NASA JPL may have given us a preview of next gen HoloLens. Actually not.

It’s L.E.A.P. Conference time and everyone is only talking about Magic Leap in these days. But today, we may also have some cool news about next gen HoloLens: in a video, we may have spotted its future appearance.

UPDATE: After various clarifications, we understood that it is not next-gen HoloLens. It is a prototype of HoloLens v1. I’ll leave the article here as a reference, with two updates in the end that explain everything that has happened. I’m sorry to have generated confusion, I (and like me, a lot of other people that believed it), never saw that device in my whole life. Luckily, I had written in the post since the beginning that this was pure speculation. It has been cool dreaming with you 🙂

I was browsing social news about Magic Leap (I think I’ll write a roundup of all the news I’ve found, because they are pretty interesting) and writing stuff about the Milan Games Week event I attended, when I got a message by the great creative technologist Michel Buchner (follow him!) that told me that there could be the first video featuring the new version of HoloLens. I was like “Wait, what? Is that possible?”… then I watched the video and I discovered that damn, he may be right.

NASA JPL is a long time user of HoloLens, that is a device strongly targeted to the enterprise sector. We all know that they are using HoloLens, so when at the beginning of the video I saw NASA telling that it is using HoloLens to simulate a collaborative exploration on Mars, I said: “oh cool, but nothing new”. The video highlighted how the software is able to take 2D photos taken on Mars by the rovers and convert them in a navigable 3D landscape. And this is for sure amazing, but nothing surprising, given NASA expertise. Then at 0:21 of the video, I saw this frame and I was like “OH SHIT SHIT SHIT”

Look: it is clearly a HoloLens, but it is not a HoloLens as we all know it. It has the same design style, but it is different. It is lighter, more elegant.

The two rings that were used to fit the device to the head are now only one ring, with an external classy knob to secure the device to your head, in a way similar to present time HoloLens. The man wears glasses, so this device is able to accomodate well people wearing glasses. It seems that Microsoft has worked a lot to make the device more ergonomic and elegant, but the style remains anyway less classy than the one of Magic Leap. It seems like a better HoloLens v1, but it still seems to me a glass for lab workers. I hoped in a bigger leap (pun intended) on design and ergonomics in this gen of HoloLens. Anyway, it is a big step forward from the very geeky look of HoloLens v1.

On the side there is circular metal stuff that I don’t get what it can be used for: maybe is it something for the tracking?

The cameras may be less visible thanks to miniaturization or also because they have substituted all the cameras with a single multi-spectrum one, as stated in this patent by Microsoft.

In the final part of the video, there are other people using HoloLens, but this time it is a standard version.

The full version of the video is this one (it is very short, so I advise you to watch it)

Now, I don’t want to necessarily say that this will be the appearance of first public appearance of next-gen HoloLens. This device may be everything:

• May be another headset that NASA is using
• May be a custom HoloLens version made for NASA;
• May be the v2 version of HoloLens, the one that has been skipped and that maybe has been given only to selected partners (like NASA) to have feedback;
• May be the prototype of the next-gen HoloLens, that selected partners are testing. This means that the final device that will be shipped in 2019-2020 may be much different. If you recall well, Valve Knuckles, for instance, have changed a lot from the first iteration given to selected developers to the final dev-kits that are shipping now.

My personal take is the third one: NASA is using next-gen HoloLens and is helping Microsoft in shaping them better: the final design may be that one, or an improved version… but anyway this is the current stage of the technology. According to various rumors (in part confirmed by one of my secret sources), the next-gen HoloLens is having a delay because of the development of the operating system that is slower than expected, and this would give more time to Microsoft to optimize the design and the hardware. So there is time to change the device from current stage to an improved future one, maybe also thanks to the feedback that Microsoft will get from this preview.

It is improbable that a close partner of Microsoft showcases another headset in an important video, so the first option is very unlikely. Also showcasing an old interaction of the device has no sense. And since we are during Magic Leap’s LEAP conference, and in the video there is that clear close-up on the man wearing those AR glasses, I bet that this is something that Microsoft has made on purpose to hype people about HoloLens v3 and steal a bit of attention from Magic Leap. I also don’t think that they are showing the final design before an official launch, so I think that it is still a work in progress. So in my opinion, the “sneak peek” option is the most likely.

But I may be wrong, so this is one of those posts where everything you read may be true or may be false. But in XR we all love speculations and I’m the first one that loves them and that reports them. And I hope that you like them as well and that you like this article. So, let me know: what is your take on this video? Is it a Sneak Peek of next-gen HoloLens? And what’s your take on next-gen HoloLens? Let me know in the comments or on my social media channels!

And if you like speculations as me, please subscribe to my newsletter, to sustain my efforts in writing a lot of them 🙂

UPDATE: Scott Hayden of Road To VR have dig the web to find a photo of a similar device in a TechCrunch article of three years ago.

Likely not. https://t.co/rM47j7BXmd

— Scott Hayden (@vrbosenet) October 11, 2018

As you can see, the device is almost identical to the one I’m talking about in this article. So, it may be a HoloLens v1 pre-production prototype. If this is the truth, it remains to be understood why NASA JPL has inserted such a close up of an old prototype in its most recent video. It has been made on purpose for sure, and I admit that things are not completely clear to me at this point. Anyway, my friend Scott has already contacted Microsoft and JPL and I hope they will clarify everything. I’ll keep you updated!

UPDATE 2: Alex Kipman has officially confirmed that this is a prototype of Hololens 1. Mistery solved.

Congrats to the #OnSight team and check out this cool video our friends at @NASAJPL made. For the curious, what you see here is a prototype of #HoloLens v1. So what’s next? Let me just say, the future of #MixedReality truly is out of this world 😊https://t.co/pEEsPfxfnG

— Alex Kipman (@akipman) October 11, 2018