April in Review: HoloLens, Unity Tutorial, WebVR, and More!

April has been a busy and exciting month – there’s been a lot of news in the VR and AR communities, and HoloLens has jumped into the mix with Build this week, finishing off the keynote address yesterday and starting to gain exposure with various demos available to Build attendees. I had a chance to try out the Holographic Academy event they’re doing (expect more on this very soon, in the meantime check out this guy’s experience) and I’m really excited with the direction HoloLens seems to be heading.

This month, I also published a getting started with Unity 5 tutorial that I created as I was teaching myself the basics of 3D development and world creation within the Unity editor. It’s not meant to be a best practices guide, but instead walks through the fundamentals of getting down basic game mechanics for developers (and non-developers) who are interested in picking up some of the basics. VR support will be coming alongside the basic gameplay mechanism soon, as companies begin to release more complete versions of their tools and SDKs. Yes, at some point in the future, HoloLens will be one of them. If you’re interested in picking up some of the basics about Unity, or know someone who might be, check out the tutorial here.

 Alongside Unity, I’ve been teaching myself the basics of WebVR, which I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts on the topic. I’ve recently begun a second WebVR application that allows you to visualize Excel charts in 3D space using Three.JS and a new virtual reality boilerplate template, and am getting excited about that being close to a point where I can share more details about it. I’ve also been a lot more exposed to other projects being worked on with WebVR as part of a talk that I’m doing in two weeks at JSConf Budapest, where I’ll be speaking about JavaScript’s role in virtual reality and how web developers can get started with the technology today! The talk will be live streamed and available on-demand after the conference, so stay tuned for that! I’ll also share my slides – and if you’re interested in hosting the talk in a social VR space, please get in touch because that would be amazing! 

Finally, in unrelated-to-VR-news, I’m in the process of transitioning my blog off of WordPress.com and making some much-needed updates to the overall site. Things may be a little wonky as I figure these out, so if things look out of place or are unavailable, shoot me a note on Twitter and let me know if there are bugs I miss!

Happy Holograming!

Do we live in a hologram? 

After Hours @ BUILD – RSVP Today!

Not attending BUILD but interested in getting the scoop? Join us on April 29th at our After Hours event and meet with me and the rest of the Northern California Microsoft evangelism team in a social setting to hear about our OSS journey. We’ve got a lot we’re excited to share, and we want that to extend outside of the conference attendees, too! RSVP at http://aka.ms/afterhours or shoot me a message if you’ve got any questions! It should be a lot of fun – I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

Announcing Windows Holographic and Microsoft HoloLens

Today at the Windows 10 Preview event, Microsoft officially announced their stake in the VR/AR game with Windows Holographic and Microsoft HoloLens – we are officially living in the future.

Source: Microsoft

Today’s Windows 10 event generated a lot of buzz for the HoloLens and Windows Holographic, with a live demo of an app called HoloStudio showing a drone being decorated to showcase how you can use the HoloLens to build things on the PC and see how they look in 3D. While we’re still waiting on most of the details, tech specs, and availability, word on the street is that they’ll likely be opening up a developer program sometime early this year.

What we do know already is that Minecraft is going to be a key app for demonstrating the headset’s capability, and that there will be a lot of potential for Microsoft’s “Universal” apps to run seamlessly with the HoloLens.

Source: Business Insider

Another important demonstration from the Windows 10 event also adds to the hype and excitement about Windows Holographic and HoloLens: Cortana, Microsoft’s personal assistant AI, is coming to Windows 10, which leads me to believe that the voice control on HoloLens will be pretty fantastic. I’ve used all 3 personal assistants and Cortana takes the cake over Siri and Google Now, and the limited nature of current VR/AR input devices means that a solid voice navigation system could very well be in the works.

Wired got a first look and hands-on with the HoloLens, and you can follow the new product’s official Twitter account @hololens. Stay tuned as more information comes in, and I’ll be doing my best to see about getting a demo myself!

Designing Office for iPad

Designing Office for iPad

A really good overview of the way that the Office for iPad team worked from scenarios to build an awesome experience of a classic Windows application on a non-Windows device.

Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner #61 – Microsoft!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending my second Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner, hosted by Microsoft. Since we were holding the event at our awesome new Executive Conference center, various members of the Silicon Valley Women at Microsoft group got a chance to attend and volunteer.

Firstly, I have to give mad props to volunteers who check in huge volumes of people at large conferences and for the organizers themselves. The Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners have grown huge – out of the roughly 1200+ lottery entrants, around a third are offered a tickets – and the amount of planning that goes into holding these events is extraordinary.

After an introduction by Lisa Brummel, Microsoft’s Vice President of Human Resources, two members of the Skype team presented an inspiring technical talk about machine learning and how it was being used as a prediction method to serve customized content during Skype conversations. This was accompanied by a cheesy yet “feel good” video around how Skype is connecting the world that brought out a few laughs from the crowd and a live demo that had a surprisingly human interactive feel to it.

“It’s about generating energy. Change comes from directing that energy. Do something great.” – Lisa Brummel

Lisa got back on stage and spoke openly about her history at Microsoft and the importance of being energetic and passionate about the work you’re doing. Julie Larson-Green talked about her “don’t tell me I can’t do it” personality that always pushed her to thrive on the challenges of making the impossible a reality and spoke whimsically of a childhood tale involving coffee and the importance of taking responsibility for finding solutions. She also had on a fabulous pair of stilettos and made no apologies for being the type of girl to rock an awesome pair of shoes.

The introduction slide was an appropriate nod to Julie’s love of heels

Following a panel discussion about work and lesser-known trivia about Microsoft (apparently a single Xbox generation can have 4-5 different physical interior designs throughout its lifetime) I enjoyed a chance to snack on delicious free food – the Girl Geek Dinners are delightfully catered – and network with other women from the industry. I had a chance to catch up with several attendees that I had met at other conferences and a few coworkers I hadn’t seen in some time, and left with a renewed sense of community and excitement for what lies ahead in tech.

Interested in learning more about the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners?

Remote Desktop Preview for WP 8.1 is now available!

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2014/04/23/microsoft-remote-desktop-preview-app-for-windows-phone-8-1-available-for-download.aspx

Today is an exciting day for the Remote Desktop team as we launch the preview of the official Microsoft Remote Desktop app for Windows Phone 8.1! I’m happy to be part of such a great group of people who are passionate about our products. Looking forward to what we do with it next!

Universal Apps for Windows Devices

Universal Apps for Windows Devices

I am really excited about this announcement from BUILD. One app that can be used on multiple platforms is awesome for developers and for consumers, since it helps with a consistent experience across the board. I think we’re finally getting closer to the converging of mobile and desktop, and moving away from different devices that essentially do the same thing.

The Newest PC Battle is on the Television

Today, Valve announced SteamOS – the popular gaming platform’s attempt at competing more directly with the Xbox and Playstation. With Apple TV and Google Chromecast, not to mention Samsung’s ‘Smart TV’ incentives, we are seeing a big shift from traditional television and the big tech companies are taking over. I don’t think this is a bad thing.

The Converging of the Mobile and Desktop OS

A few months back when Google announced that they were keeping Chrome OS and Android separate, I wrote a blog post about why this disappointed me. Yesterday, when Apple announced the iPhone 5S, I got a little bit of that excitement back. The introduction of the 64-bit mobile operating system gave me faith that my dream of “one device to rule them all” is on its way – hopefully sooner rather than later.

Let’s Discuss: Swapping Operating Systems

My first computer ran DOS. I was 2 years old when I installed my first computer game (I couldn’t say the word “setup”, but I could apparently spell it right) and I’ve been running on Windows ever since. 3.1, 98, ME, XP, Vista, you name it – my personal primary computer is running the release preview of 8.1 now, and I love it to death. You could call me a Windows “power user”, though I’m sure my Linux-touting friends would scoff at me. Your definition of the word power user may vary.

I’ve used Ubuntu and Mint. I loved the Macintosh G3 computers in elementary school and begged my dad for a pink one (I’m still holding out hope I can track down a case and do something cool with it) but at home, I spent hours living in Bill Gate’s operating system and developed a passion for computing that led to my job with Microsoft today. And while I love booting up my desktop to play around in the Mint terminal (I greatly prefer it to Windows 8 for Python programming), the one operating system I haven’t had the chance to learn is OSX – until now.