Yesterday at the Microsoft Build Conference in San Francisco I was among the lucky few who got an invitation to a private Microsoft one-to-one demonstration of the HoloLens! This demonstration took place at the Intercontinental hotel just a block away from the Conference. At the scheduled time we arrived at the hotel and we were split into two small groups of just eight people. We were then escorted to an upper floor of the hotel. Microsoft took over the entire floor and had all rooms redecorated specifically for this demonstration. I am not even sure if it was just one floor...
They had a lot of Microsoft employees there, including security guards. First, we were taken to a locker room where we had to surrender all of our electronic gadgets: no cameras, recording or communication devices were allowed. Then we had a 10-minute orientation where they showed us how to put on and adjust the HoloLens, explained the basics, taught us some simple gestures: how to do a click with a finger in the air, for example. Finally they took the measurements of our interpupillary distances, just like an optometrist would do: the HoloLens needs to be configured accordingly (through a computer).
After the orientation, we were individually escorted to private rooms for one-to-one demonstrations. As I have found out later, they had several different demonstrations. In my case it was a virtual "tool box" which I used to build my own virtual environment: set up an aquarium in the corner of the room, copied and colored the fish, etc. it was fun!
A few things really surprised me. First of all, the virtual image location was very stable. No matter how I turned my head, or moved around the room, the 3-d virtual image remained in place at didn't move at all. At some point, just out of curiosity I decided to get behind an object, to see it from the back. No problem at all!
At the same time I was rather disappointed how narrow the field of view was: I could only see virtual objects in front of me, within a small angle, nothing in my peripheral vision. Not sure how big that angle was, but it was smaller than my home theater viewing angle. I also had some problems with voice commands: the HoloLens refused to understand my accent.
The device is pretty light. Lighter than I expected and is relatively easy to adjust on you head, thought it may require some practice. I tried it with and without my glasses. No problem either way. The picture was sharp enough, but i only had cartoonish looking objects.. My demonstration didn't include much audio, so I can't comment on the audio quality
Overall, I am very impressed with the HoloLens device and with the technology it's based on.