I decided to create a quick demo to load a couple of 3D assets. I hooked up an idle animation, but didn’t have it repeat so you only see movement for a little bit. I’ll be creating more around this. If you are interested in a tutorial on character animation inside of Unity let me know. I want to make some content that people actually care about. So let me know if there is something you are dying to see but can’t find a good article or video on and I’ll see what I can do.
In the mean time, I hope you enjoy the holograms. I had fun messing around with them. I have work to do around the lighting and to add in better animations, but I wanted to get a post out that showed loading life size “people” as holograms.
If you want to get started with game development, I’d highly recommend using Unity. I have an introductory course available at http://devgame101.com so go check it out.
I’ve been asked to show some of the app I’ve been working on.
Well, I’ve been dabbling with a few things. I’ve already shown the Visualizer so I won’t show that today. I’ve been working on something with similar technology to HoloTours but I won’t show that today either.
What I’m demoing here though was actually written using Unity. Last year, I did some free webinars on game development. One of the webinars I did was showing How to create a Unity 3D Game in 90 minutes. People seemed to have like the webinar. If you are interested, you can watch a replay over at devgame101.com.
The game is called Tunnel Vision and it is a simple first person perspective game where you are defending your tunnel from invaders. The invaders don’t shoot, they just come straight for you.
I’ve taken the version of Tunnel Vision and made a couple of modifications to get it to run on the HoloLens. I tried it both with the poor excuse for a skybox I had as well as with a completely black background (which becomes transparent to the HoloLens). While the voice command works well, it takes it too long to understand and execute the appropriate code. Still, I’m happy with progress so far. I didn’t have to spend much time to get it into this state. As I continue to play around with different demos and try different things out, I’ll create some information about best practices and/or tips when developing for the HoloLens. The HoloLens is a mobile device and it needs to be treated like one.
I’m not at all happy with how my HoloTours-like demo is working. It is only getting about 5 fps instead of 60 fps like it should be. I’m going to try a few things but hopefully I’ll be able to show that before too long…
I’ve gotten a request to show some Young Conker. If you have a request of something you want to see leave me a comment and let me know.
I was working on showing a little work in progress demo of something similar to the HoloTour app, but I accidently deleted the wrong folder. I got most of my files back, but there were a couple that were corrupted. So I had to switch gears and I looked at a recent comment on one of my YouTube videos from Chitore 2009. The request was simple:
show holotour more
So that is what I’m doing. I also had a little too much fun editing the video I believe. If you are itching to see some more HoloTour, then watch the video below.
Next week I should actually have a demo available. Make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel if you are interested in seeing some demos as I’m creating them for the HoloLens.
I wanted to see how the HoloLens performed outside. Would I be able to see the holograms clearly or would they be washed out? Would the sunlight keep me from watching a movie outside? Could I actually play Fragments outside and would the Spatial Mapping work correctly?
Check it out in my video:
I was pleased that everything worked as I would expect. I think I’ll be watching the next conference streamed on Channel 9 from the comfort of my front porch swing.
The video being played on my front porch can be found on Channel 9 at:
If you are interested in game development make sure you visit devgame101.com where I discuss game development using Unity. If XNA and MonoGame are more your style, then you might like the code I updated from my XNA Game Studio 3.0 Unleashed book last month. Stay tuned to see upcoming material teaching how to develop for the HoloLens!
