You might have seen the very cool simulation of Portal in Hololens recently. White it demonstrated the ways in which Microsoft’s augmented reality device could replicate the video game’s mechanic of launching objects through portals, it didn’t allow the user to walk through the portals themselves. “HoleLenz Gate” does exactly that and it’s bad for people who are afraid of heights.
Developer Kei Voxel has been tinkering with this impressive experiment for a while now. You can see a compilation of his progress in the video below. But be warned, that it might cause a sinking feeling in your stomach. The holes in the floor certainly appear dangerous but when the user walks through the portal into a whole other location overlooking a mountain range, it becomes clear that this is some next level tech.
Hololens is still a long ways off from being a commercial product but we have to say the demos and dev projects that we’re seeing are really impressive. This thing is a lot more exciting than VR. And if rumors are true, Microsoft knows it. Last month reports indicated that the tech giant is so confident that it’s on to something and so encouraged by how far behind its competitors appear to be that they’re skipping an entire iterative stage. If sources are correct, Microsoft plans to hold back on Hololens version 2 and move forward with its plans for version 3. That means developers won’t be getting the next model until 2019.
For now, you can drool over the amazing stuff Kei Voxel is doing in the video below and keep up with his future experiments through his Twitter.