Microsoft HoloLens 2 is an augmented reality (AR) headset developed and manufactured by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

. It is the successor to the original

Microsoft HoloLens Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...

. The first variant of the device, The HoloLens 2 enterprise edition, debuted on February 24, 2019. This was followed by a developer edition that was announced on May 2, 2019. The HoloLens 2 was subsequently released in limited numbers on November 7, 2019.

Description

The HoloLens 2 was announced by lead HoloLens developer Alex Kipman on February 24, 2019 at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain. On May 7, 2019 the HoloLens 2 was shown again at the

Microsoft Build Microsoft Build (often stylised as ) is an annual conference event held by Microsoft, aimed at software engineers and web developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a succes ...

developer conference. There, it showcased an application created with the Unreal Game Engine. The HoloLens 2 are combination

waveguide A waveguide is a structure that guides waves, such as electromagnetic waves or sound, with minimal loss of energy by restricting the transmission of energy to one direction. Without the physical constraint of a waveguide, wave intensities de ...

and

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

-based stereoscopic & full-color

mixed reality Mixed reality (MR) is a term used to describe the merging of a real-world environment and a computer-generated one. Physical and virtual objects may co-exist in mixed reality environments and interact in real time. Mixed reality is largely synony ...

smartglasses Smartglasses or smart glasses are eye or head-worn wearable computers that offer useful capabilities to the user. Many smartglasses include displays that add information alongside or to what the wearer sees. Alternatively, smartglasses are som ...

developed and manufactured jointly by

and MicroVision, Inc. in Redmond, Washington. It is the direct model successor to the pioneering

and the technical successor to the MicroVision stereoscopic and monochromatic

-based

virtual retinal display A virtual retinal display (VRD), also known as a retinal scan display (RSD) or retinal projector (RP), is a display technology that draws a raster display (like a television) directly onto the retina of the eye. History In the past similar s ...

(VRD) &

helmet mounted display A helmet-mounted display (HMD) is a device used in aircraft to project information to the pilot's eyes. Its scope is similar to that of head-up displays (HUD) on an aircrew's visor or reticle. An HMD provides the pilot with situation awareness, ...

(HMD) prototype-in-the-running for the canceled RAH-66 Comanche stealth helicopter and the now-defunct monoscopic and monochromatic MicroVision Nomad Augmented Vision System. On February 24, 2019 the HoloLens 2 enterprise edition debuted as the first variant of the device, followed by a developer edition that was announced on May 2, 2019. It was subsequently released in limited numbers on November 7, 2019. The US military's Integrated Visual Augmentation System is a further development of Hololens 2. The HoloLens 2 is an early AR device. The displays on the HoloLens 2 are simple waveguide displays with a fixed focus of approximately two meters. Because of the fixed focus, the displays exhibit the

Vergence-Accommodation Conflict Vergence-accommodation conflict (VAC), also known as accommodation-vergence conflict, is a visual phenomenon that occurs when the brain receives mismatching cues between vergence and accommodation of the eye. This commonly occurs in virtual real ...

, which is an unpleasant visual sensation for the viewer. On August 20, 2019, at the Hot Chips 31 symposium Microsoft presented their Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) 2.0 custom design for the HoloLens 2 with the following features: * 7x SIMD Fixed Point (SFP) for 2D processing * 6x Floating Vector Processor (FVP) for 3D processing * >1 TOP of programmable compute * 125Mb SRAM * 79mm² die size and 2 billion transistors *

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world' ...

16FF+ process *

PCIe PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

2.0 x1 at 100 MB/s bandwidth to Snapdragon 850 On August 29, 2019, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Microsoft's Executive Vice President, Harry Shum, revealed that HoloLens 2 would go on sale in September 2019. The product started shipping on November 7, 2019.

Improvements over the previous model

Microsoft highlighted three main improvements made to the device: immersiveness, ergonomics and business friendliness. HoloLens 2 has a diagonal

field of view The field of view (FoV) is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment. In the case of optical instruments or sensors it is a solid angle through which a detector is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. Human ...

of 52 degrees, improving over the 34 degree field of view (FOV) of the first edition of HoloLens, although Karl Guttag states that it offers less than 20 pixels per degree of resolution (despite Microsoft's claim that it would keep a resolution of 47 pixels per degree). Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) 2.0 improvements compared to the HPU 1.0: * 1.7x compute * 2x effective DRAM bandwidth * Improved hologram stability * New hardware accelerated workloads such as eye tracking, fully articulated hand tracking, semantic labeling, spatial audio and JBL filter

HoloLens 2 emulation

The HoloLens 2 Emulator was made available to developers on April 17, 2019. This

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

allows developers to create applications for the HoloLens 2 before the device ships.

References

External links

*
Microsoft Documentation for HoloLens Emulator
{{Mixed reality, state=autocollapse Augmented reality Computing input devices Gesture recognition Head-mounted displays History of human–computer interaction Microphones Microsoft peripherals Mixed reality Wearable devices Windows 10