In true Microsoft fashion, the HoloLens is an incredibly interesting piece of technology that is hamstrung by a thick layer of jank smeared over the device and development process, especially for those on a Mac. After shaving numerous yaks that I thought I would never have to revisit (DirectX drivers? Really Microsoft??), here’s a relatively sane tutorial on getting your HoloLens environment and emulator up and running. Hardware. MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014).
Select Hololens Emulator as your device. Click the green button or select Debug → Start We did it! Hololens Emulator should launch after a while (it may take up to 15 minutes, though, so. Elsewhere, the other news from Microsoft concerned its development of what appears to be the frontrunner to be the first true AR headset, the HoloLens. While companies have been rushing to.
OSX 10.11.5 Software. Windows 10. VMWare Fusion 8.1.1. (Visual Studio, HoloLens Emulator, and Unity for HoloLens). Yo Cortana what up with dat hypervisor? Installation Begin by installing Windows 10 inside VMWare Fusion. I set my Virtual Disk size to be 85GB, which is 70GB for Windows, HoloLens tools, and associated cruft + extra space for future expansion.
It’s probably worth setting up a shared folder that lives on the host OS for storing your source code and binaries without bloating the VM. With the VM powered off, you’ll want to tweak the following settings within VMWare’s Virtual Machine Settings. Under General, set the OS type to Hyper-V from the Windows dropdown, which will allow you to run the inside VMWare. Under Processors & Memory use at least 2 cores and 8GB of memory. In Advanced options check the box next to Enable hypervisor.
Under Display, uncheck Accelerate 3D Graphics. I know this is confusing. When this option is selected Windows uses DirectX 9 and Unity crashes when I try to add a Cube to the scene. When this option is unselected I am able to run DirectX 11 and Unity behaves just fine. You can check your DirectX version by running dxdiag.exe. This might have something to do with the Intel Iris GPU in my Macbook.
Note that the latest version of Blender requires 3D acceleration so you will want to install version instead. Under Compatibility, make sure you are running Hardware Version 12. Next, fire up Windows 10 and. Enable.
Install all available Windows Updates. Install the Now you’re ready to get down to business. Start with which will walk you through creating a project in Unity, exporting it to Visual Studio, previewing it in the emulator, and exporting the code to a HoloLens.
I would suggest in Chapter 3 that you place the Cube at a Z position of 3 so that it appears directly in front of the user rather than at the origin. This makes the Cube much easier to find when using the emulator. You’ll also want to take a peek at the to learn how to navigate with the keyboard. As a final note, you may want to consider the entire Windows dev environment on EC2 and avoid VMWare altogher. Happy hacking! Gleitzman graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he worked with Hal Abelson to using mobile devices.
Gleitzman was a visiting researcher at Google Research in Mountain View, California where he built, a graphical programming language for creating Android phone applications that is now at the core of the MIT Center for Mobile Learning. He is the founder of, an organization teaching software engineering, creative thinking, and entrepreneurship to junior and high school students. In his spare time he enjoys creating electronic music, discussing programming concepts, and playing, his remake of Encarta 95's classic trivia game.
He also posts useful bits of knowledge on. Popular Tags Popular Articles.
![Hololens Hololens](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125482525/163464893.jpg)
Contents. Deploying apps to the HoloLens emulator. Load your app solution in Visual Studio 2015.
Note: When using Unity, build your project from Unity and then load the built solution into Visual Studio as usual. Ensure the Platform is set to x86.
Select the HoloLens Emulator as the target device for debugging. Go to Debug Start Debugging or press F5 to launch the emulator and deploy your app for debugging. The emulator may take a minute or more to boot when you first start it. We recommend that you keep the emulator open during your debugging session so you can quickly deploy apps to the running emulator. Basic emulator input Controlling the emulator is very similar to many common 3D video games. There are input options available using the keyboard, mouse, or Xbox controller.
You control the emulator by directing the actions of a simulated user wearing a HoloLens. Your actions move that simulated user around and apps running in the emulator respond like they would on a real device. Walk forward, back, left, and right – Use the W,A,S, and D keys on your keyboard, or the left stick on an Xbox controller. Look up, down, left, and right – Click and drag the mouse, use the arrow keys on your keyboard, or the right stick on an Xbox controller. Air tap gesture – Right-click the mouse, press the Enter key on your keyboard, or use the A button on an Xbox controller.
Bloom gesture – Press the Windows key or F2 key on your keyboard, or press the B button on an Xbox controller. Hand movement for scrolling – Hold the Alt key, hold the right mouse button, and drag the mouse up / down, or in an Xbox controller hold the right trigger and A button down and move the right stick up and down. Anatomy of the HoloLens emulator Main window When the emulator launches, you will see a window which displays the HoloLens OS. Toolbar To the right of the main window, you will find the emulator toolbar. The toolbar contains the following buttons:. Close: Closes the emulator.
Minimize: Minimizes the emulator window. Human Input: Mouse and Keyboard are used to simulate human.
Keyboard and Mouse Input: Keyboard and mouse input are passed directly to the HoloLens OS as keyboard and mouse events as if you connected a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Fit to Screen: Fits the emulator to screen.
Zoom: Make the emulator larger and smaller. Help: Open emulator help. Open Device Portal: Open the Windows Device Portal for the HoloLens OS in the emulator. Tools: Open the Additional Tools pane. Simulation tab The default tab within the Additional Tools pane is the Simulation tab. The Simulation tab shows the current state of the simulated sensors used to drive the HoloLens OS within the emulator. Hovering over any value in the Simulation tab will provide a tooltip describing how to control that value.
Room tab The emulator simulates world input in the form of the spatial mapping mesh from simulated “rooms”. This tab lets you pick which room to load instead of the default room. Simulated rooms are useful for testing your app in multiple environments. Several rooms are shipped with the emulator and once you install the emulation, you will find them in%ProgramFiles(x86)% Program Files (x86) Microsoft XDE 10.0.11082.0 Plugins Rooms. All of these rooms were captured in real environments using a HoloLens:. DefaultRoom.xef – A small living room with a TV, coffee table, and two sofas.
Loaded by default when you start the emulator. Bedroom1.xef – A small bedroom with a desk. Bedroom2.xef – A bedroom with a queen size bed, dresser, nightstands, and walk-in closet.
GreatRoom.xef – A large open space great room with living room, dining table, and kitchen. LivingRoom.xef – A living room with a fireplace, sofa, armchairs, and a coffee table with a vase.
You can also record your own rooms to use in the emulator using the Simulation page of the on your HoloLens. On the emulator, you will only see holograms that you render and you will not see the simulated room behind the holograms. This is in contrast to the real HoloLens where you see both blended together. If you want to see the simulated room in the HoloLens emulator, you will need to update your app to render the spatial mapping mesh in the scene. Account Tab The Account tab allows you to configure the emulator to sign-in with a Microsoft Account. This is useful for testing API’s that require the user to be signed-in with an account. After checking the box on this page, subsequent launches of the emulator will ask you to sign-in, just like a user would the first time the HoloLens is started.
See also. Advanced emulator input Most emulator users will only need. The details below are for advancd users who have found a need to simulate more complex human input to the emulator.
Contents. Concepts To get started controlling the virtual input to the HoloLens emulator, you should first understand a few concepts.
Motion is controlled with both rotation and translation (movement) along three axes. Yaw: Turn left or right. Pitch: Turn up or down. Roll: Roll side-to-side.
![Hololens emulator Hololens emulator](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125482525/417631227.png)
X: Move left or right. Y: Move up or down. Z: Move forward or backward. Gesture input is mapped closely to how are performed when using a physical HoloLens:. Action: This simulates the action of pressing the forefinger to the thumb. For example, the Action input can be used to simulate the air-tap gesture, to scroll through content, and to press-and-hold.: The HoloLens bloom gesture is used to return to the shell and to perform system actions.
You can also control the state of simulated sensor input:. Reset: This will return all simulated sensors to their default values. Tracking: Cycles through the positional tracking modes. This includes:. Default: The OS chooses the best tracking mode based upon the requests made of the system. Orientation: Forces Orientation-only tracking, regardless of the requests made of the system.
Positional: Forces Positional tracking, regardless of the requests made of the system. Types of input The following table shows how each type of HoloLens input maps to the keyboard, mouse, and Xbox controller. Each type has a different mapping depending on the input control mode; more information on input control modes is provided later in this document. Keyboard Mouse Xbox controller Yaw Left / right arrows Drag Left / Right Right thumbstick left / right Pitch Up / down arrows Drag up / down Right thumbstick up / down Roll Q / E DPad left / right X A / D Left thumbstick left / right Y Page up / page down DPad up / down Z W / S Left thumbstick up / down Action Enter or space Right button A button or either trigger Bloom Windows key or F2 B button Reset Escape key Start button Tracking T or F3 X button Input control modes The emulator can be controlled in multiple modes, which impact how the controls are interpreted. The input modes are:.
Default mode: The default mode combines the most common operations for ease of use. This is the mode the emulator operates in the majority of the time. Hands mode: Hands are typically not visible to the emulator – they are made visible briefly when performing gestures such as and bloom using the default input mode. The corresponding Hand is also made visible when you enter hands mode, or when you click “Turn On” in the Simulation tab, which is located in the Additional Tools pane. To enter hands mode for one or more hands, press and hold an alt key on the keyboard: use left alt for the left hand, and/or use right alt for the right hand. You can also press and hold a shoulder button on the Xbox controller to enter hands mode: press the left shoulder for the left hand, and/or press the right shoulder for the right hand. Head mode: The head mode applies controls, where appropriate, exclusively to the head.
To enter head mode, press and hold the H key on the keyboard.