Microsoft has this week announced its latest project: a new mixed platform that allows people in different physical locations to combine collaborative and shared holographic experiences across different devices while experiencing the same virtual world.
The futures project, dubbed Microsoft Mesh, led this week’s Ignite digital conference, the company’s first major experience designed entirely for mixed reality, with people attending the co-op speak in a “shared holographic world.”
The concept of holoportation, which uses 3D capture technology to bring a vivid image of a person into a virtual view, will allow regionally dispersed teams to have a better sense of collaboration, however be it through doing meaningful design sessions, helping each other, or even hosting real social gatherings that go far beyond just catching up on Zoom.
“This is the dream for mixed reality, the idea from the very beginning,” Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman explained in a press release earlier this week. “You can feel like you’re in the same place with someone sharing content or you can teleport from various mixed reality devices and be present with people even when you’re not physically together.”
Microsoft Mesh will initially allow users to express themselves as avatars in a virtual world of sharing and experiences but over time the technology company will use holoportation to enable users to design themselves – their most vibrant, photorealistic ones – into the virtual shared universe.
While new developments make video conferencing similar to yesterday’s technology, this is really just the beginning of the Microsoft Mesh platform – which, according to Microsoft, will eventually beyond entering even more layers of human connection across the globe.
Two friends who live on opposite coasts, for example, could join the same show with avatars to experience the show together, Microsoft even hopes to create such photorealistic avatars which families separated by oceans and border routes may interact with family members in real time at reunion. .
“This is why we have been so passionate about mixed reality as the next big medium for collaborative computing,” Kipman said. “It’s magical when two people see the same hologram.”
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