HoloLens 2

Microsoft HoloLens 2 is a mixed reality head-mounted display developed and manufactured by Microsoft. It is the successor to the original Microsoft HoloLens. The first variant of the device, The HoloLens 2 enterprise edition, debuted on February 24, 2019. This was followed by a developer edition that was announced on May 2, 2019. The HoloLens 2 was subsequently released in limited numbers on November 7, 2019.^[2]

Microsoft HoloLens 2

Developer	Microsoft
Manufacturer	Microsoft
Product family	Windows 10
Type	Mixed reality augmented reality head-mounted display smartglasses
Generation	2
Release date	November 7, 2019; 5 years ago (2019-11-07)
Availability	Enterprise and developers
Introductory price	$3500 USD, $125 USD per month Enterprise, $99 USD per month Developer
Operating system	Windows 10 Holographic
System on a chip	Qualcomm Snapdragon 850 Compute Platform
CPU	Qualcomm Snapdragon 850
Display	See-through holographic lenses 2K 3:2, 1440x936[1]
Graphics	Adreno 630
Input	Eye tracking, spatial tracking, hand tracking.
Camera	8 MP 1080P30 video
Connectivity	Bluetooth LE 5.0, 802.11 2x2 WiFi
Platform	Universal Windows Platform
Online services	Windows Holographic Operating System, Edge, Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Dynamics 365 Layout, Dynamics 365 Guides, 3D Viewer, OneDrive for Business
Mass	566g
Predecessor	HoloLens
Website	www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/

The Hololens 2 is now discontinued, but will continue to receive software updates until December 31st, 2027.^[3]

Description

The HoloLens 2 was announced by lead HoloLens developer Alex Kipman on February 24, 2019 at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain.^[4][5] On May 7, 2019 the HoloLens 2 was shown again at the Microsoft Build developer conference. There, it showcased an application created with the Unreal Game Engine.^[6]

The HoloLens 2 are combination waveguide and laser-based stereoscopic and full-color mixed reality smartglasses developed and manufactured by Microsoft. The US military's Integrated Visual Augmentation System is a further development of Hololens 2.^[7]

The HoloLens 2 is an early AR device. The displays on the HoloLens 2 are simple waveguide displays with a fixed focus of approximately two meters. Because of the fixed focus, the displays exhibit the Vergence-Accommodation Conflict, which is an unpleasant visual sensation for the viewer.^[8]

On August 20, 2019, at the Hot Chips 31 symposium Microsoft presented their Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) 2.0 custom design for the HoloLens 2 with the following features:^[9]

• 7x SIMD Fixed Point (SFP) for 2D processing
• 6x Floating Vector Processor (FVP) for 3D processing
• >1 TOP of programmable compute
• 125Mb SRAM
• 79mm² die size and 2 billion transistors
• TSMC 16FF+ process
• PCIe 2.0 x1 at 100 MB/s bandwidth to Snapdragon 850

On August 29, 2019, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Microsoft's Executive Vice President, Harry Shum, revealed that HoloLens 2 would go on sale in September 2019.^[10] The product started shipping on November 7, 2019.^[11]

Improvements over the previous model

Microsoft highlighted three main improvements made to the device: immersiveness, ergonomics and business friendliness.^[12][13]

HoloLens 2 has a diagonal field of view of 52 degrees, improving over the 34 degree field of view (FOV) of the first edition of HoloLens, although Karl Guttag states that it offers less than 20 pixels per degree of resolution^[14] (despite Microsoft's claim that it would keep a resolution of 47 pixels per degree^[15][16]).

Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) 2.0 improvements compared to the HPU 1.0:^[9]

• 1.7x compute
• 2x effective DRAM bandwidth
• Improved hologram stability
• New hardware accelerated workloads such as eye tracking, fully articulated hand tracking, semantic labeling, spatial audio and JBL filter

HoloLens 2 Emulator

The HoloLens 2 Emulator was made available to developers on April 17, 2019.^[17] This emulator allows developers to create applications for the HoloLens 2 before the device ships.

References

1. "Rendering - Mixed Reality". docs.microsoft.com. Microsoft. 24 February 2019. Retrieved 22 May 2021.
2. Strategy, Moor Insights and. "Hololens 2: Microsoft's Enterprise AR Power Play For Windows Mixed Reality". Forbes. Retrieved 2023-02-04.
3. Warren, Tom (2024-10-01). "Microsoft is discontinuing its HoloLens headsets". The Verge. Retrieved 2024-11-01.
4. "Microsoft Hololens 2 ushers in the next generation of augmented reality". mashable.com. February 24, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
5. "Microsoft's new $3,500 HoloLens 2 headset means business". cnn.com. February 24, 2019. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
6. Apollo 11 HoloLens 2 Demo | Microsoft Build 2019 | Unreal Engine, retrieved 2019-08-07
7. Kress, Bernard C.; Cummings, William J. (May 2017). "11-1: Invited Paper : Towards the Ultimate Mixed Reality Experience: HoloLens Display Architecture Choices". SID Symposium Digest of Technical Papers. 48 (1): 127–131. doi:10.1002/sdtp.11586.
8. "Comfort - Mixed Reality". learn.microsoft.com. Retrieved 2022-09-22.
9. Cutress, Dr Ian. "Hot Chips 31 Live Blogs: Microsoft Hololens 2.0 Silicon". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved 2019-08-21.
10. "Microsoft says new augmented reality headset to go on sale in..." Reuters. 2019-08-29. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
11. Robertson, Adi (2019-11-07). "The Microsoft HoloLens 2 ships today for $3,500". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-11-19.
12. "HoloLens 2 pricing and preorder". microsoft.com. Retrieved February 25, 2019.
13. "New HoloLens 2 gives Microsoft the edge in the next generation of computing". Innovation Stories at Microsoft. Microsoft. 24 February 2019. Retrieved 25 February 2019.
14. "Hololens 2 Display Evaluation (Part 2: Comparison to Hololens 1)". KGOnTech. KGOnTech. 8 July 2020. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
15. Kipman, Alex (2019-02-25). "No secrets... - The first HoloLens had a 34-degree diagonal FOV; the new headset's field of view … 52-degree diagonal field of view. More than 2x is area and most of the growth is vertical (no longer 16:9)". @akipman. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
16. Goode, Lauren (2019-02-24). "The HoloLens 2 Puts a Full-Fledged Computer on Your Face". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
17. Schaik, Joost Van (2019-04-17). "First look at the HoloLens 2 emulator". Dotnet by Example. Retrieved 2019-08-07.

External links

• HoloLens demo at Mobile World Congress on YouTube
• Microsoft Documentation for HoloLens Emulator