Microsoft has been pushing hard to get new ideas for HoloLens applications. They’ve solicited ideas from academics with big money on the line, and trickled out ideas from their own HoloLens developers. Most recently, Microsoft has been soliciting ideas from the HoloLens community with their “Share Your Idea” contest. Now, the company is asking for your vote on which of the three finalists should be developed into an actual HoloLens application.
Voting starts tomorrow, January 21, and Microsoft has published the three ideas to give you a head start on your evaluation. Here are the details:
We have reviewed all the extraordinary ideas you submitted. Now it’s time for you to get ready to select the next app our team will build.
We will open source this project with no restrictions, allowing any developer to fork our project and make it their own. To that end, ideas with IP rights were not viable ideas, as they wouldn’t allow for usable source code for future HoloLens developers. That said, the three ideas below represent several ideas that we found to share similar characteristics. They also include compelling features that were part of other ideas you submitted.
Click on each idea below to see how we envision each project, and how they inspired us. Votes will open on January 21st at 12:00 PM PST.
The three finalists share a common theme: exploring an exotic locale by overlaying information over an existing environment. That seems to be the core functionality of HoloLens, and so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Here are the three ideas, with tons of detail availed on each idea’s microsite:
Airquarium: Immerse yourself in your own personal aquarium
Grab the Idol: Your room is transformed into a hazard-filled puzzle dungeon. Grab the idol to escape!
Galaxy Explorer: Transcend time and space to explore our galaxy like never before.
Clearly, HoloLens is an exciting platform for innovative ways to explore and manipulating information, and Microsoft’s efforts to identify all of the possible ways HoloLens can be utilized are a lot of fun to watch. We’re looking forward to seeing the winning idea get developed, and don’t forget to vote!
