Microsoft is Promising a Star Wars-style Future

What is Microsoft doing with Holoportation?

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Microsoft-is-Promising-a-Star-Wars-style-Future
CollaborationInsights

Published: January 22, 2021

Rob Scott

Rob Scott

Publisher

It was 2018 when Microsoft researchers coined the title “Holoportation” to refer to holographic transportation experiences. The tech giant says that holoportation will provide a mixed-reality experience where life-sized holographic avatars of people could effectively appear in real-time environments, with features like simultaneous language translation to boot.

Essentially, what Microsoft is promising is a Star Wars-style future where we can project versions of ourselves to other locations around the world in real-time. During the Inspire partner show in 2020, Microsoft demonstrated what this scenario might look like with the support of a few existing Microsoft technologies.

VP for Azure, Julia White, used a HoloLens 2 headset to create a full-sized hologram of herself, which also simultaneously translated her voice into Japanese while maintaining speech patterns. It was pretty impressive stuff – but what’s next?

The Next Step for Microsoft Holoportation

The 2020 holoportation demonstration leveraged everything from Azure speech translation and speech services, to HoloLens technology, and headsets. It wasn’t the first time that Microsoft explored the possibilities of holographic technology either. In 2019, Microsoft demonstrated it’s HoloBeam technology from the Valorem partner, and way back in 2016, engineers were working on initial tools for mixed reality.

Back in 2021, Microsoft seems to be making progress at a steady rate. The company announced an update on its 3D capture and algorithmic technology and took it’s hole teleportation technology with it outside of the studio, into a car. This is the next step in Microsoft’s effort to make holoportation a mobile and versatile experience.

Notably, to accomplish this kind of mobility, Microsoft reduced the bandwidth requirements for its technology by 97%, but it still managed to maintain quality experiences for today’s business users. The mobile holoportation system, if it works out, will generate some incredible opportunities for real-time 3D capture and transmission in an MR environment.

The Future of Holoportation

For the most, holoportation rigs (like many disruptive technologies), have been very expensive initiatives, requiring huge amounts of bandwidth and computer resources. However, Microsoft’s ambition is to make it easier for companies to use their existing Azure services for computing and condition to unlock end-to-end holoportation experiences.

The ability to place the holoportation technology into a moving vehicle is a clear step in the right direction. By reducing the bandwidth required by the tech by up to 50 Mbps, Microsoft ensured that they could use the system within a moving car, so long as they stayed in Wi-Fi range.

WiFi connectivity is only the first step for Microsoft too. The company notes that they’re planning on making the move to cellular data, so that passengers in the back seat of a car can transport themselves into meeting rooms or offices while they’re waiting to arrive somewhere.

The arrival of new advances in edge computing and 5G technology are sure to make a huge impact here. With new 5G developments, companies will be able to unlock enough computing resources and bandwidth to support truly immersive high-fidelity scans being sent over the airwaves. Just as 5G supports better VR and AR experiences, it will also reduce the latency involved with delivering MR 3D representations of people to places around the world.

Making Holoportation Accessible to Everyone

Microsoft’s decision to test the Holoportation rig in a moving vehicle wasn’t just a publicity stunt. The tech giant is actively trying to find ways of unlocking more immersive experiences for people communicating in a new environment. If Microsoft’s technology is successful, it could lead to a future where you can project yourself into a meeting, even if your cab is stuck in traffic.

People will be able to reach out to family members and friends while they’re sitting on the bus on the way to work, and make it feel like they’re actually in the same room. Microsoft’s current iteration of the technology only requires a set of two cameras to capture depth information for a 3D image of a person or object. Now, they’re overcoming the bandwidth restraints that have prevented the project from being accessible on a global scale too.

Microsoft’s innovative approach to compression could be the first step in making Holoportation a very real solution for many people. Already, Microsoft is removing the barriers to entry by combining the technology with things like Azure Kinect cameras, and Microsoft HoloLens headsets for affordability.

Experts also predict that the arrival of the AWS Wavelength from Amazon might be valuable in the progression of this technology. This infrastructure, apparently optimised for applications running through mobile edge computing scenarios, would support holoportation. A single-digit latency with Wavelength would reduce any issues with drop-outs and distortion that might harm the realistic experience Microsoft is striving for.

Is the Future in Holoportation?

There’s still a way to go before Microsoft achieves its goal of making Holoportation available to everyone. In the long-term, the ongoing evolution of technology and dropping prices will make this solution more of a reality for companies in search of more immersive experiences outside of the office environment.

The rise of the remote working landscape and social distancing has accelerated investment in this industry already, meaning that though it’s still early days, holoportation could be here sooner, rather than later.

Visit their official site to discover more about Microsoft’s Holoportation project.

 

 

 

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