Microsoft HoloLens and Volvo team up to bring a more immersive consumer experience when purchasing a new car. (Photo : YouTube/Microsoft HoloLens)
Microsoft HoloLens teams up with Volvo in a bid to revolutionize the way people examine a car's interior prior to making a purchase. Potential customers will have the chance to immerse themselves into the experience as they explore the vehicle using 3D technology.
The HoloLens is a type of headset that allows wearers to view the environment in a more digital perspective while keeping their presence intact in the real physical world. Packed with a bunch of sensors and processing tools, the headset easily creates a window in the user's fields of vision, allowing him to unlock all the possibilities brought by holographic computing.
At a demonstration held at Microsoft's global office in Redmond, the company showed how customers can take advantage of the wearable's mixed reality feature in order to create configurations of three dimensions in cars.
"You've got the simple experience of changing colors and trim options, which is hugely important for customers," HoloLens program senior director Scott Erickson told The Verge. "But you can imagine sitting in the cockpit of the car and seeing what it looks like, and how it feels, and how the different trim options change."
Apart from partnering with Volvo, Microsoft also confirmed that it has started collaborating with other organizations as a way to build applications for the company's augmented reality headset. These would include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA, Trimble and the Case Western Reserve University.
"People aren't reading car manuals or user manuals much anymore, and there's so much they miss," Slash Gear quoted a Volvo representative as saying.
The HoloLens developer kit will cost $3,000 with shipping slated to begin in the first quarter of 2016. Interested developers can now submit an application with the company while consumers would have to wait until an announcement is given for the final consumer version of the headset.
Volvo's chief futurologist Aric Dromi explains the company's collaboration with HoloLens in a video clip uploaded in YouTube. He says, "You can do something you could never do before...you can see the soul of the car. You can strip the body out and stare at the skeleton."
Watch the video clip here:
