Actiongram, the HoloLens app for creating holographic videos

/ / Augmented reality @en

Microsoft HoloLens’ developer version will be delivered soon: the first lucky ones that paid $3000 will start to receive the new headset from March 30th.

While waiting for the shipping, Microsoft is showing to the future developers the different possible uses of the augmented reality headset; one of these surprised many: it’s called Actiongram and it’s an app for HoloLens that makes possible to film ourselves or other people while interacting in video with holograms.

The idea is nice, but don’t expect special effects as in the cinema though: Microsoft wanted just to offer to the developers who don’t have any CGI or animation skills the possibility to have some fun shooting short videos in which they can insert special holograms previously created by the producers of the app.

In order to provide great holographic content to help inspire creators, we built a holographic studio where many different actors, characters, objects, and creatures can be captured as holograms,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post previewing the app. “Actiongram is an app that allows people to place this rich holographic content into their real world environment, and record a mixed reality capture (MRC) video.

Together with the announcement, the company released also an explanatory video that shows some examples of possible use of the app, but also how easy it is to set a video: in pure Microsoft style, an holographic menu appears in front of the users’ eyes, overlapped to the view thank to HoloLens;  from here it will be possible to choose the hologram to insert in the scene.

Which subjects are available? There’s actually a lot of choice: from the dinosaur to the astronaut, we can’t wait to try them all!

This is Microsoft’s official video: