When was the last time you used your desktop computer for anything other than work? More than likely you’d rather sit on your comfortable couch and browse the internet on your iPad. Data reported from many popular websites says you aren’t alone in this, with views from mobile devices recently overtaking desktop visits.
One of the biggest problems with mobile devices is the lack of powerful hardware. To combat this, more is being pushed to the cloud. Cheap, internet connected devices can leverage powerful servers to do heavy lifting, as well as storing media and documents. The most popular of this new family of cloud-based devices are Google’s Chromebooks. Running nothing but a modified version of the Chrome browser as its entire operating system, Chromebooks rely entirely on webapps and cloud storage, allowing an incredibly cheap device light enough to carry around with you, while still being a laptop.
Touch screens are good, but small screens can only show so much information, while large screens are uncomfortable to reach across a desk to use. New devices, such as the Leap Motion controller, could do to touch input what touch did to the mouse and keyboard. The Leap Motion controller is a set of cameras that tracks your hands in the air above it, and allows you to control your computer with gestures. Scroll down a page by lowering your hand, open file by pointing at it. Currently the Leap Motion controller is a small box you place on your desk, but a few manufacturers have already released products with this technology built in to the device.
Controlling your computer with hand gestures is pretty cool, but in the end, you’re still just moving things around on a screen. The Rift, in development by Oculus VR, Is a virtual reality headset that is making great strides to improve the field. The Rift aims to bring virtual reality into the mainstream by making a few key improvements over older versions of the technology. Each eye is shown a slightly different view, to give the illusion of depth, while using high definition screens to keep everything as sharp as possible. One reviewer commented that “Oculus’ Virtual Cinema makes it look and feel like you’re in a movie theater”. The team at Oculus VR has also implemented head tracking, meaning that when you turn your head, your view changes in the headset, furthering the illusion of actually being somewhere else. Finally, and most importantly, they have managed to overcome the effects of “simulator sickness”, the motion sickness-like effect that was a major roadblock in previous attempts at virtual reality technology. This was achieved by using low latency OLED screens instead of LCD’s. Until recently, you would need to use some kind of physical input, such as a game controller, to manipulate the world you see through the Rift, but the folks behind the Leap Motion controller have built a mount to attach the sensors to a Rift, allowing you to manipulate objects in the virtual world using your hands like you would in real life.
As much of a step forward as these technologies seem, especially together, they are both still tethered to a traditional computer. Microsoft is attempting to break that last barrier with its new Hololens headset. While not a true virtual reality headset like the Rift, the Hololens works by projecting “holograms” onto a transparent screen in front of your eyes, creating what they are calling “Augmented Reality”. It does this by scanning your environment with built in sensors, similar to the Leap Motion controller’s, and saving it as a 3d model. This allows for things like “attaching” a video player app to the wall of your living room, where it will stay, can be views from an angle, and even have objects pass in front of it. The biggest, and possibly most important, difference between the Hololens and competing technologies is that the Hololens is an entire, self-contained computer, requiring no other hardware to set up or use. In addition to its consumer uses, the Hololens has many professional applications. Early tech demos had journalists using the device to explore the surface of Mars created using photographs taken by probes and viewing life sized, 3d cutaway’s of the human body, and there are plans to send a pair of Hololens headsets up to the International Space Station for use is scientific experiments.
If you look back ten years ago, it seems almost funny that we spent most of our time on a computer stuck to a desk or lugging around a heavy laptop. I look forward to a future where these new technologies make even the lightest, quickest tablets of today look slow and clumsy in comparison.