Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition Open For Pre-Order

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Microsoft just announced that the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition is now available for pre-order. According to the press release, units will begin shipping on March 30th.

I’m thrilled to announce that starting today, developer applicants will start receiving invitations to purchase the Microsoft HoloLens Development Edition – which will begin shipping on March 30th. Today represents a monumental step forward. This is the first step in our journey to consumers. A step focused on our commercial partnerships and on supporting developers, who will help pave the way to consumer availability with amazing and new holographic experiences.
 
Wow, that thing looks uncomfortable as hell. I wonder if they'll be able to make it more compact as the consumer version is further developed.
 
I like how it's not available to pre-order, it's available to apply to be invited to pre-order.
 
Guess the crowd that bought Titan Z will jump all over these. $3,000 is nothing for them.
 
So the Oculus Rift was $300 on kickstarter for their development kit, and Microsoft wants you to apply to pay $3,000? Interesting.
 
The difference being that pretty much anyone could buy an Oculus DK. You're probably getting dedicated support with the Hololens kit.
ManofGod said:
Well, this is a development unit and not a consumer edition product. For development, $3000 is not bad at all.
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My thoughts, exactly.
 
They should have HoloLens like they use to have video conference rooms for business and HoloLens for Arcade-ish experience for kids, both significantly upgraded.
 
For those bitching about the price. You don't need or use a PC. This IS a PC. That is what is build into the band around your head. It is a fully functional standalone device. That is why it cost as much as it does.
 
I don't see how the $3,000 price tag is a problem.

1. Its a developer unit.

2. It is cutting edge, this isn't VR but AR.

3. I'd be willing to bet that most AR applications will not be gaming, or even every day PC tasks. This particular technology has way more application in industrial, medical and design fields than even VR.

I am very curious to see this tech develop, and it would be horribly disappointing if it was just another way to watch TV or play games.
 
Aireoth said:
I don't see how the $3,000 price tag is a problem.

1. Its a developer unit.

2. It is cutting edge, this isn't VR but AR.

3. I'd be willing to bet that most AR applications will not be gaming, or even every day PC tasks. This particular technology has way more application in industrial, medical and design fields than even VR.

I am very curious to see this tech develop, and it would be horribly disappointing if it was just another way to watch TV or play games.
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1. Oculus was a dev unit and a lot cheaper. Sure there's differences but $3,000 is a lot for a lot of people, especially indie dev's.

2. It's not that cutting edge. Transparent glasses displays have been around for a long time now and motion tracking and the like are pretty common these days. VR is just a technical.

3. That's fine but last I check MS is pushing this for gaming. Though I doubt that'll be it's main focus due to price. If they're charging $3,000 for dev kits something tells me the final product will be at least $1,000.

Certainly not the PSVR competitor that people thought it was going to be.
 
Mut1ny said:
1. Oculus was a dev unit and a lot cheaper. Sure there's differences but $3,000 is a lot for a lot of people, especially indie dev's.

2. It's not that cutting edge. Transparent glasses displays have been around for a long time now and motion tracking and the like are pretty common these days. VR is just a technical.

3. That's fine but last I check MS is pushing this for gaming. Though I doubt that'll be it's main focus due to price. If they're charging $3,000 for dev kits something tells me the final product will be at least $1,000.

Certainly not the PSVR competitor that people thought it was going to be.
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They have been using it with NASA already. I was under no illusion that this particular device was going to in any way compete price wise with VR.

Edit: Looking at and thinking about AR games, I just don't see them actually taking off, not unless the game has the ability to entirely replace your environment, people are going to dramatically notice the difference between the simulated items and the real environment. I can see that bugging most gamer's.
 
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I wonder how long before the consumer version is going to be out? The demos for this look very impressive. We might get a dev version of this (for where I work), but haven't gotten the official OK yet. We had the Google Glass and Oculus. The Glass could be cool, but needs a lot more time in the oven to finish baking. The dev kits of the Rift are cool, but give me major headaches and dizziness.
For personal use, I'll be sitting on the sidelines for all of these technologies for a while until it matures a bit. Exciting products - can't wait to see these in a few years.
 
1) I did not know that they were announcing the Dev kit, let alone on the same day as Vive Pre-Orders. Still, more AR and VR is great!

2) Let's not forget that one of the HUGE points of the hololens is that it is wireless.

3) This is a DEV kit, $3000 is a pittance for anyone that is serious about developing applications for a piece of hardware.
 
Mut1ny said:
1. Oculus was a dev unit and a lot cheaper. Sure there's differences but $3,000 is a lot for a lot of people, especially indie dev's.

2. It's not that cutting edge. Transparent glasses displays have been around for a long time now and motion tracking and the like are pretty common these days. VR is just a technical.

3. That's fine but last I check MS is pushing this for gaming. Though I doubt that'll be it's main focus due to price. If they're charging $3,000 for dev kits something tells me the final product will be at least $1,000.

Certainly not the PSVR competitor that people thought it was going to be.
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Apples and oranges.

1. Oculus Rift DK1 was a device that used existing display in a case with lenses to focus each eyes on the rendered image. It used entirely off-the-shelf parts for its electronics, which were basically a 7" LCD screen, a 72MHz ARM CPU, a six-axis motion sensor, a three-axis compass, a DVI interface controller, 256KB of flash memory, and plastic+straps to hold it to your head. It required a PC to drive graphics through its HDMI/DVI port, and acts essentially as a specialized display and input device. The DK2 requires an external camera for tracking the position within the world. It's cool, but the Rift DK1 isn't remotely the same as the Hololens. Even the DK2 and the final released version are still primarily commodity hardware.

In comparison, the Hololens has a full computer built in, uses a new lens that isn't off-the-shelf/commercially available, has a specialized processor for interpreting environment data, multiple cameras and sensors to feed back into that processor, and has amazing 3d positional sound that doesn't require over-ear headphones.

2. While transparent displays have been around, I'd love to see what devices you are referring to when you say "transparent glasses displays have been around for a long time now." Further, you call it "motion tracking", but the Hololens goes much farther than that, performing real-time world mapping with the ability to do something like pin something to a wall, walk around the house, and walk back to where the application is pinned and it's still there.

3. Where do you get that idea? While you can certainly play games with it, that's not at all what the Hololens has been pushed for. Consider the demos (at least the ones I know are publicly available) - create object for 3d printing, remotely assist someone for DIY projects, virtual telepresence for scientific collaboration, and a couple games. More are focused on the use of the augmented reality than on playing (though I'll admit some of the games were quite addictive - e.g. Project XRay was simple but quite fun and I see we finally released a video for the new Conker game).

That said, the Rift is likely going to be the better device for most gamers due to its FOV and better immersion. You stop noticing the lower FOV when playing for a while, but it's certainly a place for future improvement (assuming battery tech and/or processor power consumption get there). Still, the team deserves a ton of credit, the device is awesome, and I'm glad we're (Microsoft, but not my team) finally getting the dev kits out there :).
 
Tawnos said:
Apples and oranges.

1. Oculus Rift DK1 was a device that used existing display in a case with lenses to focus each eyes on the rendered image. It used entirely off-the-shelf parts for its electronics, which were basically a 7" LCD screen, a 72MHz ARM CPU, a six-axis motion sensor, a three-axis compass, a DVI interface controller, 256KB of flash memory, and plastic+straps to hold it to your head. It required a PC to drive graphics through its HDMI/DVI port, and acts essentially as a specialized display and input device. The DK2 requires an external camera for tracking the position within the world. It's cool, but the Rift DK1 isn't remotely the same as the Hololens. Even the DK2 and the final released version are still primarily commodity hardware.

In comparison, the Hololens has a full computer built in, uses a new lens that isn't off-the-shelf/commercially available, has a specialized processor for interpreting environment data, multiple cameras and sensors to feed back into that processor, and has amazing 3d positional sound that doesn't require over-ear headphones.

2. While transparent displays have been around, I'd love to see what devices you are referring to when you say "transparent glasses displays have been around for a long time now." Further, you call it "motion tracking", but the Hololens goes much farther than that, performing real-time world mapping with the ability to do something like pin something to a wall, walk around the house, and walk back to where the application is pinned and it's still there.

3. Where do you get that idea? While you can certainly play games with it, that's not at all what the Hololens has been pushed for. Consider the demos (at least the ones I know are publicly available) - create object for 3d printing, remotely assist someone for DIY projects, virtual telepresence for scientific collaboration, and a couple games. More are focused on the use of the augmented reality than on playing (though I'll admit some of the games were quite addictive - e.g. Project XRay was simple but quite fun and I see we finally released a video for the new Conker game).

That said, the Rift is likely going to be the better device for most gamers due to its FOV and better immersion. You stop noticing the lower FOV when playing for a while, but it's certainly a place for future improvement (assuming battery tech and/or processor power consumption get there). Still, the team deserves a ton of credit, the device is awesome, and I'm glad we're (Microsoft, but not my team) finally getting the dev kits out there :).
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Glad to see somebody else does understand this. You can't compare all these things
 
The point isn't that the DK1 was cheaper than the HoloLens dev kit, of course it was, the point is that the DK1 was half the price of the CV1. The question is whether HoloLens is working to the console model where dev kits are significantly more expensive than consumer hardware. Although given the tech in HoloLens which, like the Rift but unlike consoles, will likely improve in quality during development, it seems unlikely a retail unit would be a much cheaper.
 
Exavior said:
Glad to see somebody else does understand this. You can't compare all these things
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Helps that I had multiple units kicking around the house for a while and can finally mention some of the stuff I got to see firsthand. Basically, with stuff like this, if it's not publicly stated officially and in the open, it's best to avoid anything that could leak info :).

Litfod said:
The point isn't that the DK1 was cheaper than the HoloLens dev kit, of course it was, the point is that the DK1 was half the price of the CV1. The question is whether HoloLens is working to the console model where dev kits are significantly more expensive than consumer hardware. Although given the tech in HoloLens which, like the Rift but unlike consoles, will likely improve in quality during development, it seems unlikely a retail unit would be a much cheaper.
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It was half the price because the DK1 primarily used a small list of common off-the shelf parts, and the CV added a significant number of things to that - external camera, IR, headphones, etc. Additionally, they probably were trying to make money with the CV so had some profit built into it.

Either way, that's far different than developing prototype hardware that includes things like custom silicon and small-quantity orders of not-very-common, new hardware. I have no idea what the target price is, but it would surprise me if it's as or more expensive than the dev kits. Refer to this post's discussion of the //BUILD 2011 conference. I was one of the people helping with that device testing (though I gave the device I received to my old team when I moved to my current one, though I kept the signed posted of one of those shells). Raymond's comment about the price makes me think the Hololens dev kits are in a similar position:

"Now about the devices themselves: They were a very limited run of custom hardware, and they were not cheap. I think the manufacturing cost was in the high $2000s per unit, and that doesn’t count all the sunk costs. I found it amusing when people wrote, “What do you mean a free tablet? Obviously they baked that into the cost of the conference registration, so you paid for it anyway.” Conference registeration was $2,095 (or $1,595 if you registered early), which nowhere near covered the cost of the device."

Of course, I could end up wrong about price, but just as comparing the rift DK1 to the Hololens is comparing apples and oranges, so is comparing the price change of DK1->CV versus Hololens Dev kit -> whatever release product is made.
 
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