Microsoft HoloLens Battery Lasts 5.5 Hours, 2.5 on "Heavy Load"

[Steven Bogos]

Microsoft HoloLens Battery Lasts 5.5 Hours, 2.5 on "Heavy Load"

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Microsoft says that the HoloLens will only last 2 and a half hours when used under a "heavy load".

Microsoft's upcoming half VR/half augmented reality headset Tel Aviv [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14150-HoloLens-Preview], Microsoft's Bruce Harris talked a bit about the device, specifically, how its battery life will only run around 2.5 hours when under a heavy load.

Harris claims that the HoloLens will last up to 5.5 hours when under "average" use. Unfortunately for us gamers, gaming pretty much falls under the heaviest load a PC can be under, so it looks like you'll only get 2 and a half hours of play time before having to recharge.

For comparison, the Wii U's gamepad has a battery life of somewhere between 3-5 hours [http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/latam/en/systems/wiiu/system_wiiu_gamepad.jsp], and that was already causing some annoyance to gamers.

Harris did however say that Microsoft was working hard on improvements to the device's battery life, and expects the retail unit to have a much longer life.

He also addressed the "field of view" concerns that some developers were already having. He explains that using the HoloLens will be similar to looking at a 15-inch monitor that's around two feet from your view, and while the retail edition's field of view won't be "hugely different" from the current dev kit, it will have some improvements.

Lastly, Harris gave us some pretty exciting news: you'll be able to link several HoloLens devices together, meaning two or more HoloLens users will be able to examine the same object (or play the same game, maybe?) in real time.

Source: The Verge [http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/16/10778864/microsoft-hololens-battery-life-features]

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[Sarge034]

Play the same game? I laughed out loud. The sheer lag from minimal differences in PCs and connection speeds will make real time VR interaction almost impossible in gaming and there is no way in hell one PC can take the load of rendering two separate game runtimes. The "moderate load" stuff? Sure I could see that, but not games.

 

[Mike Richards]

Play the same game? I laughed out loud. The sheer lag from minimal differences in PCs and connection speeds will make real time VR interaction almost impossible in gaming and there is no way in hell one PC can take the load of rendering two separate game runtimes. The "moderate load" stuff? Sure I could see that, but not games.

Honestly I'm not sure it'd be that different from your basic splitscreen.

If you're talking the virtual screen mode then essentially it is just splitscreen, with admittedly larger resolution. The majority of things I've thrown at my triple monitor display only have about a ten frame gap at most compared to when I just run one, so that's not necessarily a huge hurdle. Especially since the Lens doesn't even do full VR presentation. And just about everything that's fallen outside that range already has some optimization issues for my machine so they hardly came as a surprise.

Since the bigger focus here is virtual objects I can't help but feel like it's a bit hard to predict what the overhead is without knowing more of the specifics. But if anything I'd imagine rendering the objects themselves would be less intensive then a full scene if only because there's technically less there in a smaller field. So unless the input processing that keeps the scene in the right spot physically is super intensive, which it very well might be, I wouldn't expect it to be that much more difficult then, again, splitscreen.

Not to mention it would depend a lot on the kind of game being played. After all you're not gonna be running Crysis in a 3D projection in the middle of your living room, just by it's very design it wouldn't make sense. But something like a tabletop XCOM maybe? I'd bet it could chew that up and spit it out no problem.

The biggest issue though is technically we've already seen it work anyways. The E3 demo has a presenter and the camera interacting with the same scene, as well as a second player on an iPad, with seemingly no issue. Yes it's hard to gauge the timing exactly without actually having it in your hands, but at least the latency clearly isn't so bad a third party can easily see it. And try as hard as I can, that's one E3 demo I just can't think of a way to fake. So even if they're running it on a pretty damn good machine, it's still there.

 

[Sarge034]

Honestly I'm not sure it'd be that different from your basic splitscreen.

Save for the obscenely high specs required for proper performance. So I was postulating that it would over tax the system to try and have to separate game runtimes going at once. At least too much to have real time interaction.

 

[Mike Richards]

Honestly I'm not sure it'd be that different from your basic splitscreen.

Save for the obscenely high specs required for proper performance. So I was postulating that it would over tax the system to try and have to separate game runtimes going at once. At least too much to have real time interaction.

Have they released any of the specs yet? Last I heard it was all still hypothetical, but it's entirely possible I missed something. In any case, yeah, I'm expecting the requirements to be high. But there's a difference between high and insurmountably high, or even impractically high. Or how those requirements multiply when faced with more then one instance versus just getting things off the ground at all, that's not always a perfect curve. Either way it's all just so much speculation until someone actually tries to run the damn thing and tells the rest of us what happened.

The only thing we can say for sure is that based on the E3 demo it does physically work. Maybe you need an insanely good back end to run it, maybe it doesn't even work as well as it could in practice, but the device will actually do it, and apparently decently enough.

 

[weirdee]

I would think the stress of wearing a headset would cut most of these sessions short anyway, and playing a movie would be not that intensive.

 

[infohippie]

Someone should tell Microsoft there is such a thing as a "cable". Not everything needs to be wireless all the time, damnit! If it can be used while plugged in to charge that might be okay.

 

[Ed James]

Play the same game? I laughed out loud. The sheer lag from minimal differences in PCs and connection speeds will make real time VR interaction almost impossible in gaming and there is no way in hell one PC can take the load of rendering two separate game runtimes. The "moderate load" stuff? Sure I could see that, but not games.

Real time networked VR is a big research field right now (I know at least 3 colleagues looking into different ways to achieve this), so I wouldn't scoff at the idea.

Someone should tell Microsoft there is such a thing as a "cable". Not everything needs to be wireless all the time, damnit! If it can be used while plugged in to charge that might be okay.

I think it be safe to assume that a ?3,000 dev kit that is a self contained computer can run while plugged in. I appreciate a wireless alternative that doesn't use your phone. How long does an iPhone last at full blast? 3 hours?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well this is a presentation toy more then anything, you wouldn't really pick these things over VR for anything needing picture quality when everything in the background makes shit look worse. But for quick presentations where people take a peek at your 3D designs this should work fine.

If you decide to play games with it... well you are barking up the wrong tree.

 

[Lightknight]

I wonder what constitutes a "heavy load", doesn't the PC do the actual work with the headset just displaying it? Perhaps it's how much of your actions it has to capture and relay back?

 

[EndlessSporadic]

I'm actually ok with that battery life. It acts as a barrier to force people to do something else for a bit. Having that stuff right in front of your face for extended periods of time isn't good for your eyes.

 

[Ed James]

The headset is a self contained computer, streaming VR would be sub optimal any ways.

 

[Jacked Assassin]

Microsoft's upcoming half VR/half augmented reality headset coming out recently [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14150-HoloLens-Preview].

It's half VR? As in not purely Augmented Reality? I was more excited for this when I thought it had nothing to do with VR. 2016 continues to be a disappointment.

 

[Ed James]

Microsoft's upcoming half VR/half augmented reality headset coming out recently [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14150-HoloLens-Preview].

It's half VR? As in not purely Augmented Reality? I was more excited for this when I thought it had nothing to do with VR. 2016 continues to be a disappointment.

It's only 'half VR' by being able to darken the external glass and turn the headset into a purely VR one.

By definition AR is inherently part VR due to the simulated environment superimposed onto our physical world. How could one have a half AR experience? How could one have a full one for that matter?

 

[Something Amyss]

For comparison, the Wii U's gamepad has a battery life of somewhere between 3-5 hours [http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/latam/en/systems/wiiu/system_wiiu_gamepad.jsp], and that was already causing some annoyance to gamers.

And you don't even have to wear the damn thing.

 

[Lightknight]

Can the hololens be plugged in during use? I can't imagine most applications as requiring mobility at the moment.

Microsoft's upcoming half VR/half augmented reality headset coming out recently [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14150-HoloLens-Preview].

It's half VR? As in not purely Augmented Reality? I was more excited for this when I thought it had nothing to do with VR. 2016 continues to be a disappointment.

It's only 'half VR' by being able to darken the external glass and turn the headset into a purely VR one.

By definition AR is inherently part VR due to the simulated environment superimposed onto our physical world. How could one have a half AR experience? How could one have a full one for that matter?

I think this could be up for debate. Augmented reality deals specifically with overlaying or altering the real environment. Virtual reality deals with constructing a virtual environment constituting reality.

The two are in the same area but are not overlapping besides the inclusion of the virtual element.

 

[Ed James]

Can the hololens be plugged in during use? I can't imagine most applications as requiring mobility at the moment.

Microsoft's upcoming half VR/half augmented reality headset coming out recently [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14150-HoloLens-Preview].

It's half VR? As in not purely Augmented Reality? I was more excited for this when I thought it had nothing to do with VR. 2016 continues to be a disappointment.

It's only 'half VR' by being able to darken the external glass and turn the headset into a purely VR one.

By definition AR is inherently part VR due to the simulated environment superimposed onto our physical world. How could one have a half AR experience? How could one have a full one for that matter?

I think this could be up for debate. Augmented reality deals specifically with overlaying or altering the real environment. Virtual reality deals with constructing a virtual environment constituting reality.

The two are in the same area but are not overlapping besides the inclusion of the virtual element.

I'd say they similar enough (I.e. If you have a decent AR system, you've got an amazing VR system) due to the sensors, latency and rendering power required, but true, they are different fields, but virtual environments are a spectrum.

 

[Lightknight]

Can the hololens be plugged in during use? I can't imagine most applications as requiring mobility at the moment.

Microsoft's upcoming half VR/half augmented reality headset coming out recently [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/conferences/e3-2015/14150-HoloLens-Preview].

It's half VR? As in not purely Augmented Reality? I was more excited for this when I thought it had nothing to do with VR. 2016 continues to be a disappointment.

It's only 'half VR' by being able to darken the external glass and turn the headset into a purely VR one.

By definition AR is inherently part VR due to the simulated environment superimposed onto our physical world. How could one have a half AR experience? How could one have a full one for that matter?

I think this could be up for debate. Augmented reality deals specifically with overlaying or altering the real environment. Virtual reality deals with constructing a virtual environment constituting reality.

The two are in the same area but are not overlapping besides the inclusion of the virtual element.

I'd say they similar enough (I.e. If you have a decent AR system, you've got an amazing VR system) due to the sensors, latency and rendering power required, but true, they are different fields, but virtual environments are a spectrum.

Like I said, they overlap in that they are rendering virtual things. But AR is rendering virtual items onto the environment whereas VR is rendering the environment itself. So I would debate a clear distinction despite the similarities.

The fact that AR requires authentic reality and VR is specifically virtual reality makes them mutually exclusive from one another.

The only question I'd have is how to define a scenario where the entire scene being viewed is virtual but the censors are taking into account room size and furniture placement in the real world. So imagine that everything in your house is rendered virtually to be in the same place where the real objects are. So you can sit down and move around without bumping into things.

The entire environment would be virtual, but it would be an overlay over actual reality. In that circumstance I think we could present it as both, but only in that sort of scenario. Or, we could call it some third specific thing. Like VAR or something. Then we could have games that take place in your home where you can run from them and turn corners and such. Any characters would then naturally be called VAR CHARs... Teehee.