I believe these statement are true:
1) All Universal Apps Work As Holograms
2) Universal Apps can be built using HTML/JS
Does this mean I can build a holographic universal app using web technologies? For example a holographic visualizations dashboard in D3.js?
It's still too early to say definitively, but here is some info I could find.
UPDATE: There is now a library called HoloJS which allows devs to write apps in html.
First your assumptions 1 and 2 are correct. There are ways to build UWP (Universal Windows Platform) apps in javascript/html. This means you could write a UWP JS app which can run webgl in a 2D window placed somewhere in your environment. You could also run your app on Microsoft Edge.
So if all you want to do is display a 2D dashboard in a 3D room, yes it looks very possible. If you want the application to render 3D objects all around the user, there are some problems you will need to work around.
Quoted from https://forums.hololens.com/discussion/80/is-it-possible-to-use-webgl-with-hololens-repost#latest:
"Holographic apps are powered by the same graphics stack as the rest of the Windows 10 ecosystem. That means that just like the Xbox and Win32 games, apps for HoloLens are built on top of DirectX."
So you're kind of stuck with either Unity or DirectX if you want 3D visualizations that surround the user. BUT there could be a way...
A user at the bottom of this page http://forums.hololens.com/discussion/80/is-it-possible-to-use-webgl-with-hololens-repost said:
"That is interesting idea. If I understand correctly, you are trying to hook your Edge browser with your HoloLens and project 3D graphics with WebGL on your Edge browser based on the REST APIs available from HoloLens"
So, you could perhaps fullscreen your app or find some way to ensure it is in front of your user's face and then use a server to direct API calls from the hololens to your web-app in order to transform your geometry around the user.
It might be worth it to look into integrating D3 visualizations inside a threejs app if you want the holographic visualizations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWjn1N4SJsk
If you just want a 2D screen in the environment then develop as normal and use Edge inside the hololens.
Related
I am trying to build an application (converting rather), that builds into a server (UNET/ Mirror wise), a windows client, Oculus Go client and UWP client. More platforms will be implemented in the future.
Unless I did not tackle this the right way, the Toolkit does not seem to be capable of doing this with just one profile, or maybe not at all.
E.g.: I need the mouse for Windows and motion controllers for UWP. Having both in the MixedRealityInputSystemProfile spawns both on UWP. If I don't add the mouse I have nothing on Windows Standalone. This leads me to the conclusion that I have to create multiple profiles. But the MixedRealityToolkit only references a single one. Does that mean I have to additively load a different Toolkit with it's configuration for any platform configuration I want?
The DefaultMixedRealityInputSystemProfile already contains a lot of inputs, which makes me think it should be capable of doing that, but it looks like it does so to a certain degree and then fails.
Thinking further about this:
What if I want an UWP app, but for MR Portal only, or for UWP Standalone only. What about Oculus Go (Android) and Android mobile? The differentiation would be using the Oculus SDK under Android. Using it under windows would result in the Rift being used I guess.
Where do I branch off what?
I believe you can specify which input providers you want on different platforms. For example, if you want a MouseProvider in Windows only, the you can specify the Mouse Input Data Provider to run only on Windows via the “supported platforms” field of the mouse data provider.
Similarly you can enable the motion controllers using same technique.
While there are not yet ways to specify completely different configurations for different platforms, it is possible to solve your specific case of input by configuring the input data providers.
When you use the "Holographic DirectX 11 App" template in Visual Studio, it creates an app that occupies the entire HoloLens view (I believe it's call the Holographic View).
How do you build a Holographic App like the Hologram demos where you can re-size the box and place the app in the Holographic Shell?
BTW, can someone with a higher reputation create a new tag "hololens-directx". I think there are beginning to be more DirectX development and this would help distinguish from the Unity questions.
Short Answer: Not Yet
Microsoft is reserving development right such as this as well as live tiles. Of the many forum posts regarding this, an official Microsoft team has formally responded to this one below.
To understand more options available to you in your app development, see this page about the app model.
The ability to place holograms into the Holographic Shell is not exposed to app developers.
Hologram app is an inbox app and third party apps cannot replicate this functionality.
App developers can only place GLTF model into Shell as a link to their app.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/schemas/appxpackage/uapmanifestschema/element-uap5-mixedrealitymodel
I am new to Xamarin and not sure if chose Xamarin.Forms to create a application for ios and android platform has a problem or not.
The application has some features below:
The application will be able to running some code in background without launching application by user.
The application can be launched by a href link or a notification.
The application is able to launch a builtin Camera application, and receive picture data from Camera application.
Thanks,
Bo
The features you are mentioning can be done with both. Actually, anything you can do on Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android can be done with Forms. Because Forms is only an abstraction layer for the UI which is installed by a NuGet package.
Now, having that said when to use Forms or when to use iOS/Android? It is mostly about UI. Are you going to do some advanced or platform specific stuff is is easier to implement that with the platform specific project.
If you UI will be the same in both platforms and mostly consists of some lists and input fields, then that is a very good candidate for a Forms project.
Notice how I said it is easier to do in the platform specific projects. Again here, you can do anything in Forms as well by the means of Custom Renderers, it is just a bit harder to do.
Ideally try it out yourself and see what suits you best.
In regard with your need to execute code in the background. This will be tricky and is very dependent on the platform that you're on. You will definitely have to write platform specific code for that for which you can use the DependencyService to abstract it to your shared code.
However like AlancLui mentioned executing code in the background isn't something that is easy to do on mobile. On iOS it is restricted to accessing location data or playing music, but still your app needs to be running (in the background). Android has something called Services for this, which makes it a bit easier.
I am an WPF developer with little knowledge for the way "mobile" apps work but in general I believe that they work in some sort of sandbox way (meaning they should not be able to access each others process, info etc., I might be totally incorrect on this one). So I am wondering if such "limitations" are applied to the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps?
The reasoning for my question is that I would like to write and app that checks if another Universal App is in process and use some of its information. In WPF there are ways of doing just that but in UWP apps I am not sure if it is/should/will be possible.
Thanks.
There are a couple of solutions in Windows 10. Firstly, if you are building an enterprise app and can also side-load normal Desktop apps, you can use this technique to build your UI as a UWP but also be able to break out of the sandbox and do other things on the desktop.
Secondly, if the app you want to read from is cooperative (ie, is designed to provide information; you're not just grabbing it without permission) then you can use App to App services to send and receive information between two consenting applications.
Both links are to //build videos but you can download the slides too that should contain code samples.
Is there a way to run an xna game from a web page without installing anything? Something similiar to java, silverlight or very close to a wpf browser applications (XBAP).
Scenario:
Go on webpage, Get asked to install
the game. Game installs, game screen
shows up in webpage. Can full screen,
etc.
The game is a full blown xna framework game, using 3d, has access to the system calls such as directx and other low level networking api. This is probably more of having javascript working with windows system if anything.
SilverSprite seems to do what you want. I have never used it but see XNA 2D games come to the browser via Silverlight.
Essentially it allows XNA game
developers to run their games in
Silverlight 2, though there is a
limitation: the games that can be
converted may only have
SpriteBatch-based graphics, meaning no
3D games.
If your game needs access at the level you describe then it can't really run from within the browser. It will need to be properly installed on the users machine.
You can use a ClickOnce installer to launch your came FROM a web page, but not run it IN a webpage.
The Unity game engine (and designer) is pretty darned fabulous for doing exactly what you describe. You can do all the logic in C# if desired.