Windows Holographic & Vuforia

Apparently they will make their software support all of the AR or VR tethered headsets.

This will certainly be a boost to the demand for the display technology, and will probably have other unanticipated results.

And with software like Vuforia available, its popularity should be huge


ARS Technica

At IDF in San Francisco today, Microsoft's Terry Myerson said that the Windows Holographic experience, including the shell used on the HoloLens hardware, will be made available as an update to the standard Windows 10 desktop operating system some time next year.

Currently, the HoloLens runs a specialized variant of Windows. Desktop Windows offers many of the same APIs as the HoloLens, but the 3D user interface that mixes existing 2D apps with new 3D ones is only available on the augmented reality headset. Next year's update will make it available to all, opening it up not just to Microsoft's standalone device but also to hardware such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that provide tethered virtual reality.

Vuforia at Hololens Reality News

Vuforia is a set of tools that help developers build augmented and mixed realityexperiences. One of the prominent abilities, as demonstrated in the video above, is the ability to automatically render holograms when the cameras see a flat image. Basically, the image will display flat to anyone without a mixed reality device looking with just their eyes. Those with a HoloLens, however, will see a hologram in place of the flat image on the paper. That opens up a number of possibilities of how we can share mixed reality experiences out in the real world.