MICROSOFT HAS CHANNELED its inner sci-fi buff and tweaked the Outlook and Calendar apps to work on the HoloLens augmented reality (AR) headset.
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“Microsoft HoloLens will be a revolutionary tool for businesses – transforming how companies, designers, and creators work with three-dimensional data to bring products and information to life”, the company reported past year.
The company is inviting HoloLens developers to download the free email and calendar applications from the Windows Store and provide feedback on the technology. So it’s unlikely you’d be able to see these apps in their entirety at a glance, unless there were a way to shrink the Outlook windows to fit a smaller surface and allow you to see the entire box.
Microsoft has introduced Outlook Mail and Calendar compatibility for its mixed reality project HoloLens. Through AR, you can do some neat things with Outlook and Mail, like stick your inbox on your office wall while you interact with other digital content. In that way, it’s not totally unlike having a second monitor, one of which might contain your email and other tidbits while the other displays whatever it is you’re now working on. As you will discover, these are very similar (if not the same as) the Mail and Calendar apps that are included with Windows 10, and presumably they will be included with HoloLens (which runs Windows 10) going forward as well. Microsoft has begun to develop early versions of its core apps for HoloLens. You can even personalize the apps to match your surroundings, so they don’t look too out of place. It is therefore no surprise that Microsoft is hoping that its Windows Holographic platform will also be used to create other commercial headsets and gear.
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If you are one of the lucky few who already purchased the $3,000 developer kit from Microsoft, the apps are yours for the picking.
