Hololens is where our state of the art is - and I'm quite happy with that, it's imperfect magic! So when someone comes along and essentially says "we're doing all the magical stuff we can do today but somehow removing ALL the really hard limitations, and no we won't tell you how!" it just smells like wish-fulfillment hucksterism. I can just point a finger at Hololens and say "hey, this is what today's reality ACTUALLY looks like."
"Maybe Microsoft is saving all the wow factor for its keynotes, but my demo was a less refined and less capable version of what we've seen in on-stage demos. My experience, while impressive, felt like child's play AR compared to what's been in Microsoft's keynotes."
Microsoft unveiled it well over a year ago, and still when people can actually try the device the demos are a fraction of the myth presented in their keynote. And of course these things always rely upon the development of technology, but we often get 80% and think the last 20% is the easy part when really it's the extraordinarily difficult barrier between realistically credible and a toy.
The projection technology (the field refraction grid) is very interesting, and the environment mapping is fantastic, but the resolution of the device makes the demos farce out of the gate -- the total overlay resolution is 1268x720 max (in most realistic scenes much less), so when you see someone demo something like a web browser in their AR display, if you ever see the demo it's just entirely unusable (far too low of a resolution) unless you move directly in front of the projection occupying the majority of your FOV, at which point what is the point.
The technology will improve, obviously, but right now it definitely falls in the category of gimmick to me, with several generations before it's remotely as usable as being pitched.
Where did you see the "rigged demos"? It works as shown in the demos if you even understand what it can do and do not. Your 20 minutes on hand demo never shows/teaches you any thing.