I have the hololens on about half the time. So I've spent a ton of time in it.
Yes surprisingly the Hololens is "just" an x86 Windows compile target. I've found a lot of software that "just works" as long as the UI isn't hardcoded.
I demo'd google cardboard VR to a bunch of kids (prob about 200 ish) who thought it was amazing. They really enjoyed it and the feel from teaching them using VR was that this was another tool people will use in the future.
Kids are already wired up with headphones, phones in pockets, phones wired to external battery boosters. I say this because I thought cumbersome cables from phone to goggles would be a no no and the technology would have to wait for a wireless solution. But I think I am wrong, kids already have cables snaking around their bodies.
Personally I think external cameras that can show 'the outside world' inside the VR world is the future. I'm interested in your thoughts on AR... this I see as a great tool for industry, but not for the general public?
People really don't like the concept that I can see a world they can't experience. Some people become offended. Making people feel comfortable has a long way to go, but as you mention kids start with no preconceived notions so this may not be a stigma for future generations.
This is the /exact/ kind of elitism that killed Google Glass. The whole "I have this and you don't" mentality is childish and damaging.
When I use my Google Daydream, being able to "cast" my screen to a TV and it really helps with this feeling as everyone else can watch along.
If the cost didn't increase too much, I feel that an onboard camera that can overlay what the user is seeing to show a 3rd party could help with that feeling. (Or if it already has a camera onboard, perhaps some better software to make casual sharing of your perspective easier)
Microsoft did an awesome job with providing built-in tools and the vast majority of MIT open source hololens examples.
It's very technical and dev heavy, it would be great to see an app that will provide the streaming feature without the admin pairing currently necessary for the "server" access.
Two things you can get from live-feed-aug'd VR that you can't get with current thru-glass AR solutions (maybe hololens is different?):
1. The "color" black (and true opaque objects)
2. Wide field-of-view (FOV)
The first is a physic limitation of thru-glass AR implementations; it's not likely to be different any time soon. The second I would expect to over time be improved.
The downside of a live-feed-aug'd VR system is resolution - the resolution of everything is not high enough to be what people want. While I doubt the resolution of an AR system is any better, because the FOV is smaller, and a thru-glass view system is used instead of a live feed, it becomes much less of an issue.
Also, I've looked through the MVA for the HoloLens and done some messing around in Unity, but are there any good, active blogs about the HoloLens? I know there are a few like Mike Taulty and some other blogs that might post about it occasionally, but I would like a "Morning Dew" for HoloLens.
The AR blogs I find are mostly content-free, not exactly their fault because most demos are just PR demos and the real dev is under wraps at private industry. Similar to the comments here, whoever knows what's up is not talking. Lots of NDAs and patents around the technology.
As for blogs that's kind of what I've found. I've really been itching to get my hands on one and fiddle around with it. I see this as a technology that will only get bigger, and I want to get in on it early and develop a strong knowledge of how it works, and building applications for it properly, and the emulator can really only replicate so much of the true look and feel. I guess for now I'll just have to imagine what it's like with my Vive on...
[0] https://mtaulty.com/?s=Hitchhiking
[1] https://abhijitjana.net/category/hololens/
[2] https://elbruno.com/category/hololens/
As far as a design workflow I've heard many designers are happy with their existing 3D tools like Maya and Unity. Any standard 3D object and texture can be loaded into the hololens.
I am interested in learning more about Analytics/monitoring that you did. Would you be able to share more info? Please let me know how we can sync up so that I could learn more about it?
I also see a class separation between people who are augmented and who are not. It's going to blow apart industries and relationships. Eventually.
Clicking/selecting objects with gaze is often an antipattern. Much better to use alternate input.
Analytics is kind of a mess.
Everybody recommends unity but performance will suffer. I wrote my own framework instead. Most of the open-source code is bad, if you have figured out how to make apps it's a competitive advantage. MS wrote literally thousands of new APIs for UWP and mixed reality so many many features are barely documented with no real world examples.
It's a totally new paradigm in UX. Most designers fall back to poor decisions like using small buttons or overly detailed models.
Feel free to ask anything specific I'll do my best to answer.