To empower HoloLens users with the ability to share their HoloLens experience with others, Microsoft announces a new tool, Spectator View.
Microsoft HoloLens is quite an amazing innovation that helps in blending your reality with a digital facsimile, however, there is one thing which it does not do well – allow you to share the experience with others.
Spectator View is a Microsoft-sanctioned hack, which combines several pieces of hardware with some clever software tricks, and allows others to look into your augmented world, in real time and high quality.
Image Source: blogs.windows
The HoloLens already comes with a similar function via a feature known as Mixed Reality Capture (MRC). However, this comes with numerous constraints as this is built into the device, hence offering a lower quality of capture along with other problems associated with capturing input from the view of the first person. For example, it includes the user’s head movements which might confuse the viewers.
Brandon Bray, Principal Program Manager,
states,
“Today, I am excited to share with you that we have answered these questions with the release of documentation that will allow you to build a spectator view camera for HoloLens.”
In more simple terms, MRC offers a first-person perspective of the augmented reality experience, while the spectator view uses a DSLR in combination with the software so as to provide a third person view of the augmented construction, that too at a higher quality.
Spectator view is not a product which is officially sold by Microsoft, but more of a DIY hack for all those who are familiar with the programming and are able to follow Microsoft’s instructions available on
GitHub. In addition to the ability to follow them, you will need a DSLR along with a second HoloLens device.
With the entire setup, the DSLR will basically record its surroundings with the inclusion of any holograms that you have set up in the space, and it will present you with the ability to both stream live or record video and capture still pictures.
The company concluded by stating,
“On behalf of everyone on our team we are thrilled to bring spectator view to you so that you can bring what YOU have created to more people. We can’t wait to see what you create with this new perspective!”