The future is now, ladies and gentlemen. We can now game Star Trek-style.
During Microsoft’s E3 2015 conference, Mojang demonstrated a whole new version of Minecraft that could be played holographically through Microsoft Hololens. While on the stage we saw a man waving his hands around over an empty table, on the overhead screen (thanks to a special camera with a Hololens strapped in front of it), the audience watched a Minecraft town rise up out of the table in full 3D, while he moved it around with his fingertips. When his partner asked him to check what was underground, he lifted the world like Atlas to see the caverns below the surface.
If this is real–and it sure looks real–then this could be a giant leap forward in what games can do. We just witnessed an actual, honest-to-goodness, Iron Man manipulatable hologram here. This is HUGE.
Because just telling you about it might not do it justice, here’s Eurogamer’s coverage of it:
Imagine the future possibilities in RTS games like Starcraft, where instead of being stuck in front of a mouse and computer screen you can gaze down at a full holographically-rendered battlefield that you can control with your own hands. Indeed, in ANY isometric game this new technology can be a game-changer.
Imagine playing XCOM on a rig like this!
Keep an eye on this, people. We could be seeing great things, and soon. I have never felt like I was in the year 2015 more than I do now.
