Microsoft's HoloLens killer app: When is it coming?

Enough of the flim-flam and demos: we want useful "holograms" now

I've been covering Microsoft HoloLens since it was announced in January 2015 and - in line with much of the virtual reality (though call HoloLens this at your peril; it's "mixed reality", dammit) hardware we've seen spring up over the past couple of years - there still feels some way to go until the concept reaches any kind of enterprise fruition.

For those in the know, I've sat through two HoloLens "Academy" demos and thoroughly enjoyed both - whether flicking origami balls off a table, or shooting hovering robots in a sort of proto-deathmatch scenario. Both instances felt pretty ‘gamey' to me, and I almost thought it was a shame that the likes of Occulus Rift and Sony VR were so aggressively pursuing the VR space. Perhaps Microsoft felt put off?

Today, at another HoloLens meeting at London's BETT education technology conference, I started by checking how Microsoft was feeling about games right now, as the entertainment industry sees VR making - if not a foothold - then certainly an in-road. Is Microsoft distancing itself from the entertainment market?

"It's not a distancing against games, it's more a prioritisation", explained Microsoft's HoloLens commercial lead for EMEA, Roger Walkden.

"Because if I talk to a games company today and say 'Hey good news guys, we've got a new platform and it's called HoloLens - go make a game' they'll say 'Terrific - how many people own a HoloLens?' and I'd be like 'Hmm, yeah...'."

"With games, games companies need a large install base - that's why they like Xbox and PlayStation; they want to know that a big group of people out there all want to buy their stuff, and we can't guarantee that at this point.

"The price point is too high, it's only the Development Edition, so the market at the moment is only developers."

Which is all fine and dandy, but after Walkden admitted to me that HoloLens - the mentioned Development Edition of which has been shipping to US developers since March 2016 - has only sold in the "thousands", but that Microsoft is "fine" with that and it's "all [Microsoft] needs", one has to wonder if enterprise and gaming are quite so distinct.

Because no matter how deep the pockets of a developer or an enterprise, nobody with the keys to the IT till will stand a chance of pushing through multiple HoloLens purchases unless there's a reason to do so, and I for one - even as a keen cheerleader for this tech - am starting to weary of waiting for a genuine use case.

It should also be noted that "Build with Microsoft" and "Build with a partner" are two keenly-offered elements of how to "get started" with HoloLens. Perhaps a genuinely good chat from your organisation could get this ball rolling faster? But then who wants to be first to risk shelling out their bucks to Microsoft developers for something that might not work that well?

Lift me up

Nevertheless, as much of the media was today dutifully reprinting Microsoft press releases about how Trimble and the University of Cambridge (Google it, we didn't cover it) are only now looking at legitimate ways to use HoloLens for construction (despite architecture featuring in the launch video reel two years ago), I was shown two other demos today, behind closed doors.

The first was a video of German elevator firm ThyssenKrupp, which is dated back to September 2016, and the upshot of which is that wearing a HoloLens means a service engineer will have his hands free to fix the lift. All footage was, as ever with HoloLens case studies, ‘best case scenario' CG overlays and no actual first-person HoloLens footage. I found it online here. Take a look, before moving onto page 2:

Microsoft's HoloLens killer app: When is it coming?

Enough of the flim-flam and demos: we want useful "holograms" now

I quite liked the stuff about pulling out 3D models of parts (around 1.41 in the video), but as I'm unsure about the technical knowledge already required by a lift engineer before they're sent out to fix things, I can't comment on the full usefulness of a 3D model in the field. If Microsoft fancies sending me to fix an elevator myself to see how useful it is, I'm totally up for that.

The next think I looked at was an in-person demo by "Microsoft and Case Western" which was similar to those original HoloLens reveal videos, and numerous keynotes since. A 3D human body was stripped down (oo-er) into explorations of muscles, bones, possible breakages, and all the good stuff to help you explore the inner wonders of our anatomy.

The demo was on-rails, with ‘air taps' of my fingers merely moving the demo on to the next phase, so I wasn't able to directly interact with the body in meaningful ways.

I was a little surprised that this software was apparently to be aimed at doctors, though. To me, it looked - even in a more interactive form - like a brilliant way to build an amazing encyclopedia for school kids. I'm almost sure we were told it was aimed at students back when it was revealed two years back, but I could be wrong.

I'm not for one moment suggesting Microsoft changed its plans for HoloLens on the fly - despite opening with Minecraft in 2015 and generating headlines to that effect, and making a very public announcement of an enterprise tack in mid-2016.

I've always been a champion of the kit as a useful enterprise tool anyway. But while my specific questions about the product's roadmap were wafted aside somewhat, I remain extremely curious as to what - and when - Microsoft is going to show us to really blow the lid off what HoloLens is going to do for the world of work, and why a business would want to throw several thousand pounds at purchasing each one.

As it stands, Unity demos, on-rails finger-tap presentations and videos with sexed-up visuals aren't really doing it for me anymore. It's not the kind of third-party developer support I'd like to be seeing by now.

It's been two years, and I want to see HoloLens in the office, making a difference, not languishing in the bargain bin where (both versions of) its progenitor Kinect ended up.