The Windows 10 Fall Creators Update Feature Focus
by Brett Howse on November 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTWindows Mixed Reality
One of the headline features of the Fall Creators Update is Windows Mixed Reality, which is the umbrella term Microsoft uses to describe any of their Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) features. Windows has a strong case for VR/AR, since the best experiences are going to require the brute compute power of a PC, and Microsoft was one of the pioneers of AR with HoloLens, but it has to be said, this market is completely in flux right now. VR hasn’t taken off as quickly as many would have hoped, although AR has made some inroads in the smartphone market.
As Microsoft often does, they’ve turned Mixed Reality into a platform, and that has had some immediate benefits. There’s now several VR headsets available from the major PC OEMs, hitting a couple of price points. Most of the headsets have resolutions of 2880x1440, with 90 Hz LCD panels, with the exception of the Samsung HMD Odyssey which is a 2880x1600 AMOLED headset. The headsets all include motion controllers as well.
With the power of a PC behind it, a Windows Mixed Reality headset should be able to offer some great experiences, but the biggest issue is the lack of use cases. Gaming is the obvious one, but VR gaming hasn’t really taken off yet despite the launch of the HTC and Oculus VR headsets.
AR does have some interesting use cases, and unlike VR doesn’t necessarily require a headset. Using the webcam on a device will allow the system to project images on the screen which appear to be in the real world, and this ties into the work done in Windows to support 3D animations and creations over the last couple of updates.
Overall, Windows Mixed Reality still needs to prove itself. The tech is still new, and we’ve yet to see any amazing experiences which necessitate the purchase and use of a head-mounted display. VR is amazing to use, but limited in usefulness, and AR is somewhat in its infancy. The idea of standardizing all of this is a good one, and having a consistent platform should help drive adoption, but the tech is simply too immature in the market to predict if this will be the next big thing in Windows, or just another small feature.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
95 Comments
View All Comments
ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Oh wow, I bet those 10 seconds you save are a life changer.inighthawki - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Oh come on. He's booting into several different OSs a day. That's at least a full minute.ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Yeah, and they are all windoze 10, which saves that much time :)I was talking about the boot time difference relative to w7, not the overall boot time.
I usually run at least 2-3 OS in the same time, it is much faster and far more usable when you use virtual machines rather than booting one OS at a time. You get to use them in parallel and also avoid the mobo post time. The only downside is you need plenty of ram.
ddrіver - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Well, not actually every few months but easily every couple of days.ddriver - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Windoze 10 is a great OS, I just has an amazing experience with it the other day with its latest and greatest iteration.A laptop was behaving weirdly, so I decided to do some checkups, beginning with a disk check.
Clicking to run the disk check, I was told that there is no need to run it because the disk is OK.
I insisted to run it nonetheless, and to automatically fix errors.
About 1 second in the check, I was told that the error check cannot continue because the drive contains errors, and to run it again after I fix the errors.
Great functionality, I have to admit. It's like ordering pizza and they tell you they can't deliver you pizza because you have no pizza, and to call back again when you have the pizza.
And what stunning graphics design, for example the settings dialogs are literally just a white background with 3 columns of text. It is like looking at HTML without the CSS styling applied. Just pathetic and hideous.
And in an all-too-typical for m$ fashion, they are more invested into introducing even more useless bloatware.
ddrіver - Sunday, November 12, 2017 - link
Then again I haven't actually done any troubleshooting without Google for so long... Google 1, M$ 0.And they could make those Windoze 10 menus with gold and glitter and they'd still suck. Because they're M$.
ddriver - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
LOL, I have a copy-troll now.ddrіver - Monday, November 13, 2017 - link
Mispost.jardows2 - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Protected folder option - great! Going to be checking this out and enabling on all my computers. I wonder how it works with network mapped drives? Will this folder have to be selected as a protected folder on all PC's that have write access?peevee - Friday, November 10, 2017 - link
Brett, where are multiple Linux flavors?