Good news, Microsoft has officially announced that the HoloLens headset which already had it's "Development Edition" selling in the US and Canada,can now be purchased in the UK and five more countries.Pre-orders have already kickstarted,you can now preorder the device exclusively from Microsoft’s online store in the UK, as well as in Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, and New Zealand,for those who can't wait due to their eager excitement.
For most of us who do not know what the HoloLens is all about,it's a viewing device built by Microsoft similar to the VR headset but do not function the same way.Everything you need for your AR experience is built into the Hololens.There are two well-placed speakers on either side of the band (and they don’t cover your ears, which is an important thing with a device meant to be used collaboratively), with volume controls for each just above them. All the heavy lifting is done by what Microsoft calls a Holographic Processing Unit; this is built around a 32-bit Intel processor with 2GB of RAM, and with 64GB of onboard flash storage. This takes input from a range of sensors: a depth sensing camera, ambient light sensor, inertial sensors, and four ‘environmental cameras’. All these sensors combine to allow the HPU to build up a remarkably accurate 3D map of your environment.You can command the Hololens using either voice or gestures. Given Cortana’s rather… sketchy understanding of the Australian accent, we used gestures, and you can pretty much do everything with either head movement, gestures, or a combination thereof. To click on a control or menu, you use a fixed cursor to hover over it (this floats in the center of your vision, overlaid onto whatever it is you are viewing), then tap your thumb and forefinger together in front of your field of view. To go up a level in whatever menu structure you’re in, you use what the devs call a ‘bloom’ gesture – hold your fingers and thumb together, palm upwards, then slowly open your hand. It’s remarkably instinctual, and I was navigating menus in minutes.
According to reports,the first units are expected to ship on November 30, and as for the price, the hardware will set you back a cool £2,719 (it’s AU$4,369 in Australia). That’s a little disappointing, as the UK price is very close to being equivalent to the tag over in the US, where the HoloLens costs $3,000.
just an hour with the Hololens is enough to convince even the most hardened sceptic that Microsoft has created something very special indeed.Alex Kipman, technical fellow, Microsoft Windows and Devices Group said,
It has been quite inspiring to see what our partners have built and what individual developers have created [with HoloLens]. Together, we have only scratched the surface for what mixed reality can do. I can't wait to see what happens next as we welcome these new countries to our holographic landscape."
