Gadgetory

hey guys this is Tom of the verge and I'm checking out Microsoft's Windows mixed reality experience now I've heard a bunch about this over the past year and I don't know about you but I've been pretty confused by it simply because of the mixed reality name so kind of what is mixed reality I guess my trying to explain it as a platform that sits in between so you're gonna have the winds mented reality on the Left virtual reality on the right and they're trying to aim for something that's going to blend and sit sort of in the middle these devices are coming in October they're gonna come from a soos Acer HP and of course Dell and even Lenovo so all the PC makers you'd expect so this jump into Windows mixed reality and see what sort of apps and games you're really gonna get here okay so just like the oculus rift there's a tiny little bit set up where you're gonna have to mark out your physical play area apart from that you just plug in the HDMI and USB and you're good to go and because of the sensors on the actual headset track in these motion controllers so the motion control is you've got you've got these these basically represent your hands within the games and within this environment this is like a cliff house environment it's like the home essentially your virtual home and you can see there's apps like pinned to the wall I can grab those for the triggers and move them if I want to resize and bring them right into my view and all that sort of stuff and there's also a start menu and sort of thing you'd expect on anything Windows really and you can control apps um here you can actually pin them into your environment you can just start like literally start off a copy of edge and use it like you would in Windows 10 so I can navigate to my favorite website load up stuff browser and you can bring that also into your view a little bit more so you can lose really inspector closely or you know pop it in the background get myself up towards the superhot and will launch that and just to show you this is obviously a VR experience and although this is mixed reality and much let's call it mixed reality and the actual experience is very much like VR even down to the motion controllers and down to just the headset itself so I'm in stewpot now on a Dodge a few of these bullets and punch people in the face and stuff and if I'm gonna be able to grab grab this bottle yeah as you can see I know if you can read scenes very well because it's really hard for us to show you exactly how VR works but it's a pretty standard VR so the key con a difference between the oculus rift and the the vibe and stuff like that and these headsets is that the sensors and cameras are actually at the front so they're tracking your motion controllers from the front of the headset rather than having to place sensors throughout your room there's a really quick setup process you just put the headset on and plug it in and you're good to go it's home to the actual headset and adjustments pretty standard and you can actually flick this one up the visor so if you're in a room and I don't know your partner or your family walking you when I talk to them you flip heads up and you start talking to them and at the back you've got an adjustment here so let's see we're gonna tighten it or loosen it and in terms of the fit and feel and it feels pretty good it doesn't feel too weighty it feels pretty reasonably balanced on this particular unit and I haven't tried all of the different units so I can't speak about exactly how the design and the fit is across all of them it doesn't have integrated headphones like you would get on the rift but you've obviously got a cord here you can just plug in your own headphones so that's kind of useful in its own way as well so one of the key things about the windows mixed reality platform is these new motion controllers now every headset will support these and they're all going to be exactly the same it's just a reference design and each OAM so that HP or Dell in this case and will put their own sort of markings on them but they're going to be the same physical actual devices and what I found is that they're a little bit uncomfortable and they're not very ergonomic compared to sort of like the oculus rift but it's a very like square and flat piece of plastic here so it doesn't really rest all that comfortably in my hands but in terms of buttons and stuff it pretty well and they're pretty well positioned and what's really interesting about these also is that they've got these tiny little white LED lights that are constantly on so when the actual devices are powered up and connected via bluetooth these will actually track to you the cameras at the front of these headsets so like I said earlier this is this different tracking to what you see on the rift which requires the sensors and the visor which also requires sensors this will need these controllers to sit in front of you when you've got the headset on okay so there's a real quick look at Microsoft's Windows mixed reality experience obviously we've been using the Dell visors here today and there's a bunch more from over here OMS but this one is going to retail in October for three hundred fifty nine dollars and for four hundred and $59 you actually get the motion controllers as well I would recommend that and just for the extra hundred dollars for the package you can probably get more out of the VR games and experiences with these actual controllers and for more on AR or any of the virtual reality headsets check out the verge calm that was a real quick oh are you ready that's the second TiVo ok so that was a really quick look at the Microsoft weeks but that was dinner because that was a real quick look at the Microsoft Whip