HoloLens is having a bit of a moment. Minecraft and Halo 5 demos at E3. A rumoured partnership with Disney Infinity. Prizes of $500,000 for researchers working in augmented reality.
OK, OK the headsets en route to the International Space Station were blown up along with the rest of the SpaceX rocket. But you get the picture - Microsoft is on the AR offensive to make sure gamers, students and astronauts choose HoloLens over say, Oculus.
Now it has released a short YouTube video, in partnership with Case Western Reserve university, Cleveland, Ohio, which shows how medical students could use HoloLens as a training tool.
With the usual talking heads cooing about how the tech could help them make the world a better place, the video shows anatomy teaching, HoloLens style. Students wear the AR headset, potentially in groups, as they view whole bodies' muscles or bone layers, or separate, 'living' organs such as the heart, complete with the scientific names.
Read this: Everything you need to know about HoloLens
Anatomical parts can be selected, moved around or made translucent to see what's around them in a way that students couldn't do with cadavers. Beats illustrations in fusty textbooks too.
What's also interesting about the video is that Microsoft includes clips seen through HoloLens which confirms that postcard-sized field of view in the centre of the display which we discovered when we went hands on at E3. This is not augmenting your whole view of what's in front of you - students had to move their head up and down to align the AR portion with the graphics.
Case Western professors are also interested in trialling HoloLens in their art history and anthropology departments, both subjects in which altering what students see in front of them with additional graphics or information could enhance the learning experience.
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