Although the market for virtual and augmented reality products has grown more slowly than anticipated, Microsoft hopes to speed up the industry by making it much simpler for users to connect from various locations and with many types of devices.
The long-term objective of the new initiative, known as Microsoft Mesh, is to enable, for instance, a collaboration between a person in a New York office using Facebook’s Oculus VR headset and a person in Seattle using Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 glasses.
The two people would be able to see virtual versions of one another materialize in their offices, conversing and moving as if they were actually there, using Mesh-compatible hardware and software. Additionally, both would be able to see a shared projection of virtual charts or other digital objects that they might alter or control.
At least, that is the idea Microsoft unveiled at its Ignite conference on Tuesday for the first time in front of the general public. Mesh might eventually link users using different VR devices, PC and Mac laptops, and smartphones.
However, it might not be as simple as the business anticipates convincing all the various hardware manufacturers to adopt Microsoft’s standards. While major collaboration tools like Teams and Office will work with Mesh, other software developers might be hesitant to rely on Microsoft for such crucial functionality.
At the demonstration, Alex Kipman, a Microsoft technical fellow working on the project, said, “This has been the ideal for mixed reality, the idea from the very beginning.” “You might genuinely have the impression that you are present when someone is providing stuff. Alternatively, you can travel between several mixed reality devices to be there with others, even if you’re not in the same room.
Gamers could find the Mesh system benefits as well. On Tuesday, John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic, the company that created Pokémon Go, showed how the game may operate by having players standing in various locations all see the same Pokémon figures. Hanke explained, “We want to put everyone in the same ‘room’ so they can bounce ideas off of one other and have that personal connection.
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