Microsoft has been working on a lot of technologies, one of them being the Holoportation. After several years of work, Microsoft has demoed the tech, suggesting that it’s in the final stage of development.
The company showed off its technology at the Inspire 2019 event, which was able to depict a holographic avatar of a person, coupled with real-time speech translation.
The person who demonstrated Microsoft’s Holoportation was Azure Corporate Vice President Julia White, who successfully created a hologram of herself while translating in Japanese.
What is Holoportation?
For the uninitiated, Holoportation is the process of presenting a 3D and holographic image of a person clubbed with the concept of mixed reality. This further allows users to interact, see and hear in a life-like setting. You might see such party tricks in franchises like Star Wars. In fact, it seems more like what we see in Marvel movies. Still, you need to wear a tech helmet to see virtual humans.
Microsoft was able to showcase the technology with the use of its mixed reality device HoloLens and text-to-speech technology from Azure Speech Services.
The text-to-speech is able to convert written into verbal with the use of a neural network and is capable of producing human-esque speech.
Previous Demos
As Microsoft has been toiling its way into readying the Holoportation tech, the company has previously demoed it as well. The demo involved Holoportation in the car, which required a low bandwidth and Wi-Fi.
Microsoft performed the demo in a car due to — (a) the difficult and challenging scenario of cars, and (b) cars being more of a tech platform than just a mode a commutation.
Here’s a look at the demonstration:
To recall, last year, Microsoft showcased the HoloBeam technology during Inspire 2018. The demo was co-partnered with Valorem.
Also Read: Microsoft Open Sources AI Debugging & Visualization Tool ‘TensorWatch’
