At their event today, Microsoft announced a game called “Project X-Ray.”
Project X-Ray uses the HoloLens and creates the illusion that you’re fighting off a “mixed reality robot invasion,” using your own home as the setting.
Microsoft says Project X-Ray takes mixed reality “one step further” by letting you “wear” the holograms.
The demo showed a holographic gauntlet attached to the player’s arm and following his movements.
“When you combine technology like this with the environmental understanding of HoloLens, you can do some pretty spectacular things,” Microsoft said.
Spectacular, of course, means blasting virtual holes in your walls and fighting off enemy robots with lasers. And a giant holographic shield.
The cool part of using HoloLens in a game like this is that, unlike a device like Oculus Rift that tethers you to a computer, HoloLens allows the player to move freely and integrate objects into the digital gameplay.
The AI holograms can also react to objects and will reportedly interact with each other as well.
The gameplay demo honestly made it look really cool, but it definitely seemed like it wasn’t quite at the point where the player could be running around at full speed and firing off laser shots like a Matrix character. The player moved with intent, carefully aiming his shots before taking them.
As we’ve seen before, the view field of the HoloLens isn’t your full field of vision. It’s rather small.
The HoloLens was also given a dev kit release date of Q1 2016, with a price of $3,000.
As a quick aside, mixed-reality is shorthand for the space between virtual and analog reality. It’s a space created by devices like the HoloLens, where digital elements are blended into the world—hence mixed reality.
You can watch the full Microsoft presentation here. The HoloLens portion starts about 12 minutes in.
