in efforts to internally develop the company’s 5G modem, as the company opted instead to purchase Intel’s 5G smartphone modem business for senior engineering VP Johny Srouji to lead. He subsequently became an adviser or strategist for four different companies, including at least two staffed with former key Apple employees — wireless venture Keyssa, backed by iPod and Nest pioneer Tony Fadell, and secretive startup Humane, run by iPad UX leads Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri. It remains to be seen whether Caballero will continue to participate in those ventures during his tenure at Microsoft, but they’re currently listed as present rather than past tense on his profile.
Nreal is teasing an enterprise-focused standalone AR headset for launch in Q4 2020, a variant of its Nreal Light AR glasses.
The company released a darkened concept image of the headset, which we’ve brightened here:
This would be Nreal’s second product. Their first, Nreal Light , is pair of AR glasses intended for consumers. Nreal planned to ship the Light in 2019, but delayed until spring 2020. However, production was recently halted due to the novel coronavirus. Nreal seems to expect to be able to produce hardware at scale later this year though, it seems.
The Nreal Light glasses are tethered to either a high end recent Android phone or an Nreal compute pack. But Nreal’s new all-in-one would integrate the chip into the headset, preferred by professionals and enterprise because it’s easier to deploy and maintain one device per user than two.
From the looks of the sketches on the marketing materials, the chip and battery are likely in the backplate on the rear of the user’s head.
Nreal expanding to enterprise mirrors the path of Magic Leap One, which also started with consumers. For Magic Leap, this followed a report from The Informationclaiming the company sold just 6,000 units in the first six months, in contrast to its target of 100,000 per year — itself a revision from the CEO’s expectation of 1 million.
AR headsets haven’t appealed to consumers yet, due to the high price and relative infancy of the still-bulky technology. We’re still years away from the realization of all day lightweight AR glasses many dream of. We’ll see if Nreal is able prove an early adopter market with Light when it is finally able to manufacture at scale.
This is the opposite of Microsoft’s strategy. Its HoloLens found adoption by enterprise and militaries. Large companies and governments can afford the sticker price, and AR can be useful for training, collaboration, and visualization.
Nreal clearly wants in on this market, given the company has already built much of the technology needed by developing consumer glasses. Whether it can build the same software ecosystem and platform is yet to be seen, but support for regular Android apps should make this task easier.
Nreal hasn’t released a price yet, but told VentureBeat it will be higher than the $1200 Light + compute pack, but “competitive”. Magic Leap One is priced at $3000 and HoloLens 2 is priced at $3500.
Spatial, a New York-based startup behind the eponymous real-time AR/VR collaboration platform, has secured $14 million in additional financing, bringing its overall funds to $22 million.
The latest funding round was led by White Star Capital, iNovia and Kakao Ventures, with continued participation from Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger and Zynga founder Mark Pincus. Existing Spatial investors also include the likes of Samsung NEXT, Baidu Ventures, and LG Ventures to name a few.
Founded in 2016 by Anand Agarawala and Jinha Lee, the company’s social AR/VR workspace has since gone on to include support for Microsoft HoloLens 2, Oculus Quest, Magic Leap 1, Qualcomm XR2, Android/iPhone mobile device and traditional monitors.
The company emphasizes the platform’s potential to let knowledge workers seamlessly connect through virtual spaces, thereby replacing the need to travel for meetings and collaborations. Users can chat using more lifelike avatars built through a quick 3D scanning process, open browser windows, and view and manipulate 3D objects as if they were in the same room together.
We had a chance to go hands-on at MWC 2019 last year, and again at CES 2020 earlier this month. Spatial has made a compelling argument for its workspace tech, and while it’s equally early days for the company and augmented reality, it’s clear Spatial is headed in an inevitable direction.
Check out the on-stage demo from MWC 2019 last year to get a better idea of what Spatial is all about:
AR/VR startup Spatial announced that it raised $14 million in Series A funding, bringing the total amount raised to date up to $22 million.
This latest round of Series A funding was led by WhiteStar Capital, iNovia and Kakao Ventures, along with continued participation from Instagram Co-Founder Mike Krieger and Zynga Founder Mark Pincus.
Spatial is a cross-device, multi-user VR and AR communication platform. The software allows for collaboration in 3D workspaces using AR and VR devices, regardless of whether users are in the same room or in completely different locations, allowing them to collaborate in the same virtual workspace.
This year at CES 2020 we tried out Spatial’s software for ourselves. You can watch the video embedded above for our thoughts on the technology, as well as some mixed reality footage of what the collaboration software looks like in action.
Spatial supports AR devices such as the Microsoft HoloLens and the Magic Leap One, but also VR devices such as the Oculus Quest, and mobile and desktop devices as well. Spatial aims to support as many devices as possible across all platforms, allowing anyone to collaborate and participate without the requirement of a specific device. Users who are not physically present in the same space are represented to others as 3D avatars which can be generated from 2D photos.
The eventual aim for Spatial is to eliminate the need for physical travel for team collaboration and provide a solution that goes farther than existing remote collaboration tools like Zoom and Slack, allowing users to collaborate in the same physical space no matter where they are in the world.
Microsoft has revealed that its file sharing and digital collaborative work platform, SharePoint, is getting a VR Maker Tool later this year, dubbed SharePoint Spaces.
The tool was originally revealed back during the SharePoint Virtual Summit in 2018 but is nearing release generally across the gamut of widely-used VR headsets including the Oculus Quest and Microsoft’s own HoloLens AR headset. Currently it’s in private preview now but is expanding beyond that soon and is expected to launch in the first half of 2020, as spotted by Virtual Reality Times.
According to Microsoft’s own official description, SharePoint Space allows you to:
“Build immersive experiences with point-and-click simplicity; start with smart templates that have beautiful surroundings, ambient sounds, rich textures, and lighting. Then add content, which can include 2D files and documents or images you may already have in SharePoint. Immerse yourself in mixed reality, focus your attention, engage your senses, and spark your curiosity and imagination. Unlock new scenarios for communication, learning, and collaboration.”
Reportedly it will be seamlessly integrated with SharePoint proper in a very intuitive way. For example, once something is uploaded into a folder it will be immediately viewable in a VR space. SharePoint Spaces will also support immersive content like 360 photos and videos, as well as 3D models and objects. You can connect together pieces of information to make courses and information flows without needing any programming knowledge — it’s all point-and-click based inside SharePoint Spaces itself.
Would your company benefit from having a VR workspace like SharePoint Spaces? Let us know if this is appealing to you down in the comments below!
HoloLens 2, Microsoft’s second enterprise-level AR headset, is now shipping.
HoloLens 2 was introduced at Mobile World Congress earlier in the year. It succeeds the original device with a sleeker design, wider field of view and an assortment of other improvements like gesture recognition and eye-tracking. The device consists of a pair of see-through lenses that project virtual images into the real world for you to interact with. The system is entirely standalone, with no need for an external computing device.
We got a first hands-on with the kit shortly after its announcement at MWC. The improvements made to comfort and accessibility push the device much further than the previous iteration.
“When I first tried the Oculus Rift DK1, I instantly ‘got it’ despite the shortcomings,” I said in my article. “I used DK1 enthusiastically, knowing it was humble beginnings. The original HoloLens didn’t give me the same sensation. As slight as some improvements may seem, HoloLens 2 was able to cross that barrier for me. If this is AR’s DK1, I’m very much looking forward to what the future holds.”
Make no mistake, though, HoloLens 2 is unquestionably an enterprise-level device. The device costs $3,500. At that price, it’s over $1,000 more than the Magic Leap One Creator Edition, a similar type of AR heaset that has aspirations of bringing AR to consumers. Rumors also continue to persist about a possible Apple AR headset to release in the years ahead.
Do you have an interest in HoloLens 2? Or is AR a little too early on to grab your attention yet? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Unity hosted a keynote presentation in Copenhagen and announced a series of updates to its AR and mixed reality creation tools.
Unity’s MARS tool — which stands for Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio — is going to have companion apps for dedicated AR gadgets. The first version of the tool is coming for mobile phones through ARKit and ARCore. “You can sync project folders in the Unity Cloud, then lay out assets as easily as placing a 3D sticker,” according to the company. “You can create conditions, record video and world data, and export it all back straight into the editor.”
The next version of the tool will be made for AR devices like Magic Leap and HoloLens. Unity also offers a tool it calls “AR Foundation” meant to allow developers to build one AR application and have it work across the major platforms. That, too, is coming to wearable AR headsets like HoloLens and Magic Leap.
For those unfamiliar, Unity is the most popular development tool for game designers and its been pursued for acquisition by Facebook in the past as well as added enormous rounds of investment. The toolset’s broad cross-platform support helps developers bring their software to multiple gadgets. The company claims more than two thirds of creators working on VR and AR software use Unity. Unity is also including as a preview in its 2019.3 release “Unity as a Library” which will “let creators of native apps benefit from Unity’s best features and tools, including AR tools like MARS, AR Foundation, and the XR Interactions Toolkit.”
San Francisco-based startup Kura Technologies (official website) claims it will launch compact AR glasses with a wide field of view, high resolution, high opacity, high brightness, and variable focus in mid-2020. We got the chance to try a series of four different prototypes from Kura that each demonstrated portions of these promises. We came away very impressed.
The nature of the demos we tried makes it hard to say what the actual finished device will be like, but we’re optimistic. None of the demos were shown on a product that resembles the mock-up images on their website and all four of our prototypes were described as being 8-12 months old from where they are at with the technology right now. You can read more about those demos deeper into this story.
Photographs and videos of any of the hardware at all were not allowed during my meeting — only workspace photos like the ones shown below.
We’re told Kura intends to bring a functional prototype to CES in January that will have all of the functionality in a single device. However, it’s worth noting that the device they plan to ship in mid-2020 is specifically targeting only enterprise customers first.
If they can pull it off — and that remains a big if — this startup will have created a product with specifications years ahead of all known public competitors, including Microsoft, Magic Leap, and Nreal.
The Kura Gallium
To understand more about why what they’re doing seems significant, let’s take a step back. Kura’s product is called Gallium. Kura describes Gallium as having “eyeglass form factor”, yet the claimed specifications are far beyond even any known large bulky AR headsets.
According to marketing materials, the glasses are said to be powered by a hip-mounted compute pack via a Snapdragon 855, similar to how Magic Leap and Nreal work, but when speaking with CEO Kelly Peng, she told us the initial version will likely be tethered to a PC at first before providing the compute pack as a secondary power option later. Then further in the future, an adapter could allow for wireless communication with a PC that’s within range.
Kura’s website lists the price for the glasses with the compute pack as $1199, a Lite version without the compute pack for $899, or the compute pack on its own for $399.
Claimed Specifications
Field of View: 150° (Binocular, Diagonal)
Focus: 10 cm to infinity
Brightness: 4000 nits (outdoor viewable)
Max Transparency: 95%
Resolution: 8K 75Hz / 6K 100Hz / 4K144
Image Quality: 100% DCI-P3, HDR, True Black Capable
IPD: Automatic accommodation of 55-68mm
Weight: 80 grams
These specifications would put Gallium significantly ahead of any known AR headset. HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap have a maximum diagonal field of view of just about 50 degrees. Magic Leap One does not have sufficient brightness to be used outside, and even HoloLens 2 has just 1/4 the claimed brightness of Gallium.
Crucially, Magic Leap One supports just two focal planes, and HoloLens 2 is fixed focus. With automatic IPD accommodation and varifocal from 10cm to infinity, Gallium would be visually comfortable to wear all-day.
If the company truly is achieving all this in an 80g pair of glasses, it would likely accelerate the arrival of consumer AR by years. But the magnitude of these claims should be met with skepticism — even after we tried many of these features in person.
The Prototype Demos
During our visit to Kura we tried out four different prototype demos and spoke with CEO Kelly Peng for nearly an hour. Our tour of the Kura workplace, which doubles as a home for several of the core team members, was eye-opening (pun intended) to say the least.
Three of the four demos did not have head tracking and were not on wearable devices. Instead, they were mounted on tables, completely stationary, to show off the display, optics, field of view, brightness, etc. in controlled environments. This is common for early head-mounted technology prototypes.
The first demo, which was stationary on a mount, was a great example of their optics technology using 90%+ transparent lenses combined with high-brightness images to really make objects look like they were in the real environment rather than suffering from the faded and blurry effect you get in at lot of current AR devices. The models shown were far brighter than anything I’d seen in an AR device before with great focal clarity. As a glasses wearer, the quality of the image and the field of view was really encouraging to see in such an early stage of development.
The second demo was also stationary, but this one had an even larger field of view and showed a larger range of animations and types of content. Most of the animations shown in the demo video embedded above were shown during this demo, and they looked about as crisp as you could hope for in an AR device. Again, I was pretty impressed. This demo also included hand tracking so I could reach out and see my hand moving around. There wasn’t any interaction here but it did show a wide range of colors.
Next up, in demo number three, I tried a fully wearable device similar to the one pictured below as an early prototype that had head and hand tracking operational. Again, this was said to be at least eight months old. This was another good demonstration of the field of view because when my hand reached out into the view of the cameras and lenses, it added a augmented overlay to my skin and I could interact with all of the floating multi-colored particles. I could reach my right arm across my body and see the AR overlay from my fingertips all the way down to my elbow. It didn’t have a postage stamp-sized vision box like in other AR devices. There was a delay trail when I moved my arm for the overlay to re-align itself — but again, early prototypes and all that.
Finally the last demo was the roughest and most experimental of the bunch. One of the Kura Gallium’s touted features is the focal distance that can adapt from 10cm all the way to infinity. In this demo I saw a green matrix-style animation of a cat floating in front of my eyes, almost large enough to look life-sized, and then it slowly shrank and faded into the distance like it was being shot into space, Bag Raiders style. The trick here though is that I could still clearly see it even as it drifted into the distance. It never lost focus.
Kura appears to be using Occipital’s technology for positional tracking and scene reconstruction. This lets Kura focus their resources on the display technology. An Occipital video from November 2018 appears to show footage of an old Kura prototype. This prototype has a form factor significantly bulkier than the images shown today on Kura’s website and it’s very similar to one of the prototypes we tried — specifically the third one mentioned above.
Prior to our demo we reached out to Peng about this prototype, who confirmed on Twitter: “This is purely software or integration test demo we built early on, not the optics we are going for product. We used to make some giant reflectors optics 3-4 years ago, but since then totally moved away from that because of the size, contrast ratio, brightness issues.”
“Structured Geometric Waveguide”
How exactly is Kura achieving this?
Before this announcement, no credible company has claimed specifications anywhere near these. As recently as October 2018, Facebook’s chief AR and VR researcherMichael Abrash stated that the technology to enable compact wide FoV AR glasses “doesn’t yet exist“.
Almost all AR headsets today, including HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap One, use a diffractive waveguide. This technology has a fundamental limitation on field of view, and can make the real world appear dull due to the semitransparent nature of the see-through optics. This is all despite both products having a larger form factor and higher price than Gallium.
Kura claims their breakthrough is to use a microLED strip with a “structured geometric waveguide” as the combiner. While microLED displays are normally expensive and there are ongoing efforts to figure out how to affordably mass produce them, Kura’s design would only need a single row of pixels, which would allow for low cost and mass production.
The company describes this as follows:
“Like in a diffractive waveguide, light is coupled down the eyepiece via total internal reflection, but unlike a diffractive system, the structures in the eyepiece are explicitly much larger than a wavelength, which prevents colored ghosts in ambient light. Furthermore, the out-coupling elements are ordinary geometric optics, not holograms, which mitigates the narrow angle of acceptance from which diffractive elements suffer from. In addition, a careful multi-layer design allows the out-coupling elements to cover about 5% of the eyepiece’s area, allowing us to maintain very high transparency.”
It is possible Kura Technologies invented the missing display technology needed to make mass market AR glasses achievable. Again, though, it is hard to confirm exactly how the Gallium works without seeing all the pieces put together into a finalized product design. It is not uncommon for technologies to be possible and impressive in the prototype phase but never work out as a true product due to issues such as manufacturing being too hard or the expense involved in producing hardware at scale.
But since we’ve seen the pieces all functioning, albeit mostly separately at this stage, we’re optimistic enough to say Kura seems to be one of the key companies to keep an eye on in the AR space.
Kura’s Team
Kura’s CEO Kelly Peng is on Forbes 30 under 30 for Manufacturing & Industry. At UC Berkeley, Peng says she worked on custom LiDAR designs for self driving vehicles. The CTO, Bayley Wang, was a high-performance optical simulation algorithms researcher at MIT and a math genius winner of a major North American undergraduate mathematics competition. The COO, Garrow Geer, is said to have been a particle accelerator operator and research engineer at Jefferson Lab and CERN.
Kura also tells us they have employed GoPro’s former lead electrical engineer, the designer of the electronics in the Xbox controller, “one of the most reputable optical experts in the world”, experts with over 100 patents in optics, displays and materials and several decades of combined experience in optical design, industry leaders with over 20 years of experience in AR/VR manufacturing and sales.
The company describes its team as “industry leaders, brilliant technologists and experienced subject-specific experts, with MIT, UC Berkeley, Stanford, EPFL & UBC alumni.”
Is Facebook Doing This Too?
Facebook, the company behind Oculus, is also developing AR glasses. While the company has not revealed any specifics on what display technology it is using, it did give several hints at Oculus Connect 5 in 2018.
When talking about display technologies, the company’schief researcher Michael Abrash stated that waveguides “could potentially extend to any desired field of view in a slim form factor“. On screen, a graphic showed waveguides as allowing for up to 200 degree field of view.
He also noted that since no suitable display technology existed yet for AR, “we had no choice but to develop a new display system“.
At the time, this confused some optics experts, as well known limitations of diffractive waveguides limit their practical field of view to around 50 degrees. Abrash’s description of waveguides did not reflect any known designs.
Given Abrash’s comments, Facebook’s large investment in AR research, and the company’s hiring of renowned display technologies experts like Douglas Lanman, it is possible Abrash was referring to a similar system to what Kura is working on — a non-diffractive waveguide using geometric optics.
We’ll keep a close eye on Oculus Connect 6 for any details on Facebook’s approach to AR optics and how it compares to what we’ve seen of Kura.
Stay tuned to UploadVR for more details on Kura, including our in-depth interview with CEO Kelly Peng next week.
This article about Kura is co-authored by Staff Writer David Heaney, who did the background research and wrote the first draft, Senior Editor David Jagneaux, who provided the hands-on impressions and additional details, and Managing Editor Ian Hamilton, who provided editing.
Editor’s Note: We added clarification that Kura is targeting enterprise customers first.
