Microsoft won’t let us take any pictures of its amazing HoloLens headset. Damn them. Here’s the next best thing, though: five animated GIFs. If you want to know what holographic hardware looks like—inside and out—this is the best you’ll get.
Here are some early prototypes:
How it fits on your head:
The “floating audio” speaker system that Microsoft designed:
And the pièce de résistance, an exploded view of all the primary components in the front of the headset. Note the flat transparent displays, the tiny circuit board... and all those cameras.
So many cameras. The headset needs them to map your environment and figure out where you are and where you’re looking at all times. That way, it can “pin” virtual objects to real-world locations, and show you those objects every time you look their direction.
We carved these GIFs out of this brand-new YouTube video, if you want to see a bit more:
I’ll be getting our hands on HoloLens again at Microsoft’s Build developer conference this evening, but don’t expect any new pictures or video: they’re going to make me stuff my phone and camera in a locker again, just like they did in January.
You can find Microsoft’s full run-down here.