Microsoft And Volvo Bring Augmented Reality To Car Shopping

Volvo Seen With HoloLens Screenshot by author, from YouTube Swedish automaker Volvo has a long-held reputation as a car company that puts safety first. Some safety features, like replacing spear-like traditional steering wheel shafts with bulkier, non-impaley versions are easy to see. Other features, like laser sensors that detect the movements of nearby cars, are a little trickier to demonstrate on the showroom floor. So, to advertise their safety in the modern era, Volvo teamed with Microsoft to create models of the cars in virtual reality: There are no actual cars in this showroom. Instead, prospective buyers wear goggles for Microsoft’s HoloLens system, which displays virtual objects like they’re holograms, and walk around virtual visions of both the car and the invisible systems that […] Read More

Where Does Virtual End & Reality Begin?

When I first became interested in computer graphics Virtual Reality was in its infancy and it took a computer the size of a room to “render” a believable environment in which a user could navigate and interact. It was pretty clear where “you” ended and where reality began – since it required a clunky set of tools and massive processing. Now, as with so many other areas of technology, that processing power is coming to the desktop as Microsoft, Google and others make incredible advances in this area. But of course what seems to be happening is that the perceptions that have been attributed to our “normal” senses are intercepted on their way to the brain’s conceptual and analytical centers, so that we think […] Read More