Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Phoenix New Media Technology News Beijing time on October 27 news, the software giant Microsoft has launched a full sense of the future of the HoloLens head show, which allows it to take the lead in the meta-universe competition. Seven years later, however, the company's aggressive push into augmented reality (AR) has been hampered by technical constraints and impatient management.

Figure 1: Microsoft demonstrates HoloLens headline in 2016

The HoloLens is a crown-like ring-shaped computer that displays digital information on the accompanying goggles, but it has not become a best-selling product. Microsoft has shelved the planned new version and has been unable to meet the technical requirements of its biggest buyer, the U.S. Army.

According to information provided by former Microsoft employees and LinkedIn, more than 100 employees have left the HoloLens team in the past two years, including its long-term head. Microsoft has restructured the 1000-strong team that developed the headline model and cut its budget to cut expenses and staff size as profit growth slows.

Losing the opportunity to capture the market "we had a chance to own the market," said Tim Osborne, a former director of the HoloLens team who retired earlier this year. "We are far ahead in many ways." But he said Microsoft did not put enough manpower and money into the effort.

For years, Microsoft has been trying to make HoloLens a success. According to current and former employees, developing Touxian and the software it runs turned out to be much more difficult than anyone expected. Some of them say Microsoft's product strategy is unclear and inconsistent.

Figure 2:HoloLens

Microsoft says it still has ambitious plans to build on HoloLens. Microsoft remains "committed to mixing all aspects of reality and meta-universe" and that the latest HoloLens products "are helping customers collaborate and participate in a variety of industries" in new ways, Microsoft's vice president of media communications, Frank Shaw (Frank Shaw), said in a written statement.

Always getting up early in the morning and catching up in the evening to collect Microsoft's difficulties in AR hardware is reminiscent of the company's previous problems in hardware development.

Microsoft has been at the forefront of devices such as portable media players, tablets and smartphones for decades, but eventually ceded these huge new markets to Apple and others. At the same time, in recent years, it has achieved considerable success in many areas, including cloud computing and video games.

On Tuesday, Microsoft released its new quarterly results. Microsoft's profit fell and revenue growth slowed last quarter as falling PC sales eroded demand for Windows systems.

Microsoft is giving up? AR can overlay digital content such as 3D images or visual commands on the user's real-world perspective. Some in the technology industry believe that AR has a bigger market opportunity than virtual reality (VR), which allows users to completely immerse themselves in virtual worlds, such as video games. Both of them are elements of a generalized meta-universe.

So far, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has relied mainly on VR technology to focus on meta-universe, selling Quest headsets with VR technology so that users can access its virtual world.

The Quest header of 3:Meta is more likely to be successful.

However, Meta and other major technology companies are investing billions of dollars in AR. Apple, Google and Meta will all launch their own AR headsets in the next few years.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would provide its software products to Meta's Quest Touch Show. Some industry insiders believe that Microsoft's move is betting that Meta will have a greater opportunity to build hardware for meta-universe. Frank Shaw, vice president of Microsoft Communications, said Microsoft is committed to mixing all aspects of reality and meta-universe, including third-party hardware.

The decline of HoloLens in January 2015, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (Satya Nadella) unveiled HoloLens at a company event and called it "the next big event." With HoloLens, users will be able to interact with virtual dogs and collaborate on design projects in the future. At a video game show later that year, Microsoft showed how HoloLens allows players to immerse themselves in a hybrid virtual world.

However, the price of $3000 is too expensive for most consumers. Moreover, little is known about the use of the head display. As a result, Microsoft first shifted its focus to selling it to enterprises.

Microsoft has set up several teams to study new uses of HoloLens, including a partnership with NASA to allow users to view the Martian surface. Microsoft has marketed the technology to potential corporate and government customers by demonstrating its potential application scenarios.

Subsequently, the Microsoft team began to develop a new version of HoloLens 2 to broaden its horizons and improve the overall experience. The development team was founded in the video games division, then transferred to the Windows operating system department, and then to the cloud computing department. Former Microsoft employees say Microsoft executives are beginning to lose patience with such efforts.

In 2018, Microsoft reached an agreement with the U.S. Army that could eventually be worth as much as $21.88 billion. The US Army chose Microsoft to develop an integrated visual enhancement system for AR helmets to help soldiers train and interact on the battlefield. Microsoft won a $480 million contract to develop prototypes.

To do this, Microsoft must add more technology to its headsets than ever before: cameras, military-grade sensors, radios and night vision goggles, as well as waterproof and shockproof.

Figure 4: Microsoft develops an integrated visual enhancement system for the U.S. Army

Early tests revealed problems. Former Microsoft employees said that during combat exercises, the head display would be disconnected from the local wireless network, invalidating the built-in weapon tracker, making it impossible for soldiers to use it for training. The former employees say it is difficult for these devices to track the movements of soldiers' heads, so it is difficult to project digital objects on the monitor.

Some former Microsoft employees say the head is heavy and uncomfortable, and the screen can cause eye fatigue. Sometimes, after a few hours of use, they become overheated.

In October 2021, the United States Army announced that it would postpone the head show test for nearly a year. This year, the Pentagon's inspector general issued a report saying the contract "could waste up to $21.88 billion of taxpayer money on a device that soldiers may not want to use". In August, the Army unfrozen some of its early spending, saying the head showed prospects, but would further postpone a broader launch to correct deficiencies.

Late last year, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood (Amy Hood) began meeting with executives to prepare for a possible recession. Microsoft decided to invest in growth areas while cutting back on more speculative projects, according to attendees. As a result, the budget of the mixed reality team was cut and the consumer plan was cancelled.

Former Microsoft employees say Microsoft has shelved its development plans for HoloLens 3 and its cooperation with Samsung. Since its launch, HoloLens has sold about 300000 units, according to IDC. By contrast, analysts estimate that Meta's Quest 2 VR, launched at the end of 2020, has sold about 17 million units. According to previous media reports, Microsoft has cancelled its development plan for HoloLens 3.

At the same time, Microsoft CEO Nadella began to take a greater interest in the company's overall meta-universe strategy. He meets with executives every two weeks to discuss the issue, according to people who have attended the meeting.

In June, Microsoft announced that Alex Kipman, who led the HoloLens team from the start, would leave. For years, Microsoft has been investigating his behavior in the workplace, including his management style.

Kipman responded that his departure was mutually agreed, "mainly because our business and forward plans have nothing to do with the suspected investigation into my conduct or management style."

AR division split with his departure, Microsoft AR division was split into hardware and software, which led some employees to question the future of HoloLens and Microsoft's hardware strategy.

HoloLens, military projects and other hardware programs are now overseen by Panos Panay, Microsoft's chief product officer. The software business has been handed over to Jeff Tepper (Jeff Teper), a Microsoft executive in charge of office collaboration product Teams.

"We are taking a software-led approach to meta-universe," Nadella said at a company meeting in July.

It is not clear which hardware, technologies and companies, if any, will dominate meta-universe. Bar-Zeev, a former Microsoft HoloLens employee, said Microsoft's difficulties in the early iterations of AR hardware showed that would-be industry pioneers needed to maintain a high degree of focus to succeed.

"Microsoft's whole development process is mainly to get people excited about how it will change the world," he said. "what they should really focus on is how to make this product better than smartphones."

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