Imperial College Advanced Hackspace (ICAH) invited Maximilian Doelle from Kazendi to speak at our event called 'Designing Mixed Reality'.

‘Designing Mixed Reality’ talk by Kazendi

By Jin Yun Soo

For some people, their first encounter with Augmented Reality might be the mobile game, Pokemon GO. However, the realm of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality can offer so much more than catching Pokemons; it captures the imagination and makes those possibilities a reality—virtually. What if you can let your loved ones see what you see? What if you and whom you Skype with can interact—drawing and placing images—in your space and your world? What if you can collaborate, make decisions together, or receive online tutorials in real time as if the person is really by your side? The possibilities are endless.

On 30 November 2016, the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace (ICAH) invited Maximilian Doelle from Kazendi to speak at our event called ‘Designing Mixed Reality’. An alumnus of Imperial College London, Doelle is now the Chief Prototyper at Kazendi, a company that prototypes an idea within a week and conducts User Experience tests for clients.

The talk on Mixed Reality had a focus on Kazendi’s use of the most prominent Mixed Reality headset currently available in the market—Microsoft Hololens. Microsoft Hololens is fully developed by Microsoft. In fact, they designed their own chip with built-in hand gesture recognition so that all the gestures are captured in real time. Thus, it is sold at steep prices of £2,719 for the Development Edition and £4,529 for the Commercial Suite. Doelle explained that Microsoft built a lot of games applications in-house to demonstrate its capability, but shortly before it was launched, Microsoft began to target, understandably, business users.

Before Hololens arrived in the UK, Doelle pondered about choosing between purchasing a car and investing in a Hololens kit. During a trip to the United States, he not only went for the latter, he went all out to purchase a few more. Being among the first in the UK to get their hands on the kit, Kazendi has been experimenting and creating amazing projects with Hololens.

Microsoft states on its website that Mixed Reality ‘encompasses a wide range of experiences that previously were considered to be only Augmented Reality or only Virtual Reality. In Mixed Reality, people, places, and objects from your physical and virtual worlds merge together in a blended environment that becomes your canvas.’ During the talk, Doelle gave some examples of its applications. If you are a Hololens user, when you Skype with your father to ask him how to fix the pipes under your kitchen sink, you can allow him to not only see but also draw in your world through his tablet screen, while in real time you can see his instructions and drawings through your lens. Besides that, Hololens allows the possibility of virtually unlimited screen real estate; there is no need to connect multiple monitors or procure larger and larger screens. Apart from screen real estate, Hololens has the potential to disrupt the actual real estate industry by making online house viewing a very real experience.

The beauty of Microsoft Hololens is that it lowers the barrier of entry for developing its applications, so that keen technologists and developers can start creating quickly. Hololens uses the Universal Windows Platform: all holographic apps are Universal Windows apps, and all Universal Windows apps can be made to run on Hololens. Microsoft’s website also provides tutorials on the use of the middleware tool, Unity, to create holograms for Hololens. Hololens is a standalone mobile computer with memory and storage, but you also have the option to run an app on a PC and use Hololens as a display—though more technical effort is required for the latter. Kazendi offers workshops and sessions to experience Hololens; learn more via https://www.kazendi.com/hololens.

Stay tuned for more events like this—and unlike this—by joining the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace (ICAH) for free (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/advanced-hackspace/internal-college-users/apply/) and following us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/advancedHackspace). If you are eager to be part of ICAH’s ‘Unreal’ community that has shared interest and/or expertise in Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality, do contact Jin via jys13 [at] ic.ac.uk.

Maximilian Doelle from Kazendi gave an engaging talk on Mixed Reality and Microsoft Hololens. A member of the audience tried the Hololens headset, and what he sees is displayed on the screen for the rest of the audience.