Announcing the release of Holo Terrain for #Hololens. Holo Terrain is a 3D Terrain #GIS Visualization tool for Hololens. Experience breathtaking views of our planet at several zoom levels and map styles. Download #HoloTerrain from Windows Store.
For a full portfolio of Hololens projects, please visit my website at Dangling Concepts.
Features
Terrain Controls
Zoom In/Out – 4 levels
Scale Up/Down
Pan East/West/North/South
Voice Command Enabled UI
5 Terrain/Map Styles
Satellite
Light
Dark
Elevation
Contrast
Search and dynamically load any place in the world
Just had a meeting with Microsoft Hololens team and got informed that there are 3 new features coming to Hololens next week.
1. Simulated Input in Unity Play Mode
This is essentially similar to the Hololens Emulator – where you have a window to provide simulated hololens input to the emulator. But starting next week, you wont have to export unity project to visual studio and deploy to emulator. You will have a panel/window within Unity to provide the same simulated input in Unity Play Mode. This will be really beneficial for some initial testing inside Unity – lots of time savings.
2. Unity Remote Debugging for Hololens
This is essentially similar to how Unity allows remote debugging of apps on iOS/Android devices. So starting next week, you will be able to run your app on a Hololens device and connect to it from Unity in Play mode – This means that you will see the Hololens “view” inside your Unity Editor and you can provide input from Unity Editor as well as debug code – again lots of time savings and we finally can get rid of the “debug log panels in Hololens UI”.
3. Hololens Remoting to Windows 10 PC
I am extremely excited about this one. Essentially, your Windows 10 PC becomes the brains for the Hololens device.
Let’s break this down:
Develop a Windows 10 UWP app, utilize all the Hololens APIs like you would for any holographic app
But deploy and run this app on your Windows 10 PC – YES thats correct
Install Hololens Remoting app on your Hololens device (will be released next week)
Your Windows 10 PC UWP app will connect to the Hololens Device
Voila…. Your Windows 10 PC just became the brains for Hololens
All sensor inputs are being sent from the Hololens device to your Windows 10 PC app
Your app does all processing on the PC, final render / image is sent over to hololens
This is exciting on so many fronts.. first of all.. All the magic is done over WiFi – so critics jumping on to calling this a tethered experience – hold off!!
Microsoft Hololens Team told us that in their tests they have achieved 60 FPS with all the compression and communication over WiFi – and that is no ordinary feat!
Now lets consider the opportunities:
Apps that require more horse power – scientific/medical visualization or complex algorithms – can be offloaded to a PC
Apps that require more eye-candy can utilize a stronger GPU/shaders on the PC
Additional peripherals attached to the PC can be utilized e.g. Kinect, Leap Motion – any other crazy sensors.
This is a very useful addon to a device that is awesome anyway, of course it should be used IF the project requires it. We have to evaluate the tradeoffs – Will the app in question be more constrained by the processing / gpu power of the Hololens device OR will it get a performance hit due to WiFi latency – and that will depend on the project requirements.
The future is NOW – sorry – I mean next week 😉
PS: All the braniacs may have guessed it, feature 2 is powered by feature 3 🙂
PPS: Shameless plug – check out my game #HoloTankz on hololens
I finally received my HoloLens DevKit a few days ago and I am blown away. its a marvelous piece of hardware and software especially for being a 1st version Developer Device. The applications of this technology are endless and the future seems very bright.
To understand the basic concepts of Gaze, Gesture, Voice commands, Spatial Sound, Spatial Mapping and Shared Holograms, I have started a small prototype project – Holo Tanks – bringing tank battles to your living room.
After a major update to Super Polygon on Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.1, Super Polygon is now available on Android and iOS. With Super Octagon, Hexagon, Pentagon, Square and Shape Shifting Polygon modes, 4 Visual themes, 3 Visual effects, 6 original Sound tracks and new poly patterns. Free to play with some in-app purchases.
A very big milestone for me. My first game for iOS has been released. Air Soccer Fever, already a hit game on Windows Store and Google Play (4 million downloads) is now also available on AppStore with true cross-platform online multiplayer gameplay. Play Air Soccer Fever for FREE on iPhone, iPad and iPodTouch.
Air Soccer Fever was first implemented in XNA/MonoGame for Windows Phone 7. I took the plunge and ported Air Soccer Fever to Unity3D engine. This helped with releasing a great update for Windows Phone 8, Windows 8.1, Android and iOS.
Play realtime online multiplayer soccer with anyone in the world. Currently at 4.5 million downloads across Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Android and thousands of players playing online.
As Indie devs, our apps/games need to be making some money. For those of us who have full time jobs, the revenue should at least cover the development costs. The Ad network market on Windows Phone 8 is limited and unreliable. Here are some numbers from my apps and my rant at the end 🙂
Banner Ads
Microsoft Pubcenter
Fill Rate: 25% to 35%
eCPM: $0.40 to $1.50
Google Admob
Fill Rate: 60% to 80%
eCPM: $0.02 t0 $0.10
Smaato
Fill Rate: 48%
eCPM: $0.04
Vserv
Fill Rate: 60% to 70%
eCPM: $0.30 to $0.50
Interstitial Ads
Google Admob
Fill Rate: 25%
eCPM: $0.36
Smaato
Fill Rate: 65%
eCPM: $0.38
Vserv
Fill Rate: 60% to 70%
eCPM: $0.35
Observations
In the Banner Ad area, Pubcenter is the BEST option so far. Yes fill rates are low but revenue is not bad. Admob and Smaato have a horrible eCPM but they are a good backfill option. Vserv is OK but it has no inventory in US – some europe and south america inventory. They do limit the revenue for no reason. (more on that later). And when everything else fails, you can go to AdDuplex for cross-promotion.
Whats strange is that I have “Air Soccer Fever” on Google Play as well using Admob. It has a far better fillrate and eCPM than Admob on Windows Phone.
The good thing is Microsoft finally made the AdMediation system available so we can utilize several ad networks and change % usage without having to re-submit an app update. It would be great IF they would allow for extension of the control so we can add new ad providers in there (Vserv)
In the Interstitial area, the three options I use are similar in eCPM.. but severely lacking in inventory in different regions. So you have to analyze and then utilize the network per region. making money is hard 🙂 Still the interstitial eCPM is lower than the Pubcenter’s banner ads which is a shame. Now if Microsoft will just pull its act together and release a direly missing update to pubcenter, it will make all of us happy who are getting jerked around by all these other ad networks.
Pubcenter Inetrstitial Image Ads
Pubcenter Video Ads
I am not sure whats the issue there.. Windows Phone 8 is more than capable to show Inetrstitials and Video ads. Yes they announced it for Windows 10 Mobile but come on already!!
Dangling Neuron 