Over the past year car maker Ford has been one of a handful of companies to try out Microsoft’s HoloLens headset through pilot testing in the company’s design center. This week, the company is announcing that it’s expanding its testing after positive early results.
You can get a sense for what this expansion means in the video below. Ford has already been using HoloLens to help design new cars; bringing 3D models into the real world using the augmented reality headset. Now, however, the company is introducing new processes, like overlaying new features onto existing car models and creating guided tours of cars using voice recording. The company also says it’s developing new apps for better collaboration in AR.
“With HoloLens, we can go from a digital creation to looking at it in full scale and analyzing its effects much, much faster,” Jim Holland, Ford Vice President, Vehicle Components and Systems Engineering, said in a blog post detailing the company’s work with HoloLens. “We can look at the hologram blended with the vehicle in any direction, too — that’s not something you can do on a computer screen.”
It’s a good example of how AR will drastically effect industries as we know them today, just as much as it will revolutionize our own lifestyles. HoloLens remains a developer kit right now, but we’re excited to see improved versions of it in the months and years to come.
