Consider an office meeting in which everyone is present in one space and talking, but in reality, each person is either a holographic representation of themselves or a virtual avatar. While it will sound like science fiction, but Microsoft’s Mesh platform aims to bring this kind of mixed reality to life.
Mesh is the company’s new mixed reality platform, which offers a versatile experience, including the ability for holoportation for individuals. Holoportation would mean that a holographic version of one’s self ports to another space for a collaborative meeting or interaction.
Mesh will use 3D capture technology to beam a lifelike image of the person into a virtual scene. The software giant made a Mesh demonstration during its Ignite conference earlier. The entire keynote was designed for mixed reality with “people attending the conference from living rooms and home offices around the world” as avatars, the company added.
Mesh is based on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and can allow developers to create apps that will support a mixed reality for multiple users. Mesh would allow for mixed reality level collaboration, and Microsoft wants to add multi-device support to the same.
According to an official blog spot, Microsoft Technical Fellow Mr. Alex Kipman remarked that “This has been the dream for mixed reality, the idea from the very beginning. You can feel like you’re in the same place with someone sharing content or you can teleport from different mixed reality devices and be present with people even when you’re not physically together”.
Known filmmaker James Cameron, and John Hanke, CEO founder of leading augmented reality company Niantic, Inc. were among those who joined Kipman to explore the Mesh experience.
Microsoft Mesh
Mesh is a Microsoft platform that will support a variety of devices and not just the HoloLens. Microsoft says Mesh will support completely interactive head-mounted displays (HMDs) such as its HoloLens, HP Reverb G2, or Oculus Quest 2 to even phones and tablets on iOS or Android to PCs and Mac for 2-dimensional viewpoint. Users would be able to connect to Mesh from anywhere.
When is Mesh coming?
Microsoft says that in the coming months, Mesh will deliver a full suite of AI-powered tools for avatars, session management, spatial rendering, synchronization across multiple users, and holoportation to build collaborative solutions in mixed reality.
