This is a demo of the Magic Window for HoloLens. In order to obtain this effect you simply need to utilize the HoloToolkit-Unity package found at:

https://github.com/Microsoft/HoloToolkit-Unity

Under the Utilities folder is a Tests folder and inside of that is a WindowOcclusion.unity scene. The actual window object is made up of the 4 cubes that make the frame you see and then 4 more cubes that are large and one each side of the frame. There is one on top, one on bottom, one on the left and one on the right. These cubes have a material that have the WindowOcclusion shader applied. This occludes any item that is behind it. So the window can be seen through but the “walls” around the window are transparent to the user, but are really keeping the main scene from view.

This demo is a quick response to the #hololens_challenge found at
https://medium.com/@hololens_challenge/hololens-challenge-4-through-the-looking-glass-99d566c2b1b0#.y1j19wcv1

You should try it out. You could definitely create more complex meshes to surround the window, but the premise is the same. This is the same type of effect used in RoboRaid when you shoot your walls to expose pipes and cables, etc.

Enjoy the video!

The good folks behind Fragments and Young Conker, Asobo Studios, released to the community their spatial mapping code. It is available in the HoloLens Toolkit and HoloLens Toolkit for Unity at GitHub. So make sure you check it out.

I’ll be creating a post every Wednesday, but I’m a day early this week…

As some of you know, I’m launching a brand new membership site around HoloLens development. We’ve had open enrollment open since last Wednesday, but the doors are closing tonight at midnight. They won’t open again for a couple of months. This is the alpha (as in pre-beta) launch of the site.

I wanted to let folks know about the site and the rapidly closing enrollment period today and have created another video around spatial mapping as that is what the first master class inside of Learn HoloLens will cover.

I enjoy producing videos for YouTube and will continue to do so. However, I’d like to go more in depth and create a logical path for folks wanting to learn the HoloLens and this is why I created LearnHoloLens.com

The video shows how this new Spatial Understanding plugin knows where the floor and ceiling is and where open spaces on the floor are. It can determine where it can place objects in the scene and it is really going to make our jobs as developers much easier.

It does a great job at recognizing platforms where you could place items. The code has been available for about 10 days. I expect to see a lot of great apps created that utilize this code in the near future.

I hope you enjoy the video!

If you missed out on the enrollment, jump on the mailing list. Also, you can signup for my newsletter over on my About page so you don’t miss other things coming up.

You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don’t miss any free videos I create.