Microsoft recently held their ‘Ignite’ conference in order to show off some of their new technology and one of the most interesting things they showed off was a new program known as Microsoft Mesh. It’s an application for their mixed reality headset, Hololens, and is essentially a way to digitally transfer avatars of other users into a real space, essentially making real life holograms.
The concept is definitely cool and the applications could be numerous however I do have some concerns about it from what I have seen. First this seems exactly like the type of system that would be incredibly buggy and unintuitive though I suppose it will just have to be something that we will be able to gauge the reception of once it has been out for a while. Second while the concept of having people interact in realspace sounds great in concept I don’t really see the point in it if you cannot see the outside world around you as it essentially just acts like a virtual meetings hub which can be done just as well via webcam. Finally the biggest issue is that I feel that VR already kind of covers the interaction via digital avatar niche as not only can you fully customise your environment but in order to even use Mesh you still need to own and have on your head the Hololens so if you need to use some kind of technological peripheral to show others then why not just use VR instead.
Maybe I’m just not thinking in a big enough way about this but I imagine along with these niche uses and lack of popularity for Hololens that this may end up being a bit of a dissapointment for Microsoft but I am more than happy to be proven wrong. Maybe we could finally couch game over the internet, the ultimate weird workaround experience!
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.