The American giant has just declared its mixed and augmented reality platform obsolete, thus closing a somewhat dull chapter in its history.
Many people aspire to put their augmented reality and virtual reality headsets away. If these devices caused a lot of ink to flow in the mid-2010s, it is clear that they have not (yet) revolutionized our daily uses.
And, like users, Microsoft seems to have tired of technology, swapping its role as an augmented reality pro for that of an artificial intelligence addict.
Very distant ambitions
Does a VR headset that promises to change the way we interact with our computing devices and our environment mean something to you? Yes, we’re talking about the Apple Vision Pro, that’s right! But not only. Indeed, Microsoft took a slight lead over its rival by launching into this technology at the start of 2015.
The American giant had great ambitions for this new market, and proved it by designing its HoloLens 1 and 2, but also by encouraging other manufacturers to make their headsets compatible with Windows Mixed Reality. So where are we, almost nine years later?
Microsoft has answered this question by updating its list of deprecated Windows features. She announces that Windows Mixed Reality “ will be removed in a future version » of its OS. This is explicit. The company is also saying goodbye to the Mixed Reality Portal application and its platform dedicated to Steam VR, which is still alive and well.
The decline of augmented reality? Not quite
This news, however, is not a big surprise. The HoloLens 3 was never released, and no new devices have been released for Microsoft’s ecosystem in the past three years. Worse still, the company has entered into a partnership with Meta to make some of its products available in augmented reality, notably with the arrival of its cloud gaming service on the Quest Store.
Its teams dedicated to VR have also been drastically reduced. Among the thousands of layoffs carried out in 2023, a good portion concerned employees working on Windows Mixed Reality, AltspaceVR and MRTK, projects which are now history. However, the company is expected to continue developing projects for niche markets for some time to come.
Microsoft has therefore added a little more blur to a rather opaque horizon for VR. It is abandoning the bulk of its projects in this sector, while Apple is, in turn, preparing to put both feet in the mix in the coming weeks. Perhaps we are facing a situation similar to that of the iPhone or ARM processors for computers, where the Apple company succeeds where the Redmond company was ahead. Response in the coming months.
Source : The Verge
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