Microsoft's 'mixed reality' headsets aren't ready for primetime
There's the promise of mixed reality. And then there's, well, the reality.
Microsoft's mystery Oct. 3 event proved to be an unveiling of sorts. A new $500 Samsung Windows Mixed Reality headset was announced, and the company revealed it had bought Altspace, a struggling virtual social network of dead-eyed avatars with disembodied hands.
For the most part, however, this was Microsoft trying to double down on its new marketing category, that of mixed reality. The idea is that only Microsoft, with its top-of-class HoloLens tech, is capable of offering both augmented reality and virtual reality in the same transcendent device (one manufactured in various flavors by Microsoft partners).
And while that may be true in the long run, that's not what event attendees were offered. There's no HoloLens-style AR here. Instead, our limited hands-on device demos let us wander around a virtual house with different kinds of content in each room, much of it on two-dimensional screens.
In short it felt very much like a warmed over version of every VR device demo of the last three years. Calling this "mixed reality" is like calling a spinach salad "mixed greens."
Even the much-anticipated Halo Recruit -- a new piece of software designed to show off the possibilities of mixed-reality Halo -- was something of a letdown. While you are indeed somewhere inside the world of the famed video game, its resolution impressively sharp, you're also just standing in a single spot, blasting a gallery of 2-D alien silhouettes on a large screen.
At the end of Halo Recruit, Halo's Master Chief walks in and invites you to join him as a gunner for his vehicle. Yes, you think, let's go -- and the show ends right there. This seems like a metaphor for much of the "mixed reality" experience: by pointing out what is possible, the diminished version we have now appears in a worse light.
I tried both the $400 Acer Windows Mixed Reality Headset (launching Oct. 17) and the $500 Samsung Odyssey (launching early November). The Samsung was worth the extra scratch; it has an OLED screen (versus regular LED), higher resolution (140 more pixel lines per eye) and comes with built-in headphones. There seems little to choose between it and the Oculus Rift, also $500.
But for all the Windows headsets' vaunted ease of use -- you just plug in the USB and ethernet cables into any PC running the latest version of Windows 10 -- they don't represent enough of a bold leap forward to convince a mainstream user that VR is anything more than a novelty.
For starters, these devices, at over a pound, are still too bulky. I still can't wear one for longer than 15 minutes without discomfort. This is a problem endemic to the industry, but it's worth reminding ourselves that the average consumer isn't interested in sweating up their heads with massive, weighty all-black welding goggles -- especially not when the resolution is still not at the retinal level where we might find it indistinguishable from real life.
You're also still stumbling blindly around with no clue about what is around you in the real world; the raft of similar-looking Mixed Reality devices (including others by Dell and HP) are all-enclosing, and there are no AR features to let you see around you. There is in theory a setup process to establish the limits of your room, but in practice this meant the Microsoft demo operator making sure I didn't bump into anything.
As for the beach house environment that the demo was set in, it's yet another reminder that virtual reality is trying too hard to copy actual reality. Alex Kipman, the HoloLens-inventing mixed reality guru at Microsoft, excitedly showed us his calendar, his LinkedIn profile, and his Pandora radio as virtual reality screens within the virtual house.
But why? What's the advantage of strapping on a big-ass headset just to check your calendar as if it's on a giant screen in a big house? Kipman suggests that you could interact with other avatars there, calling communication "the killer app" of virtual reality.
I'm excited about the potential of mixed reality
But again, if I want to talk to someone near and dear to me when they're long distance, there is no explanation as to why seeing a dead-eyed avatar version of them in a fake house is preferable to having an actual video chat from our real domiciles.
I'm excited about the potential of mixed reality, especially when it comes to education and lifelong learning. We are in an age when people love to teach themselves new skills via YouTube video. The most exciting promise of HoloLens was that this kind of learning would go three-dimensional, and we'd use our headsets to learn how to fix a faucet, play guitar or improve our tennis swing.
That promise still exists, but nothing in the current setup of Windows Mixed Reality suggests we're getting any closer to it. As with any cutting-edge tech product, it may be best to wait until version 2.0.
Topics Augmented Reality Virtual Reality
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
